The "Ultimate" Saturday...

When I met V we discussed the typical first date things...our careers, our hobbies, our education, and our hobbies. V was really excited to tell me at that time about "Ultimate" , and seemed surprised when I had no clue what he was talking about. He was so excited about it in fact, that he took me to his car after dinner and gave me brief lesson on the rules of playing "Ultimate" and showed me his "disc" ...heh, sounds dirty, doesn't it? The following weeked, he invited me to play with him and the guys. When I suggeted that I would just sit by and watch, he frowned, informing me that if I went to watch, I was going to play. Needless to say, I didn't yet know if V was worthy of myself dodging Frisbees all afternoon, so we decided on an alternate activity. I quickly learned, as V continued to talk about the sport, that I was no where ready to even attempt it, nor did I have the required cleats. Months went by and I heard nothing more about "Ultimate" until a few weekends ago. Vincent had asked me what I had going on and told me about an actual "Ultimate" tournament in Jacksonville that he was going to go watch. I decided to tag along, if it's important to V, it's important to me. He hadn't played since we had been dating and I still wasn't that clear if it was because we spent most weekends together and he just didn't have time or if it was due to multiple "Ultimate" incidents, one in which he even had to get 4 stictches above his left eye. Anyway, I was still curious about "Ultimate" and really didn't understand the point of it. I was just thinking that it was a glorified game of Frisbee. I would soon learn that it was completely different and even mentioning the word "Frisbee" around this gang would hold great consequences.

We risked the rain and showed up at the park. Much to our surprise, the games were already underway and there were TONS of people playing, including some bad-ass chicks. We threw down a blanket and took it all in. V took some great action shots and talked to some of the guys he used to play with. As the action was crazy on the field, I was in the zone. I became addicted to "Ultimate" . I'm still not sure that I could ever play it, but it was amazing. And certainly much, much different that I was expecting. I thought that it'd be a little more violent and I thought that it would just be a lot of Frisbee tossing and running. Nope. There were some quite complex rules and I found myself constantly asking V questions about the game. He did his best to answer them all between shots. I guess the most impressive thing about the game, other than the kick-ass way that they were throwing the disc, a style, the "flick", that I had never witnessed and V has yet to teach, was the athletism of these people. They were in it for the kill. It was much less complicated than football and most simlar to basketball with the "ultimate" (pardon the pun...) goal of catching the disc in the end zone to score. These players had great strategies and knew what they were doing and it was evident.

Thanks to V for teaching me the difference between a Frisbee and a disc...I will be forever grateful.

To find out where you can get involved with "Ultimate" in your area, check out this site.