Ultimate
Frisbee Gets Down and Dirty, And Some Cry Foul ---- Shouting, Spitting,
Spiking And Swearing Bring Calls For Referees With Teeth
By Ross Kerber - Staff Reporter of The Wall
Street Journal
After a score by the Port City Slickers in
a big ultimate-frisbee game against the Seattle Sockeye team two seasons
ago, an exultant Slicker spiked the disk, prompting angry protests from
Sockeye defender Ed Avery.
What happened then made frisbee history. After players including Slickers
veteran Mike Gerics joined the argument, Mr. Avery emerged from the crowd
wiping his forehead.
"He spit on me!" a disbelieving Mr. Avery shouted, putting the finger on
Mr. Gerics.
Mr. Gerics later received a one-year suspension that began last summer.
It was the first such ban, and to many of the sport's devotees, a disturbing
sign of the times.
"In the old days, teams . . . would just throw
it deep and beat you with their athleticism," says Kevin Givens, an organizer
at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "Now, they'll intentionally
foul you, cussing the other players. That's not in the spirit of the game."
Mike O'Dowd, a veteran of San Francisco's powerful Double Happiness team,
says he may retire rather than play with new teammates who fight and talk
trash. "The team I started with was a kinder, gentler team," says Mr. O'Dowd.
These days, he says, "any big game becomes a matter of ill will."
Founded in the antiauthoritarian 1960s, ultimate frisbee is having an identity
crisis. Once played by a few iconoclasts at New Jersey high schools, the
disk-hurling game patterned loosely after touch football has grown into
a sport of about 65,000 competitors, with amateur leagues, a national tournament
and a governing body -- the Ultimate Players Association -- that dreams
of TV contracts and Olympic recognition.
But to purists, the growth has attracted too many people who cheat, argue
and hack, leading to proposals for something the sport has never had --
full-fledged referees. Until now, officiating has generally been limited
to top tournament games -- and only when both sides agree to it. Even then,
the officials usually have no power to intervene on their own and can make
calls only when asked by a player.
It's time to stop "sociopathic behavior" on the playing field, says Jim
Parinella, who plays for the national-champion Death or Glory team in Boston
and who leads the call for more referee power.
Full-on refereeing faces an uphill battle in a sport where breaks for beer
are still common and teams favor names like We Smoke Weed, Lady Godiva and
Bovine Intervention. The ultimate mainstream isn't ready for prime time
-- and proud of it. Most people who play the game can't even bring themselves
to use the word "referee." They prefer "observer."
The antiref crowd also notes that the level of bad behavior is still far
from that in sports where players choke coaches and bite off bits of ear.
They also worry that more officiating would destroy the game's tradition
of sportsmanship, which includes a strong honor code whereby players are
encouraged to rat on themselves, and a rule book that officially decries
a "win at all cost" mentality.
But self-regulation doesn't always work. At last year's world-championship
tournament in Vancouver, Canada, Kenny Dobyns of the Westchester County
(N.Y.) Summer League All-Stars body-slammed Sockeye star Jon Gewirtz --
supposedly in retaliation for obscene taunts. With Mr. Gewirtz pinned, Mr.
Dobyns whispered in his ear, "Don't let this get out of hand."
At the women's national championship in Sarasota, Fla., last October, two
players were benched by their captains to curtail their cursing and pushing.
A year earlier, as coach for East Carolina University at the Women's Collegiate
Championships, Mr. Gerics, the spitter, alleged that Sarah Savage, coach
of the University of California team, was instructing her players to make
illegal throws. Ms. Savage says that Mr. Gerics circled her team's huddle,
hurling obscenities.
"He says, `No wonder you only have eight players, you're a hag and you chase
everyone away,'" recalls Ms. Savage. She also says the ECU players were
abusive on the field. "The women were literally screaming, blood vessels
rupturing in their faces," Ms. Savage says. Mr. Gerics denies he used obscenities
or behaved inappropriately.
UPA head observer Vic Kahmi says more-powerful
judges also might deter recklessness. Mr. Kahmi says he recently witnessed
a game in Princeton, N.J., where a North Carolina college player dived for
a flying disk he had no chance of catching and crashed into the intended
receiver, dislocating the poor fellow's shoulder. "Was there intent to maim?
I don't think so, but he wasn't playing under control," says Mr. Kahmi.
When played as designed, ultimate frisbee combines speed, grace and powerful
hurling with a grueling pace. Seven-player teams try to pass the frisbee
down the 70-yard field and across the opponent's goal line. Possession switches
when the disk is intercepted, thrown out of bounds or touches the ground.
Tackling, running with the disk or stripping it away aren't allowed during
matches, which typically are played to a score of 15 or 21 and last about
90 minutes. Receivers try to break free for the overhand toss known as the
"hammer" or the Hail Mary bomb called the "huck." Hurlers must pass the
disk within 10 seconds according to a "stall count" called out loud by defenders.
Leagues are springing up in such places as Denver and Los Angeles, adding
to established groups in Silicon Valley, Washington, D.C., Boston and elsewhere.
With so many talented athletes, top tournaments like one in Fredericksburg,
Va., earlier this month include more pirouetting throws than a season at
Shea Stadium.
But the lack of referees also slows games. A match between a Carnegie Mellon
University alumni team and the We Smoke Weed squad from New York featured
as much negotiation as scoring. A typical pause came when Carnegie Mellon's
Calvin Lin stopped a stall count to suggest that a defender had stepped
on his foot.
Another delay came when New York's Mr. Dobyns,
now playing for the Weed team, called timeout to pass around cans of Budweiser
to his teammates. Some also shared a joint the size of a small flashlight.
Afterward, the alumni team pulled away to prevail 12-5. "We're too stoned
to argue!" yelled one Weed player after an opponent called a hacking foul.
Some ultimate graybeards trace the rise of aggressive behavior to Mr. Gerics,
who as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington
and later at East Carolina, helped bowl over and heckle opponents en route
to collegiate ultimate titles in 1993, 1994 and 1995. The tactics toppled
Ivy League frisbee dynasties because, as Mr. Gerics puts it, "most ultimate
players were kind of geeky intellectuals. East Carolina, it's not the hardest
school. We're bad---, we're rednecks."
After graduating, Mr. Gerics joined the Port City Slickers in Wilmington,
for whom he played in the infamous spitting game. Mr. Gerics, who wouldn't
admit his infractions at first, now apologizes. "I'm pretty embarrassed
about it," he says.
But while serving out his suspension, he has found a new love-ultimate officiating
at local college tournaments in North Carolina. Players, he says, rarely
dispute his calls because "I wouldn't try to get in an argument with me."
