stuff is cool

(note: this is purely biographical and to a lesser extent, evangelical. Don’t say you weren’t warned)

I’ve always led a fairly active lifestyle, even when I was very young. In my younger years I was always on some sort of organized sports team. From the community swim team every summer to youth soccer to little league baseball and then finally on to swimming four hours a day with the high school swim team, there was always something to keep me active. Even in my spare time my friends and I would play basketball or ride bikes or invent new games like soccer golf to play in the neighborhood.

Then came college.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I was never the most diligent student nor the most involved student. Nor was I the biggest party animal either. But, between double-majoring and the increasing soul-sucking power of the internet (specifically IRC and online message boards), spare time in college was at a bit of a premium even if it wasn’t because I was spending time on things like studying or attending student interest groups. Sadly, I wouldn’t be joining the Trinity University swim team either — partly because I knew it would take an inordinate amount of time, and partly because I knew I’d be one of the slowest members due to the fact that in spite of having swam for basically all of my life, the most rigorous swim program I was in was my high school’s swim team. So college would essentially be the first extended period in my life where I wasn’t a part of some organized sports.

Luckily, my good friend (and senior-year roommate) Byron Denney introduced me to the game of ultimate. I think it came up because he knew that I had played on the school’s frisbee/disc golf course, but regardless of how it came up, he not only introduced me to the game but he also got me involved in the first tournament I ever went to, Huckin for Love 2001 in Houston. It was a “hat tournament” which means that they basically put everyone’s names in a hat and drew teams that way, so Byron and I actually didn’t end up on the same team but it was a good opportunity to learn more and to meet more people. I knew I loved the sport when our team decided on using the team name “Midget Clown on a Unicycle” (thanks, Jason Bargas). An extra bonus was that veryone was more than willing to teach me more about the sport as I was still very “green”. So, in spite of the fact that it was actually quite cold (lower 50s) that day and I froze my tail off (Byron, if you find this story and still have the pictures, scan them and send them to me!), I still had a blast.

Back at Trinity, Byron and I would try to play more and more, but unfortunately we never got a real regular game going, and with all the added work associated with graduating (finishing up class requirements, all the graduation stuff, job searching, etc.) ultimate sort of fell by the wayside. Then graduation came and went and I found myself living at a friend’s house still in San Antonio, earning part-time wages working at home for the summer. Then, I moved back to Houston a few short months later, and lived at home once again. None of my friends from high school were around anymore, and I was in a long-distance relationship so I became a bit of a shut-in spending most of my time online chatting. Luckily that summer, Shane, one of my friends who was still at Trinity came back to Houston for the summer. He got me back into ultimate a bit, and got me the hell out of the house (that summer my long-distance relationship turned into a live-together-and-I-support-two-people relationship). Then, in August, Shane played with the San Antonio Ultimate team in the UPA Sectionals tournament in Austin and he invited me to play with them. Although I was exhausted and cramping at the end of the day, it was awesome. The HFL tournament wasn’t very competitive, but this tournament was and I loved it. So, soon after that I started playing regularly at the penultimates pick-up game. From there, I’ve just gradually increased my involvement with the sport and now going on 3 years of steady play, I love it more than ever.

So, in summary, here are the reasons to love ultimate:

• fun
• good exercise
• cheap (all you need is a field, some friends, and a disc … and I will give you one for free)
• good people
• drinking is heavily encouraged at many tournaments (at Celebracion in Austin, they gave a Nalgene bottle full of tequila to every team)

Any Houstonians interested in playing should drop me a line or just stop by the HUC website.