After four years of playing Ultimate Frisbee at Marquette, I was ecstatic to know that we were bringing the most promising team in our five year history to the Lake Superior Sectional tournament. I was even more excited when I learned that the Marquette Tribune was interested in writing a column. Had I known it would turn out the way it did in the March 18 Tribune, I would have saved my enthusiasm. Brian O'Connor's column "Ultimate defies its nay-sayers" was a slap in the face of Club Ultimate Frisbee. After a day on the sidelines at our best tournament ever, he found no value in the fact that Ultimate entered the tournament as underdogs ranked No. 7 of 11 and beat the fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth teams to take fourth place and advance. He found no value in discussing the newly-formed women's Ultimate team, which attended its first sectionals this year and faced the struggles of a new team starting from scratch. He found no value in delving into the sport and capturing any of its inherent uniqueness. He rather chose to scratch the surface.
In order to have some value, O'Connor believes "Ultimate will need a striking innovation, something like what the forward pass did to football." For those who play Ultimate, such an innovation exists and it's called the spirit of the game. Unlike most other sports, there are no referees, each player is responsible for making calls when it comes to fouls, in and out of bounds and does so with the respect of teammates and opponents on the line. Play is very aggressive but never at the expense of the physical well-being of opponents. The striking innovation needed by Ultimate apparently now consists of overcoming the narrow-minded opinions of sports columnists.
To say Ultimate resembles "a bunch of college kids throwing a Frisbee around" is the equivalent of saying writing for the Tribune resembles a bunch of college kids flaunting their vocabulary and trying to build their resume, when in fact there is more to it.
If the evolution of the sport of Ultimate is lacking, then the strategic chess match of man and zone offenses and defenses employed along side of ultra-competitive, yet respectful, play must be creationism at its finest. Does this warrant the type of column that was put forth? It appears that O'Connor's writing ability "will need a striking innovation" in order to convey a message worth the time of his readers. Until then, I guess we'll stick to the things we all know and can rely upon. Add a sarcastic tone and O'Connor may just be the next Jerry Seinfeld.
Julian Kos is a senior in the College of Engineering.
This viewpoint appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 28 2005.