几粒米: Ultimate Frisbee!!

when i first hear about this game, it was on my first day of orientation in this college. Boy Jeffrey was a good at giving his speech, i could still remember what he said about this game, “this is not a very rough game as you all can imagine, it is a quite gentle game that gals are actually playing too” and Mr Carroll was the coach of the Ultimate team before he left HUC. sobs.

well, until last saturday, or the day before when Jiu Hwei ask me to help out at the HELP Open Ultimate, i realise playing frisbee isn’t a very “gentle” game after all. before going on to the field i manage to found some website that talks about the rules and histories about this game, it says here “Ultimate is an exciting, non-contact team sport, played by thousands the world over. It mixes the best features of sports such as Soccer, Basketball, American Football and Netball into an elegantly simple yet fascinating and demanding game. To compete at the top level, Ultimate players require an unmatched degree of speed, stamina and agility.”

the 2 thing that i like the most about this game are self-refereeing and it’s really similar to American Football (one sport that i always dream to play). there is not much rule and every players are responsible for the own fouls and line calls, and yea, if you simply call a foul, wait to be bash up. even world class ultimate frisbee games are also self-refereed by the players, according to a code of conduct know as “ the Spirit of the game”.

well, on saturday itself i manage to have a little taste of this amazing game. HUO was held at one of UM’s football field as the size of the space needed is100m x 37m, two games can go on in one time at a soccer field. my job was to keep time and inform the players how many time left, when’s half time, since it’s self-refereeing, yea, i jus need to lay back and enjoy the game. 7 teams show up that day, ours was the Jumpers, Rojaks from Sunway, El-Ninos, Nottingham Opps, U8 Soars, Dark Phoenix from USJ 13, and the CareBears, the all star team which caught the attention of all.

at the morning Kenneth and i showed up, then later on Jie Hwa appear to help out, well, our job was really damn simple as we jus need to keep track of the time for the players, that’s it, and what we get was Dominos Pizza, woohooo, i’m starting to love pizza’a other than from pizza hut.

what’s amazing about our team was Mr. Carroll is in the playing for us and man he’s really a good player, same goes to the rest of the team, Mike was the leader as Jiu Hwei need to settle the score sheets and stuffs, and he’s really good at leading and encouraging the team. the Jumpers played well, they got 4 wins and 2 loses, manage to get into 3 placing, and most of all, they won the Best Spirit Team, which gave them another special disc, gosh i wan one too. congrats to them anyway. about this Best Spirit Team, it’s something the captains will do after the every match, the captains or representative will give points to the opposing team for their Spirit Scores, something similar to Sportsmanship.

the other team played well, especially the CareBears, which is the all-star team, Jiu Hwei told me that, and they are indeed the all-stars. man they really can throw the discs, and even dive for it. and they have two guys wearing the Kilt, some skirt that Irish guys wear, it is to believe it’s their tactic to distract the player defending them so that they have chances to throw the disc, what a crap. but yea, they can go really serious into this game when they were once nail 3-0, then they manage to end the game by 15-10, which they won in the end. gosh they’re good.

well, everything was fine until the very last match, until the rain began to fall, but the match doesn’t end until the thunder sounds, it’s a bit hard for them to play in the rain cause the disc doesn’t fly properly and they only can do short throws, while the rest of us are trying to find cover and keep everything dry, the remaining is still going on and until the thunders strikes, boy everyone was fast running out of the field. and the game jus end that way.

conclusion is, i had loads of fun on that day, learn a lot about frisbee, and met a lot of nice and friendly people, and, i’m going for my first frisbee practice tomorrow at KBU… WOOHOOO….

Jumpers lining up