Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Ron Kantowski crashes the party at the Ultimate tournament held at UNLV’s Sam Boyd Stadium

My world of sports got a little wider Sunday morning and it had nothing to do with skeleton in the closet - or for that matter, on tape delay from some snow-capped village in Northern Italy.

All I can say is if some guy hiking through the woods on snow skis, only to stop every so often to start shooting at stuff with a rifle, is a sport - this is what Scandinavians with icicles in their beards call "biathlon" - then Ultimate Frisbee is also a sport. And then some.

Actually, they dropped the "Frisbee" part many years ago. "Frisbee" is a trademark of the Wham-O company and although its um, flying disc, is still used in Ultimate any, um, flying disc, weighing 175 grams - heavier and sturdier than the um, flying disc, you may have tossed around the park on a lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer - will do.

"Hazy" and "crazy'' would describe many of the players running up and down the Sam Boyd Stadium soccer fields in the 96-team ultimate college tournament known as "Trouble in Vegas." But, contrary to the sport's laid-back origin, it is not a game for the lazy.

In fact, of the dozens upon dozens of players that were flipping and catching the, um, flying disc, I didn't spot one that looked like he couldn't have run home. Even the ones from Cornell and Dartmouth.

As I told Frank DiNicola, the captain of the UNLV-sponsored Ultimate team known as the "Red Army," when I was in college, choosing up sides to play Frisbee was just an excuse to drink beer and ... well, listen to Bob Marley music really loud.

"It's not the first time I've heard that," said DiNicola, 23, who is studying film at UNLV. "But we actually practice three times a week."

Which means even more opportunities to drink beer and listen to Bob Marley music really loud.

DiNicola admitted that the traditional Saturday night party is a highlight of any Ultimate tournament weekend, but he missed the one here at Gameworks on the Strip. While his teammates were drinking beer and listening to Bob Marley music really loud, DiNicola was sitting at home with his sprained ankle propped up on a pillow.

"I was on the couch in pain," he said, his tournament having ended just three points into the first game Saturday.

If you've never seen Ultimate, it's sort of an amalgamation of football, soccer and basketball, only with lots of bandanas and facial hair.

Developed in 1968 by a group of students at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., it's a game of transition in which players move quickly from offense to defense after turnovers - a dropped pass, an interception, a pass out of bounds or when a player is caught holding the disc for more than 10 seconds.

Players run patterns like wide receivers in an attempt to get open. The disc cannot be advanced after a pass - the player who catches it must stop in his tracks and establish a pivot foot, sort of like when the Rebels' Wendell White picks up his dribble too far from the basket.

Each possession usually consists of a series of short passes followed by a longer one where some spindly-legged free spirit sprints 40 yards or more in an attempt to literally run under the disc in the end zone for a point.

The first team to score 13 points is the winner. Unless somebody starts playing the Bob Marley music really loud first.

The coolest thing about Ultimate is that it is played without referees. Players are expected to call fouls and violations on themselves. This is the so-called "Spirit of the Game" upon which the sport was founded. Competitive play is encouraged, but throwing elbows is not.

While the athletic ability of the players is impressive, an Ultimate tournament still mostly resembles the parking lot before a Jimmy Buffett concert. Based on what I saw Sunday, there were a lot of lost shakers of salt from the night before that never materialized.

On the big posterboard brackets in the tent that served as tournament headquarters, there were phone numbers for St. Rose hospital, Fast Track Wedding, Fast Track Divorce, EZ-Cash Super Pawn, Gamblers Anonymous and a business that specializes in tattoo removal.

As for the players, well, let's just say the last time I saw that many goatees was at a Maynard G. Krebs convention. In the game between UNLV and San Diego State, players answered to first names or last names or nicknames. But never all three. That's because nobody seemed to know all three.

DiNicola only knew the UNLV coach by his first name and alma mater. "Ben," he said. "Played for William & Mary. They were No. 3 in the nation.''

He nodded toward a teammate wearing corn rows in his blond hair, another who resembled Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo" and another dark-haired youth who looked fairly normal, other than he was leading cheers in Russian.

"That's Andre," DiNicola said. "I don't know his last name. Yeltsin-something-vich. I don't know why he joined."

I asked if the team's name and hammer-and-sickle logo might have had something to do with it.

"Yeah, maybe that's why he joined," DiNicola said, patiently answering my questions as the game was being played.

I was going to ask if he ever heard of an Ultimate game being disrupted by a pack of Frisbee-catching dogs.

But then somebody started playing the Bob Marley music really loud.

Ron Kantowski can be reached at 259-4088 or at [email protected].

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