Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette And now...representing the United States...at the World Ultimate and Guts Championship...from Central Catholic...the Frizzball Wizard ( a k a Tommy Hendrickson) Click photo for larger image. ULTIMATE FRISBEE: A primer The seven-on-seven sport is played on a pitch similar in size to a soccer field with end zones. At the onset or after a goal, play starts when the teams line up at their own goal line, and the team on defense throws, or pulls, the disc to the offense. A goal is scored when a player on offense completes a pass to a teammate in their opponent's end zone. The first team to 15 points wins, with a minimum victory margin of two points. Participants play offense and defense. They cannot run with the disc but can establish a pivot foot as they maneuver to attempt a pass to a teammate. The player in possession of the disc must throw it within 10 seconds, as counted off by the defender guarding, or marking, him. Play is primarily man-to-man, with defenders covering receivers as they maneuver to get open. If a pass is intercepted, incomplete or caught out of bounds, it's a turnover, resulting in a change of possession. Contact results in a foul. The sport is self-refereed at all levels according to a code of conduct called "the spirit of the game."

The funny side to this story is what Kathy Hendrickson recalls what her middle son, Tommy, was saying when he followed the eldest, Drew, into the sport of ultimate Frisbee.

"He said he was never going to be a fanatic about this like his brother," Kathy Hendrickson recalled last week.

Yes, the Hendrickson family is laughing. They'll be laughing all the way to the banks of the Aura River in Finland this summer when they accompany Tommy to the World Ultimate and Guts Championships.

Tommy Hendrickson has been selected to play for the U.S. junior squad. The tournament is Aug. 1-7 in Turku in southwestern Finland.

Hendrickson, a senior at Central Catholic High School who is headed for Carnegie Mellon in the fall, is the only one of the 20 members of the 2004 junior boys team who is from Pennsylvania. In fact, he's the only one from an area that includes several surrounding states.

At 18, he has become one of the biggest ambassadors for ultimate Frisbee, a team sport that has similarities to football and basketball. Offense is based on passing, with scores coming on completions in the end zone.

"Kids who are coming in from other sports, who are athletic, pick up the sport really well, and it's cool to see that," Hendrickson said. "I'd really like to see Pittsburgh grow, get a lot of better players, maybe have a giant ultimate community."

So much for his initial lukewarm feelings about the game.

All in the family

Drew Hendrickson got hooked first. When he was around 14, he convinced his father, Chris, to stop and let him out of the car when the family passed a pickup game of ultimate Frisbee along Washington Boulevard.

Drew eventually got Tommy involved, but it wasn't until the 2002 summer league season that Tommy got serious about the sport. The two brothers will be playing for the CMU club team next school year.

Youngest brother Peter, 14, wants to join a summer league team this year.

Apparently, there are a lot of families like the Hendricksons of Point Breeze.

"The sport's been growing 15 percent a year for 25 years," said Henry Thorne, of West View, a board member of the Ultimate Players Association, the sport's national governing body. He was part of the first generation of ultimate Frisbee players locally, starting the CMU intramural program in 1981 and helping to build the summer league.

"It has recently surpassed rugby in numbers," Thorne said. "The reason is, it's great fun. Players love it and get hooked. They get their friends and relatives to play, and they get hooked, and so on."

Locally, there are high school and college club teams as well as UPA-sponsored, year-round recreational and club leagues. The summer club league, which has grown from 100 players to 500 the past five years, is the most popular outlet.

Tommy Hendrickson stays involved every way he can. He plays on a Central Catholic team that is in the high school playoffs. He plans to play at CMU. He plays for a local club called Run in league play. He travels to tournaments. Last year, he not only played in the Pittsburgh summer league but also commuted to Cleveland to play in the summer league there.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette "People ask if it's that thing with the dog chasing the Frisbee," says Tommy Hendrickson. No, but ultimate Frisbee does attract a lot of techies. Click photo for larger image.

He works a lot on his own, running, lifting weights, doing quickness drills and grabbing a friend or two for some Frisbee throwing practice.

"He found his sport," Chris Hendrickson said of Tommy, who formerly played soccer and ran cross country and track. "You need to be able to run a lot. You need quickness and hand-eye coordination, and he's got those things.

"I'm real happy with what he's doing."

The ultimate sport

Tommy Hendrickson has heard all the questions and seen the eye-rolling when he talks about ultimate Frisbee. He's the first to admit that although it's popular internationally, it might never be accepted as a mainstream sport.

"People ask if it's that thing with the dog chasing the Frisbee," Hendrickson said.

Games and practices locally are on soccer fields when teams can get them, but they can also wind up in just about any open, relatively flat spaces, sometimes even the outfields of unused baseball fields. Players bring orange cones, set up a field and go.

There certainly are elements that tend to put ultimate Frisbee in a cult category, elements beyond the fact that the equipment is not a familiar ball but a disc that has served for years as a toy.

Actually, the tournament players don't use a Frisbee, the well-known trademark of a particular disc. Players use a Discraft model in their tournaments but are testing a Frisbee product.

By any name, it's a sport that is popular with techies.

Hendrickson doesn't dispute that. He's going to major in mechanical engineering at CMU and is interested in robotics. He's also deep enough into the ultimate Frisbee culture that he buys online videos of tournaments so he can study the games and become familiar with the top players.

"The people that play ultimate are a very tight corps, and tech-savvy people tend to get into it," said Matthew Bourland, an involved volunteer and player who has captained Hendrickson the past two summers.

Thorne agreed. He is an entrepreneur who founded Aethon Inc., a robot company.

"But it is wide-ranging," Thorne said. "There are different sexes, races and ages in the summer league."

In addition, although there are several statistical categories, personal statistics aren't really monitored.

"It's more of a team sport, and it's hard to evaluate players based on their stats," Bourland said. "Like with turnovers -- the best players tend to take the biggest risks, so you can't just go by those numbers."

Another thing that raises eyebrows is that ultimate Frisbee doesn't use referees at any level. Players police each other as part of an honor system.

"It's this whole aspect of the spirit of the game, where every player is supposed to trust every other player, have integrity and respect other people's calls," Hendrickson said. "Sure, there are tons of arguments. I've been on the field where people have yelled and whined at each other for a good 10 minutes. I really stay away from that stuff and try and get the game moving again. You've got to play through it. And you can't really say a game is won or lost on bad calls.

"I know it seems that with self-refereeing it's not a competitive sport -- or I guess the misnomer is that it's a hippie sport -- but there's so much competitiveness at the top level. That's why I wanted to play on this [U.S. junior] team, to play against the best."

An unknown quantity

Hendrickson, who has gone from 5 feet 8 to a wiry 6 feet in just a couple of years, had the speed to get invited to a UPA tryout for the national junior team March 20-21 in Atlanta.

Still, he was an unknown.

"I hadn't gone to any of the national training camps or anything, so I really wanted to impress them because I guess nobody knew who I was," Hendrickson said. "I trained really hard over the winter, and I hoped to really come out and impress them."

Hendrickson isn't a flashy player, as some at the tryout were. He concentrated on being consistent and working to avoid turnovers.

It worked.

"Everyone noticed him doing everything right, but no one said anything at first," Kyle Weisbrod, director of youth development at UPA, said of the selection committee. "We were talking after the first day and someone kind of said, 'I thought Tommy played well.' Then all of a sudden we were all like, 'Yeah, he played great.' Everyone had thought they were the only one who noticed how well Tommy was playing."

One of the assistant coaches for the junior team, Jason Simpson, added, "He sure plays a mean frizzball."

That gave Hendrickson a national nickname that stuck. Now he's the Frizzball Wizard.

"I guess it's from the musical or something," said Hendrickson, who was born 16 years after The Who released "Tommy," featuring the song, "Pinball Wizard."

Perhaps it will be an international moniker after the world tournament in August.

Thirteen of the 20 U.S. junior team members are from the three hotbed areas for the sport -- the states of Massachusetts and Georgia and the Seattle area. That doesn't mean someone from Pittsburgh can't make a national or international splash.

"He is a superstar-to-be in this sport," Thorne said.

Not bad for someone who wasn't sure how much he would like ultimate Frisbee.

"It's definitely the best sport I've ever played," Hendrickson said. "I hope to play it for many, many years."