Ultimate student-athletes like spring fling
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At a university where the football coach and the basketball coach each make twice as much money as the chancellor, another team will vie this weekend for a national championship.
That would be the University of Pittsburgh's Ultimate Frisbee team, and get this: The 25 players are paying their own airfare and chipping in to cover the coaches' fares to Boulder, Colo.
Like most Americans, I've tossed Frisbee discs to both dogs and bipeds, but I'm not among the reported 4.9 million people who play Ultimate. The sport seems an odd hybrid of picnic, football and basketball, the kind of game Bear Bryant might have coached - were he a hippie.
You fling a plastic disc downfield to one of your six teammates, who then tries to do the same. You can't run with the disc but can only pivot, as in basketball. The idea is to make a catch in the 25-yard end zones that stand at each end of the 70-by-40-yard field.
There are no referees. Players call their own fouls. It's like medieval Iceland, with rules but no government, and somehow it works.
In this sport of rare and admirable purity, the Pitt team is ranked third among the 322 open squads in the nation, having dispatched teams from Harvard to San Diego State to go 24-3.
Could there be potential collegiate champions more anonymous than these? I met two of the players, Colin Conner and Jay Huerbin, on a Pitt intramural field Tuesday afternoon. We were the only ones there.
Both men are shy of 6 feet tall and around 170 pounds. Fit and strong, they've clearly been around the weight room and the track, but it's still surprising to hear that the soft-spoken Mr. Conner carries the nickname "The Coroner."
The junior accounting major explains a bit sheepishly that the nickname was given to him playing Ultimate back in high school, for leaving opponents sprawled on the ground.
Mr. Huerbin, now a grad student, and Mr. Conner were high school rivals when Mr. Huerbin was at Hampton and Mr. Conner at North Hills. Mr. Huerbin came to the sport by having played soccer and hockey, figuring, "That can't be hard, right?" Mr. Conner got into Ultimate in elementary school through his friend and current teammate, Alex Thorne, whose parents brought him up on the game.
First Published May 26, 2011 12:00 am
