Boo-friggity-hoo

I’ve been re-examining my relationship with Ultimate Frisbee, that fickle bitch, for the last couple weeks or so.

It hasn’t been fun times for me on the Frisbee circuit lately.

Back in April I was complaining about how most of the people I started out playing the game with have had to retire or move on to other things. As I continue to play without them I realize how lucky I was to fall in with the group in first place. I might never have stuck with the game through those gawd-awful first months, where I was fat, out of shape and coughing up the remnants of my lungs after a decade of huffing the smokes, without the camaraderie and spirit the originals brought to the sport.

We were never, EVER, powerhouses but we won enough games to keep us happy and we were always competitive enough to at least challenge the other teams.

I play twice a week in the warmer months. This summer I joined a Tuesday team that’s a little more competitive than most. But in order to inflate some of our numbers a little, and mitigate our playing costs, we picked up some players who can’t at the same level as the bulk of the team. That means the handlers on the team avoid passing to them if they can avoid it. This, rightly so, leads to hurt feelings, bruised egos and team friction. So instead of tipping a pint or two after the game we all sullenly slink back to our cars and repeat the whole process again next week.

I captain Thursday’s team which is a sort of Longshot’s lite. Over the last four years we’ve been adding a new player here and a new player there and now I’m the only one left from the original group. This new group lacks the cohesion of the original bunch. They come or go as they please and quite often the team is very different from season to the next. We’re barely one step up from a bunch of individuals who’ve just gotten together to form a team. And right now we’re losing, a lot…and badly to boot.

After a great winter finish we had our traditional turnover and we lost a couple of out better players. This means that we can’t compete like we used to. So people are less interested in coming out or sticking around and it’s getting hard to keep anyone with any skill around. Add to the fact that the Thursday fields are as hard as hell to get to and people just don’t want to bother with having to struggle to get to a game they’re destined to get their ass kicked at anyway. It wears them down mentally.

I don’t have to win. I just want to be competitive.

We’re a rec team in an intermediate division.

So what can I do? Right now I’m speaking to people well in advance about putting together a fall team. I’m not writing off this season, but if I want to avoid another stinker I need to start lining things up now.

And on Thursday I’m going to call in every ringer I can. If I can get some serious handlers and players to come out then maybe we can start being competitive again and turn people’s spirits around. I’m also going to try to switch divisions so that we can play on fields that are a little more accessible.

It may not work, it may fail horribly and I could find myself in an even worse situation when the fall comes around. If that’s the case I’m going to need to blow up the team and see if I’m lucky enough to strike gold as an individual (avec S of course) a second time out.

We shall see.