Scobel Wiggins Photography

I am an incredibly blessed Ultimate player. I have played for two of the best coaches in the game. I have always played for and against good teams that included players that were much better than me, from whom I could always learn and who always gave me a higher level of play for which to shoot. And it really was sheer dumb luck. I had no idea what I was starting when I went to my first paideia practice as a snot-nosed freshman in the fall of 1997. I recall vividly that Harper could throw it anywhere and Pauline could catch anything. The first time I ever saw Jason Simpson launch horizontally and come up with just one of the hundreds of sick plays I've seen him make, I entered my addiction phase.

I looked at Michael Baccarini, mischievous beam stretched ear to ear:

"I wanna do THAT."

The rest of that school year, I could not walk around campus without a disc in my hands. Tournaments became the new Christmas. Don't get me wrong: Santa was, is and will always be the pimp shit (man wears red fur robes and black boots and gets away with it), but I looked forward to playing Ultimate with the same anticipation that I had for Christmas in my youth. 46 days out from a tournament? Not too early to start counting down.

Everyone I've talked to that shares at least some of my enthusiasm for the sport has been through some version of this story. Everyone remembers the light bulb moment when they knew that this was now something they loved. I have never talked to a player (and I talk to many) that got addicted late once they started playing the organized version of the game. That is to say, no one plays college and then finally gets hooked in club. No one plays juniors and delays his/her addiction moment until college. People that love Ultimate love it immediately.

I have recently acquired some juniors coaching experience. My favorite part by far was being around young, acutely addicted players again. How refreshing to be re-exposed to my love for the game in it's purest form.

The propostion: limit juniors' players to 2 games per day in tournament play. The intention: prevent injuries and keep the sport safe for young players.

I am vehemently opposed to this proposition.

First simply: in the acute addiction phase of the game, more Ultimate=more fun. As a juniors player, I would have been irate at someone telling me how much Ultimate I got to play in a day. I played 4 games and it was still never enough. The idea of reducing it further horrifies me.

Secondly, Club and College teams play 4 or 5 games per day in every tournament except the series. The preseason is supposed to be hard. As long as elite players are running these events, the preseason tourneys will remain at 4 or 5 games per day. All other sports train their young players to face the same stress that top players face. High school football 2-a-days aren't going anywhere. The argument that training players at a lower level of exertion and stress will prevent injuries is certainly a valid one. Play less Ultimate, lower your risk of injury. I buy that. The biomechanics of the game are such that if you ever intend to play a full season for a serious team, you will play through some level of injury. Keeping these young players that intend to continue playing the sport (a staggering majority) from experiencing 4 games in a day and training for tough tournaments and seasons could only leave them atrociously unprepared for the next level of the game.

We are doing a particular disservice to the ambitious young players. I got to see Fortunat play at Classic City in the fall of 1998. I explicitly remember thinking that someday, I wanted to be that good. So I played and trained in an effort to be that good (without the sort of success I was hoping for in my youth), and that didn't involve 2 game/day tournaments. These ambitious young players are the future of the game. They are the ones capable of taking the game to levels it hasn't yet reached. Having played in Semis and beyond at the UPA Club championships the past few years, I genuinely believe the level of athleticism and skill rises each year. I am grateful that my skill set and athleticism are up to par even for a brief moment that I should get to compete at this level. I am also grateful that one day (probably not that far down the road) I will watch a final in Sarasota and know that even in my prime, I could not have held my own with the new cast of characters on the field. We're proposing a form of malnourishment to these young players and Ultimately to the sport as a whole by preventing them from imitating and striving for the top level at whatever age they may be. If they want to dream about being good and playing for a great team one day, those dreams should be maintained and supported by the community; that one day these dreams may be harvested by the young players dreaming them as they put on their first Jam, Revolver, Sockeye, Ironside, Bravo, Chain, new bad-ass-team-of-the-future Jersey and take the field. That was hell of a rush for me. I am overjoyed to find the same butterflies have returned presently, thinking of my imminent departure for Sarasota to tryout for the right to represent my country at an international event. Go ahead, youth of the game. Dream big. It's good for all of us.

Finally, I have to quote Tiina Booth: "The gap between elite high school boys and their older elite counterparts is closing." I can't say it better than that. I am perpetually humbled by the skill and athleticism that young players display. If club teams continue to take young players, are we proposing that they have to choose two games of the day (out of 4 or 5) for which said players can be active? Preposterous.

I watched a 17-year-old Nate Castine sky a crowd at JEM camp in Boulder in 2005 (for one of my crappy throws, no less), and I knew that very few of my Bravo teammates could have made the same play. George Stubbs and Grant Lindsley were both seeing significant playing time for Chain in Fall 2006 (the year chain broke into semis) at age 16. At 17, Grant was starting O-line and George covered Andrew Lugsdin for the entire Furious game, won the match-up and roasted the big man deep for the final goal and the win. What would those kids have done against Bravo in semis had Chain made it past Goat that year? Maybe I don't have a finals appearance to my name if we have to deal with them. Matt Rehder made Sockeye this past year at age 16 and he was not there as a developmental interest or a project for the fish. The kid can ball. He had some of the best closing speed in Sarasota last year, and he got D's that inevitably left people wondering, "would Chase have gotten that?" Not knocking Chase. Who would knock Chase? He did more to raise the level of play in the game over the past 4 years than most do in their entire careers. But this is just my point. How much farther can Rehder, Stubbs, Lindsley, Castine, and other young players take the game? Yes, even beyond the level of play that Chase, MG and Beau have reached in the modern era. Don't we want to find out?

We won't see the game continue to advance like it can if we send these players to college and club unprepared for the physical and mental demands of the game. It is hard, and it is demanding, but that's what makes it worth investing in. That's why we hit the weights and the track time and time again for the shot at a single fleeting moment of victory. That is the purity of sport. And I see no sense in depriving young players of that.

Adam Simon is one of the best players in the world, and a member of the newly minted Team USA. He has come through two vaunted institutions of Ultimate: Paideia HS in Decatur Georgia and the University of Colorado. He is beginning graduate work at Yale.