Dark Night of the Soul: Roberts Ultimate Frisbee Tournament

Fast forward three weeks from the Bristol Hills trip.  April was an exciting month for our Frisbee crew at Roberts Wesleyan College. That was going to be the first intercollegiate Tournament we ever hosted at our school. 

My freshman year, we worked hard to make the Ultimate Frisbee team recognized as a club at the school. That was an important milestone because it meant we were recognized by the school and could host events on campus. So our first home tournament was arranged. We had two Roberts Teams, Nazareth, Fredonia, FLCC, a high school team, Brockport, and Hobart. 

We were all going to wake up early and go down to set up the fields and welcome visiting teams. So on that Saturday morning when my alarm went off I jumped up, excited about the prospects of the day, only to look out my window and see that it was pouring rain. My first thought: "This is going to really fun to play in, lots of fun to dive in.... unless its also very cold."

So I packed up my van with my cleats, snacks for the day, and lots of layers of warm dry clothes. We checked in all the teams and tried to stay warm and dry as long as possible. After a short delay due to confusion from the weather, we started our first game.

I feel like I need to give you a more accurate picture of the weather. Picture this: Rain... lots of rain... like the kind of rain where you need the fastest setting for your windshield wipers while driving. Wind... lots of wind... like the kind of wind that makes it very hard to accurately throw a Frisbee. And Cold... very cold.... like the kind of cold where your fingers don't work quite right and even the best Frisbee players can't seem to clamp down and catch the disk with any regularity.

But I also feel like I need to give you a more accurate picture of Frisbee players in general. They are a fun loving bunch, they love Frisbee and play hard... but they don't like taking themselves seriously. They plan on having fun no matter what. This makes sense considering Frisbee's hippie roots. So rain or other bizarre weather conditions are no deterrent to a good tournament... usually.

Two teams ended up leaving because of the cold after two games. Part of our own team decided to bail. We were jumping into the warm cars while we weren't playing to keep warm. Between the wind and the cold fingers we were dropping most of the passes. Drenched through layers of clothes, cold as could be, and not even able to catch the frisbee most of the times.

I rememeber my pivitol moment. My thoughts went like this:

"I just wanna give up. Other people have given up. This isn't even fun. We can't hardly even play in these conditions. We've been waiting all semester for this tournament and now it stinks. I could leave. We would still have enough players. But this is the spirit of Frisbee isn't it? Having carefree fun no matter what? We are all playing in the same conditions... its an even playing field. We have dry clothes to change into soon."


"I love playing Frisbee no matter what... right?"