Thomas Edison, I am not

A hat tournament is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. Names are put into a hat, or paper sack in this case, drawn out and assigned to teams. This randomly drawn group of people spends the day together playing Ultimate and trying to defeat other randomly drawn groups of people.

This is the second hat tournament of my life. All I recall of the first is that it nearly ended in death by heat exhaustion. It definitely ended in vomiting and a brutal car trip from Columbia to St. Louis. Thanks to good friends and whatever it is that keeps me going, I survived.

This past Monday was no ice cooler filled with beer. It was more like charcoal grill just getting warmed up. I drank plenty of fluids in anticipation. Back to the reinventing...

I took the field with new people that only knew a name and the fact that I was prepared to spend my day in the heat chasing plastic like they were. I was not quiet, or fiery, or even good to them. I don't know if I'm those things to other people. I just know that in other places I sometimes feel the weight of expectations. Here, I was Dave and I was going to play. There is something refreshing and invigorating about that. My team was filled with cutters. We aren't the people that pick up the disc and make the big hucks. We aren't the tall people bringing down those long throws. We were a bunch of 6 foot or less movers with ok throws, ok hops, and decent speed. There was one true handler on our team; so for much of the day I, like many others, shared in the handling responsibilites. I also wound sharing in the leadership responsibilities. That's a mantle I take reluctantly, but somehow I think my scoring and my personal battles on defense had elevated me to leader. There are some roles that apparently can't easily be turned down. With this came cheerleader, strategy-maker, and even a little of the dreaded rules expert.

At one point I raised my rules expert mantle a bit too high. In a heated battle, as I was chasing down a long throw with my defender on my heels, as I readied to leap into the air and grab a score, my defender jumped up and swiped the disc right out of the sky above me. There is a rule called the principle of verticality. It states that a person has a right to the space immediately above him/her. The disc had been immediately above me and so I called foul based on the rule. A discussion ensued and my opponent may have mentioned not so kindly how he had played defense above my head- he had "skyed" me. I argued that I had a right to my vertical space. I stared into his eyes refusing to back down. He stared back angrily. Then he said, "If that's true, how could anyone ever sky anyone?"

At that moment I could no longer keep the anger boiling inside of me. I felt a smile creep to the corners of my mouth. Here we were nearing the end of a gorgeous day playing a game. He had probably made a spectacular jump to steal my score away. Even if the principle of verticality supported* me, I wasn't sure it mattered. Those corners quickly became a full smile and I replied, "I have no idea. Turnover."

I felt good about the call. I worried a little that I'd backed down from confrontation, but my worry quickly dissipated when he checked the disc in and immediately threw it into the ground.

They went on to win and play for the championship. My team of cutters (I love how by the end of the day "a" team becomes "my" team) proudly took third place.


*The principle of verticality actually doesn't support my argument as he didn't contact me; he just jumped over me. The UPA rules (more rules!) state: "The Principle of Verticality: All players have the right to the space immediately above them. Thus, a player cannot prevent an opponent from making an attempt on a pass by reaching over an opponent. Should contact occur before the outcome of the play is determined, it is a foul on the player restricting the vertical space."