The Frisbee has become more than just something to toss around
Madness by
Tiffany Fitzgerald
photography by
C
onsider the Frisbee: a bright plastic disc, a toy for kids, a symbol of the counterculture. Wait — a symbol of the counterculture? The popularization of flying disc sports started as a rejection of mainstream sports and has continued to grow nationally and internationally. The two main disc sports — disc golf and ultimate disc— have been expanding in Southwest Michigan for a while, in large part because Kalamazoo is a town with three colleges. In fact, Kalamazoo hosted the Disc Golf World Championship in 2008 and is set to host it again in 2015. Ultimate has had active local leagues for years, and participation is on the rise. If you didn’t know you were living in the middle of a flying-disc hot spot, look around. You’ll start seeing both games hiding in plain sight. The flying disc, like many other sporting objects, has an origin that’s difficult to pin down. People have been playing with discs for a long time — at least as long as documented history — but the first time someone tried to make money selling flying discs as sports objects was in the 1920s. After many incarnations and failed attempts to mass-market these discs, the toy company Wham-O released the first professional-grade Frisbee in 1964. (Frisbee, the most commonly used name for flying discs, is one brand among others.) Disc golf and ultimate started on opposite coasts — the former in the West, the latter in the East — around the same time that the Frisbee became popular. Because the
ERIK HOLLADAY
sports arose during the ‘60s, when the youth counterculture was at its apex, both sports were deemed by oustiders as “hippie sports” or games for young college males. It’s an image that players in both sports are looking to shake.
Is that the one with the basket? Before diving into what ultimate disc and disc golf have in common, let’s look at what they don’t. Despite a common misconception, ultimate disc does not involve baskets. “When we say we play ultimate, people always say, ‘Oh! That sport where you throw the disc into the basket?’ ‘No, that’s disc golf,’ we have to say. In fact, ‘No, that’s disc golf’ is one of the most commonly uttered phrases in ultimate,” says Jeremy Welter, captain and “brain trust” member of the Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League (KUDL). Disc golf is almost exactly like golf as far as the rules are concerned, but instead of using a club and a ball, a player uses a set of discs made specifically for disc golf — a driver disc, a mid-range disc and a putter disc. And instead of aiming for a hole in the ground, a player aims to get a disc into a raised metal basket. Those baskets are everywhere, and once you know what they are, you’ll start noticing them. Or at least that was the case for Jennifer Sawyer, who is now administrator of Climax Club Ladies Disc Golf and an avid disc golfer. “There are over 120 courses in our state alone,” she says. “I think that within 25 miles of Kalamazoo, there are about 20 — you’re never very far from it at all. Even if you
Disc golfer Jennifer Sawyer lines up a shot.
24 | Encore SUMMER 2014