Mix one part NFL tailgate party with one part Grateful Dead show and another part Ironman Triathalon. What do you get? The Portland Ultimate Frisbee Summer League tournament.
On Saturday, more than 500 men and women from all over Maine – and some from beyond – competed in the season-ending 30-team tournament. The games began at 8 a.m. and continued until after 9 p.m., and the format was simple: if you won, you continued on toward the finals; if you lost you went to your car, grabbed your cooler and your portable grill and set up shop fieldside.
“We have a big party, all 30 teams, a big cookout. We have a live band. It’s part of ultimate culture,” said tournament director Alex Pozzy, a Bangor native who started the Portland League 13 years ago. “There’s always a party, and we’ve always done it. That’s why most people want to lose in the quarters, so they can go start partying and watch the good teams play.”
Pozzy, 37, started the league in 1992 to help grow the sport, but also because he wanted to set up a feeder system for Portland’s Red Tide club team, which competes in national-level tournaments. That first year, there were four teams and about 50 players.
The number of teams has grown by two to four every year since, and according to Pozzy, the league is larger than others that exist in bigger cities such as Chicago and Atlanta. The teams, which go by their sponsor names (most are Portland-area bars and restaurants), play an 18-game schedule to determine the tournament seedings.
And, in the ultimate frisbee spirit of things, the lower-seeded teams are the ones that get the first-round byes. What that means is the top-seeded teams will have played five games at approximately two hours each if they advance all the way through the finals.
“It takes some hydration, just keeping your energy up,” said Lisa Bisceglia, a South Portland resident, who advanced to the semifinals playing for Amigos. “It’s really, it’s a mental game too. Someone scores on you, and you can just feel so defeated.”
That everyone is going through the same thing, under the same beating hot sun, though, adds to the camaraderie of the sport. And the camaraderie is one of the reasons the league has continued to grow over the last 13 years.
Sure, the players compete fiercely like in any other sport – “I heard some guy in his 50s that’s been retired for 10 years, say, “Playing ultimate’s like having a credit card. You pay the bill later,” said Pozzy, who sat out this year because of an achilles injury – but there’s also the one, big, happy family aspect.
Little kids run around the outskirts of the fields while their parents do the same inside the lines; babies wait patiently in their strollers. And when the games are over, everyone – kids and babies included – sticks around to watch.
“You don’t see ex-Major League baseball players, once they lose the pennant, they’re not coming out to watch the games,” said Cape Elizabeth resident Tom Stoughton, 39, who captained Great Lost Bear. “They’re at home, bitter, playing golf. But here, everyone knows each other, and it’s like that everywhere, at the national level, the world level. Everybody just has a passion for the sport.”
It helps, of course, that there are no referees to get in the way.
“I mean, it’s basically written into the rules. It doesn’t say there aren’t refs, but it says it’s self-officiated. And the ‘spirit of the game’ clause describes the fact that you can’t cheat,” said Pozzy. “At the super-high levels, national championships, some of those guys get pretty testy. And they’re starting to have certified observers. They’re psuedo refs. They only ref if there’s an argument, and they settle the argument. But at levels like this we don’t need them. Everyone’s here to have a good time.”
Bisceglia said the fact that there are no refs is her favorite aspect of the game. Her husband Trevor Braden, a doctor at Central Maine Medical who she met on the playing field, switched from soccer to ultimate frisbee during college at Colby for the very reason that there aren’t refs.
“This is a game where you run just as hard, you have to be in just as good of shape, but you don’t have the obnoxiousness and animosity, which is great,” he said.
Andrea Killiard, of Windham, played soccer at Fairfield University. She agreed with Braden’s assessment.
“It’s just laid back, and I have yet to find anyone in ultimate that I don’t like,” she said. “I’ve played competively down in Boston and in tournaments and it’s always like that and that’s awesome.”
Even Matt Libby, a former professional hockey player with the Portland Pirates, is a convert.
“It’s a lot different, and I guess that’s what makes this a lot more fun than the hockey and football that I’ve played before,” he said.
Libby didn’t get to enjoy the day as much as he could’ve though. He was one of the players who competed in five games throughout the day. Yes, in between all of the socializing, beer guzzling and barbecuing, a champion was actually crowned.
Great Lost Bear beat Herb’s Gully, 14-12, in the finals.
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