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Reply-To: <sashadall@iname.com>
From: "Sasha Dall" <sashadall@iname.com>
To: "britdisc (E-mail)" <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: FW: Good? press for ultimate...
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 18:27:53 -0000
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Here's something from Forbes Life that was forwarded to me from a friend in
the States.. so we're the HiTech/Internet sport are we?
Enjoy,
Sasha XX
-----Original Message-----
From: swsides@mailgate.sandia.gov [mailto:swsides@mailgate.sandia.gov]On
Behalf Of Scott W. Sides
Sent: 09 December 1999 17:34
To: Brett Annaheim; Christine Louy; Dan Zaffuto; Daniel Duffy; Danny
Kasbar; Deez Ole; Geoff Burda; Jamie Witkowski; Katey Forth; Kent
Carlson; Mickey; Monica Raymond; Paul D. Cathers; Red; Sam Krosney;
Sasha Dall; Sean Elliott
Subject: Good? press for ultimate...
> > Monday, December 13, 1999
> >
> > Forbes Life
> >
> >Sports Disc Drive If you want to connect with the digital crowd over
sports,
> >put away those videos on how to improve your golf swing. Work on
perfecting
> >your "huck" and your "scoober."
> >
> > BY Ann Marsh
> >
> > ULTIMATE FRISBEE HAS BEEN VERY VERY GOOD to Steve T. Jurvetson. In
> > 1995 Jurvetson, then a 28-year-old partner in the Palo Alto venture
> > capital firm of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, was wondering whether to fund
a
> > small e-mail directory outfit called Four11.com. It turned out that
> > Jurvetson and two of Four11's founders shared a passion for ultimate
> > frisbee, or "disc."
> >
> > That's what devotees call the game of ultimate frisbee, and these
fans
> > are a devoted bunch indeed. If you plan to make your fortune in the
> > dot.com world but you don't know a scoober from a blade, you'd better
> > learn. Ultimate is the high-tech community's version of golf, but with
a
> > lot more heart-attack potential.
> >
> > Jurvetson liked Four11's business plan just fine, but more
important,
> > he liked the style Michael Santullo and Larry Drebes displayed during
> > the lunchtime pickup games the three played regularly. It wasn't just
> > their skill, it was also their teamwork and the code of honor that
count
> > for as much as athleticism in the sport's New Agey ethos. Vince
Lombardi
> > has left the building.
> >
> > Says Jurvetson, "If someone cheats or constantly criticizes, they
may
> > not be someone you want to hire."
> >
> > After a particularly sweaty ultimate frisbee face-off, the Four11
> > founders and the Draper Fisher Jurvetson partners signed paperwork for
> > $825,000 in seed funding on the hood of a car. Two years later Yahoo
> > acquired Four11. Today DFJ's investment is worth around $345 million
in
> > Yahoo stock. As they say in discland, that's hot!
> >
> > Ultimate hasn't quite reached golf's critical mass--yet. It's pretty
> > hard to count noses, but supposedly there are at least 100,000 people
> > nationwide who play it regularly. In the Bay Area are some of the
> > country's busiest ultimate leagues--teams have names like Spastic
> > Plastic, Saucy Jack and Feral Cows--but most of Silicon Valley can't
> > commit to a regularly scheduled anything. Games tend to get arranged
ad
> > hoc, say, when everyone finishes inventing the latest Web browser.
> > Browse over to www.upa.org for
> >
> > pickup game listings worldwide.
> >
> > "Without sounding melodramatic, this is a game that mirrors a lot of
> > the values of the Valley," says Peter Nieh, 33, a venture capitalist
> > with Weiss, Peck & Greer in San Francisco. Nieh recently invested in
> > Clip2.com after a referral from an angel investor he met on the field
> > (if you happen to run into him there, just call him "Nee"). "It's
> > fast-paced, intense, very dynamic. You never have time to set up.
Unlike
> >
> >
> > football, it just goes and goes and goes."
> >
> > In fact, ultimate frisbee came about as an antidote to the
oppressive,
> > hierarchical vibes in sports like football. The first game was played
in
> > 1968 in Maplewood, N.J. Among the inventors: Joel Silver, who went on
> > to produce such humongous Hollywood hits as the Die Hard and Lethal
> > Weapon series and The Matrix. "I moved in the student council that we
> > investigate getting frisbee onto the high school curriculum," recalls
> > Silver. Silver and his friends spent the next two years in the high
> > school parking lot--the grass field was a later refinement--devising
the
> > rules. "At the end of my obit, they'll say, 'He also invented ultimate
> > frisbee,"' Silver predicts proudly.
> >
> > Today's game is played on a football-length field with two teams of
> > seven players each. Players throw the disc past defenders to a
teammate
> > who scores by catching it in one of two end-zones at either end of the
> > field. There are no "downs" or requirements for yardage gains, as in
> > football. The team on offense keeps advancing until the defending team
> > can wrest possession of the frisbee by knocking down or intercepting a
> > pass. Play continues nonstop.
> >
> > Players can score by throwing short, crisp passes up the field or by
> > heaving long, dramatic "hucks" that are far more difficult to catch
> > because of the frisbee's varying flight patterns in changing winds.
The
> > result is intense sprinting, leaping and volleyball-like "lay outs"
for
> > the disc. It's taxing, to put it mildly.
> >
> > Just as important to its partisans is how ultimate departs from the
> > underlying spirit of football, which is probably the reigning
corporate
> > sports metaphor. Unlike football, ultimate is the ideal
flat-management
> > sport. There are no fixed positions, no highly-specialized roles;
> > everyone is a quarterback and everyone is a receiver. There are no men
> > in gray flannel shoulder pads on an ultimate field.
> >
> > The founding nerds also enshrined the spirit of tolerance for
spazzes
> > and other athletically challenged players. They had felt the sting of
> > rejection often enough themselves. Silver recalls, "The jocks were a
> > clique. In ultimate, everybody played. It was a nonpolarizing game
that
> > didn't hold to caste lines."
> >
> > It's not unusual to attend a pickup game where talented athletes
share
> > the field with first-timers dropping the disc right and left. Sarah
> > Anderson, 33, the new vice president of marketing at Egreetings.com in
> > San Francisco, just started playing the sport this past summer. You
can
> > see her running around Golden Gate Park like a maniac on Saturdays
with
> > husband Dante Anderson, 37, a former captain of the Canadian national
> > ultimate team.
> >
> > Turnabout is fair play. In October Dante got a job as director of
Web
> > content at Everdream.com, which gives away free PCs while charging
steep
> > monthly service fees to technophobes. He went into his Everdream
> > interview expecting to talk about his resume. "They said, 'Yeah, yeah,
> > but tell me more about frisbee,"' he recalls.
> >
> > "Ultimate embraces the idea of people being many things instead of
> > being a specialized cog in some moneymaking machine," says William
> > (Willie) Herndon, a schoolteacher from Venice, Calif. who's been
playing
> > ultimate frisbee almost as long as Joel Silver has. Herndon recently
> > finished his own worshipful documentary on the sport, called Spirit of
> > the Game, which gets shown privately in ultimate circles.
> >
> > Spirit of the Game takes its title from the game's revered code of
> > sportsmanship, painstakingly written by the frisbee founding fathers
in
> > the early 1970s. This is a hallowed document; laugh only if don't give
a
> > hoot whether or not your startup gets funding.
> >
> > According to Spirit: "Highly competitive play is encouraged, but
> > never at the expense of the bond of mutual respect between players.
And
> > never with an intention to abuse the agreed-upon rules of the game or
> > destroy the pure joy of play." Bill Gates, you are hereby sentenced to
> > remedial gym class.
> >
> > Players resolve foul calls themselves on the field according to
> > agreed-upon protocols and, ideally, they acknowledge their own
> > transgressions. The sport is set to make its debut at the World Games
in
> > Japan in 2001. Without referees.
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Valley of the Sun Ultimate
> >http://www.vots.org
>
> ***********************************************************************
> Robert Levy PHONE: 301-614-6123
> SSAI FAX: 301-614-6307
> NASA/GSFC code 913 EMAIL: levy@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov
> Greenbelt, MD 20771
>
> Also affiliated with the Institute for Flying Disc Science
> ***********************************************************************
--
Scott W. Sides
Integrated Materials Research
Laboratory (Blg. 897)
Sandia National Labs
1515 Eubank S.E. MS-1411
Albuquerque, NM 87123
swsides@sandia.gov
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~sides
home: (505) 298-0632
work: (505) 844-9846
FAX: (505) 844-9781
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
The point of philosophy is to start with something so
simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
-- Bertrand Russell
Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.
--Gandhi
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
--Mark Twain
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