Athletic heart, inquisitive mind

	"I've played basketball. I've also played softball, tennis, and golf, and run track. I play on a collegiate volleball team. Yet after only two years of ultimate frisbee, this lesser-known sport is winning over my athletic heart."

Junior Valarie Hamm, author of "Ultimate Connections" below, can conduct a mean interview, toss out a polished phrase, or spike a deadly volleyball.

Co-captain of the volleyball team, Hamm attacks journalism assignments with athletic vigor. She has interned with the Port Townsend Jefferson County Leader and the McMinnville News-Register as well as with the Whitman magazine. A history major "because like journalism, it requires research, examination of bias, interviewing and lots of writing," she also is a scholar of academic distinction.

Meanwhile, Hamm has practiced a set of volleyball skills that brought her all-conference honorable mention this season. She also has played, with equal enthusiasm, a variety of intramural sports — including ultimate frisbee.

The Ultimate Connection

"Apple, apple, apple!"
"Onion, onion, onion!"

Sound like a Walla Walla farmer's market? It might be a vendor's call to potential customers, but if you are anywhere within the vicinity of a Whitman ultimate frisbee intra-squad scrimmage, you have probably just heard one the Sweets' official team cheers. The Sweets (yes, as in the Walla Walla sweet onions) became a Whitman club sport team in 1992 and have graced Ankeny Field with flying frisbees, diving bodies, unique cheers, and a rolling roster list ever since.

"It's very inclusive," says Molly Gerber, one of this year's co-captains. "Because we teach beginners how to play, it allows inexperienced people to come out. Unlike many other sports, it opens the game up to everybody."

Ultimate is a non-contact sport played on a rectangular field. Each point begins with seven-player teams lining up on the front of their respective end zone lines. Play is initiated when the defense throws, or "pulls," the disc to the offense, much like a kick-off in football. The disc (frisbee) may be advanced in any direction by completing a pass to a teammate, but players may not run with the disc and have only 10 seconds to complete a throw. Each time the offense completes a pass into the defense's end zone, the offense scores a point.

Whitman senior Molly Gerber, center, at the Potlatch Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in Redmond, Washington, in July.

"It adapts many of the rules, strategies, and skills of mainstream sports, throws them together and produces what you see on the field," says co-captain Kyle Nagelmann, a senior. "It's kind of a mix of basketball and football, and it has the high intensity of soccer."

Ultimate originated in 1968, when a few New Jersey high school students began to play on an asphalt parking lot. The first intercollegiate ultimate game was held in 1972. Now the sport is played extensively throughout the United States and other parts of the world by both men and women, young and old. Competitions generally guarantee two days of grueling play along with food for the players and social events. Players can compete as members of formal club teams, collegiate teams, or junior teams or during casual pick-up games.

"It's supposed to be a sport that anyone can play," said Nathan Brightbill, '98, a former Sweets team member who also played in Germany while studying abroad. "You can pretty much go anywhere in the world and play a game while taking part in another culture."

The Sweets practice year-round and travel to a variety of places to compete in weekend tournaments. This fall they played in a co-ed tournament in Belling-ham, Washington, a women's tournament in Eugene, Oregon, and the men's regional championship in California. In July, current Whitties and a few alumni met in Redmond, Washington, to compete in Potlatch, a national tournament featuring more than 1,200 players. Whitman also hosts its own 15-team competition every spring, Onionfest, which includes a permanent berth for Whitman's official alumni team — the Bittersweets.

"Whitman ultimate players tend to stay in touch," says Brightbill. "Whenever I come back to Whitman, I play with the team. It's this great homecoming."

Ultimate helps maintain connections between current and past Whitman players, but what also makes this club sport unique is that it lacks a referee. Players are responsible for foul and line calls and must resolve their own disputes. They are governed by the "spirit of the game," which emphasizes sportsmanship and fair play.

The spirit of the game also emphasizes competition, "but never at the expense of respect between players, adherence to the rules, and the basic joy of play," reads the Ultimate Players Association rules. The "basic joy of play" seems to be at the heart of ultimate frisbee, demonstrating itself in the form of costumed players and good-hearted cheers composed by teams to honor the opposition after each game.

"Self-officiating can be a lot of responsibility for the individual, but nobody knows the call better than the player since the player almost always has the best perspective," explains Sweets member Paul Leow, a junior. "It's a sport which requires true athleticism, wisdom, patience, and spirit."