The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Mikey McDougall of Santa Cruz lays out for a pass during an Ultimate game last week.

Launch Break

Silicon Valley Frisbee-heads indulge in the Ultimate lunch

By Pam Marino

They may change jobs, bosses or even companies, but through it all--layoffs, recession, boom times, natural disasters--their sport of choice never changes.

For 15 years now a group of mostly guys has been faithfully meeting on a local grassy field every Tuesday and Thursday at noon to play a game called Ultimate. The game is sometimes referred to as Frisbee Football, because it looks just like a football or soccer game played with a flying disc.

The pickup lunch-hour games started with a group of Tandem employees playing on the field next to the Cupertino Library. But later it included employees from Apple. A decade later the men and women come from all over Silicon Valley, as well as various walks of life.

Al Esquivel, a Cupertino resident and one of the original lunchtime Ultimate players, has been faithfully playing on his lunch hours for all 15 years. "It's kind of like a family," he said. Ultimate players come and go, but anyone can return after no matter how long and fit right back in. "It's dynamic, as the valley has been dynamic," he said. "Sometimes old and new faces reappear."

In the game, two teams of seven players face off on opposite ends of the field. The object of the game is to pass the disc down the field and score in the opposing team's end zone.

It is a complex game with nearly 20 pages of rules, but there is one very straightforward guiding principle called the "spirit of the game." At the top of the rules is one simple statement, "No set of rules can replace players' respect for one another and for good spirit." No matter what the level of competition, be it lunch-hour pickup games or international tournaments, there are no referees. Players work out rule violations among themselves, sometimes by just redoing a play. Players even call fouls on themselves.

"It relies on the integrity of the players," nine-year veteran Tom O'Shea said. O'Shea lives in Cupertino and works in Sunnyvale. He described Ultimate as "a gentlemen's sport."

Aruna Venkatachalam, one of the handful of women who regularly play, said the sport is popular because of the people who participate. "It's a real nice group of people," the Saratoga resident said.

Charles Shaffer, a Cupertino resident and president of Oaks Travel at The Oaks shopping center, said there is always mutual respect between players. He's been playing the game for 23 years, starting when he was a student at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.

"The thing that attracts me is I can play hard, and others play hard, but no one has the intent to hurt one another," he said.

That's not to say people don't get hurt. "It happens," Shaffer said. Despite being noncontact, the sport involves a lot of running, dodging and blocking. It is inevitable that players collide, fall, pull muscles or twist ankles, backs and other parts of the body. Some players are out for months nursing injuries. But there's always a place for them when they come back.

On average about 20 people come out to the field. Numbers have been down because of the winter rains, but in the spring as many as 70 people may show up to play.

The city field is divided in half for two different levels of play. The side closest to the corner of Pacifica Drive and Torre Avenue is for more advanced players. Those players often play in teams that travel all over the world in tournaments. In the summer high school and college students show up, giving the older players a workout. The other side of the field closest to the library is for less experienced players, as well as those coming back from an injury.

From noon to 12:30 p.m. the players trickle in to warm up and practice. "When critical mass builds up, games break out spontaneously," Esquivel said. The players sort themselves into teams--light shirts vs. dark shirts, for example. The first seven players on the line are the starting team; extra players wait on the sidelines for those in the game to rotate themselves out to rest and drink water. From 12:30 to 1 p.m. scores aren't kept; toward the end, teams will keep track of scoring. By 1:15 and 1:30, players head back to work.

"It just kind of takes care of itself," Esquivel said.

Since most of the players are in high-tech businesses with flexible schedules, it's not unusual for them to take two hours away for lunch.

"I put it on my calendar as 'physical therapy,' " George Morgan of Los Gatos said. Most players agreed that their demanding jobs, sometimes with 12- to 14-hour days, require that they make the time for physical exercise.

"I would definitely call Ultimate a group of overachievers," Shaffer said of the players.

"It relieves a lot of stress from work," Ram Rajamani of Sunnyvale said. "It's lots of fun and lots of exercise, too." Rajamani said he tried jogging, but it was just too boring. "I like [Ultimate], so I just push myself to play for a long time."

Ultimate started 30 years ago on a high school campus in New Jersey. The sport caught on at colleges across the country, and many of the players who learned in college have continued playing on organized teams in their spare time. There is an Ultimate Players Association, with a paid staff member, and even publications devoted to the sport. Shaffer estimates there are 30,000 players in North America, and 60,000 players worldwide. There are approximately 60 teams in the Bay Area.

Part of Shaffer's business is making travel arrangements for teams attending competitions around the world. Last week, Shaffer returned from two different tournaments in Hawaii--one in Honolulu, the other on the island of Maui. Nearly 700 players total were in attendance at the two tournaments, he said.

Shaffer, Esquivel and O'Shea have played on teams that have traveled to Europe, as well as around North America, to compete. Their team has participated in as many as six to seven tournaments a year.

"It's all at our own expense," O'Shea said. "We just love the sport so much we're willing to travel long distances."

Here at home, the players continue their faithful devotion to the noontime games every week. There is some concern among players that Cupertino may one day reclaim the field for a new library. A library expansion committee is currently meeting to make recommendations to the City Council later this year. The hope is that the city will leave the field open for kids' soccer, the annual Art and Wine Festival and, of course, Ultimate.

But players said even if they lose the field, they will never lose their lunchtime games. They will find a new location, and like the noontime games themselves, everything will "just kind of take care of itself."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, March 4, 1998.
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