[ Post a Response | Valley of the Sun Ultimate Association ]
Posted by n00b on 4/2/2009, 7:41 am
151.190.254.X
Okay, let me start by saying I have played UF for all of 3 months...yep, I'm a newb... 
...
I started playing ultimate for the following reasons:
- Great exercise
- Meet new people
- I love sports
- Noone in Arizona plays basketball/football/hockey
Being new to the game, I perused the rule book and saw this concept of "spirit of the game."
I immediately recognized what this meant....as it relates to "pickup" games...
In basketball, when you hack someone, you call a foul on yourself...
In football, even after laying someone out, you help them up and give the guy a pat on the back...
In hockey, when a guy smears me into the boards, I say nice play or good hit....
Anyway, the last couple of weeks, as games became more competitive, I see a conspicuous absence of "spirit of the game." I have made some inquiries of other players, both new and vteran, and it seems to be a concensus FWIW...
In the first 5 weeks combined I may have seen the game stopped at most 4 or 5 times for fouls/infractions/whatever...
In the last 2 weeks, in each individual game, there have been closer to 20 stoppages...
Last night, our game was stopped on each of our first 3 scores...on two of our opponents scores, travelling this, disc space that, fould this, interference that....and yes there were some blatant fouls too... stopping in front of sefenders to let the disc go by...running into people when going for the disc...bla, bla, bla,...and every stoppage entailed a minute or so of badgering back and forth...
IT IS GETTING WORN OUT....
Look, I like a good competitive game as much as anyone...and yes, I prefer winning once in a while...but having the game stopped over and over and over due to borderline infractions or because some guy would rather have a high speed collision rather than let someone catch a frisbee....is just ruining the experience for a lot of people...
Last night, in saying "why are they stopping again!?" A player from the other team stated to me "our captain thinks this is for blood" and simply shook her head...
It is a shame people...
Can't we just go out and have some good competitive fun?
Or was I mistaken in taking the advice of my friends when signing up when they told me....don't worry about being new, its just good fun out there...
Please tell me that what I have seen the last couple weeks isn't what VOTS is all about...it has become very discouraging to this n00b...
