Ultimate generates surprising fall turnout

Published 8:17 pm Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Wayne Jones throws the disc as Brandon Sparrer guards him during the first week of competition in the fall league put on by the Suffolk Ultimate League. (Beth Hamilton Photo)

Wayne Jones throws the disc as Brandon Sparrer guards him during the first week of competition in the fall league put on by the Suffolk Ultimate League. (Beth Hamilton Photo)

When Suffolk Ultimate League coordinator Nick Hamilton decided to follow up a successful 55-player summer season with a fall season, he was expecting a significantly smaller turnout.

Hamilton said the general thinking was that “if we could get 25 people to sign up for a fall league that we would consider that a success, and we actually had 46 people (sign) up.”

Compounding his surprise was the fact that while some of the 46 were returning summer players, 45 percent of them were new, having heard about the Ultimate Frisbee league from a variety of sources. Some had been invited by players in the summer but could not participate until now.

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Most participants are from Chesapeake and Suffolk, but others cover a bit more road to play.

“One of our summer league players moved to Maryland and is driving down on the weekends,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton decided to expand the fall league’s age range to 15 and up, and four 15-year-olds are now competing. The greatest concentration of players is men in the 25- to 28-year-old range, but six women play, and there are also about a dozen players over 30.

After allowing team sign-ups in the summer, which led to some squads being clearly more experienced and dominant, Hamilton eliminated that option for the fall, allowing only pairs of players to sign up together. This change has aided in the formation of three well-balanced teams.

“We’re seeing games that are a lot closer, a lot more competitive,” he said.

Hamilton has created a round-robin formatted six-week schedule that started on Oct. 4. Each team plays twice every Saturday afternoon at 2896 Bridge Road.

To help avoid an overly taxing amount of playing time and waiting time between games, halves of games have been shortened from 25 to 20 minutes.

“This seems to be satisfying for both the people who wanted to play more, but it’s not too much for people to play that second game,” Hamilton said.

He decided not to have fall playoffs because there are only three teams that already play each other every week, and he also wanted a championship to be the special feature of the summer league.

“I really want to put all the focus into the summer league,” Hamilton said. “Spring has adult softball that some people play in, and I don’t really want to compete with that,” but he does figure there will be a spring edition of the Suffolk Ultimate League.

“It’s hard to argue with 45 percent new players coming with what I thought was going to be a 25- to 30-person fall league,” he said.

He plans on regular weekend pick-up games between fall and spring and is already strategizing for how the Suffolk Ultimate League can raise its profile with USA Ultimate announcing that its inaugural Beach Championships will be held in nearby Virginia Beach in May.

“That’s going to be huge for Ultimate in this area,” Hamilton said, and it’s going to coincide with his summer league sign-ups.