donner

Had forgotten about that

Blog

Years ago (all of maybe two of them), Donner was a powerhouse in mixed ultimate. Coming out of our section, so therefore in our region, Donner was a regular opponent at any local(ish) tournament.

From an outside perspective, Donner was considered a great team, not only for their athletic prowess (national and world champions), but also for their spirit.

They had the outsiders fooled.

Donner players were notorious for agressive, antagonistic, unspirited side line chatter. Any call made against their team was a bad call, whether the call was legitimate or not. Any call made by their teammates was a good call. Any call against them that was later retracted was rewarded on the sidelines with calls of, "good spirit!" but any kept was met with mutterings and complaints of bad spirit.

So, imagine my flashbacks this afternoon when, after a throw out-of-bounds was met with a cacophany of "Send it back!" and "You should just give us that disc back."

A thrower on the opponent's team had put up a huck along the far sideline. Scottie, a longtime Donner player, was open when the throw went up, and started booking to catch it. The disc started drifting out of bounds, so Scottie had to layout to catch it. Sitting in the location near where he was going to layout was a Mischief player. Because he was unable to layout in his optimal location, a layout that would land out of bounds, thereby requiring Scottie to try for a Greatest (with no one around to catch the throw), when he did stand up, be blamed his miss on the Mischief player.

The near sideline oddly agreed, and felt the disc belonged back to them. Clearly, the non-player was interfering, and therefore responsible for the out-of-bounds catch.

Serious flashbacks. Half of the team are Donner players, so I shouldn't be surprised.