Ultimatum: Ultimate Rites and How I Became a SLUT

(For my teammates and friends)

Ultimatum: Ultimate Rites and How I Became a SLUT

“Excuse me…what is it that you say at the end of those cheers? Slut?” – Common bystander, Florida Winter Classic 2013

            Whenever I’m walking through campus on the phone discussing rides to SLUT practice in the evening, I’ll usually get a stray look or two in my direction. “Did she say what I thought she said?” “That can’t be right…” they must surely be thinking. There is a mixture of amusement and shining pride in the admittance that, yes, I did indeed say SLUT. I joined Seminole Ladies Ultimate Team (SLUT) in the fall of my junior year at college.

            The last day of my stagnation was not quite as relaxed as I was accustomed to. It was still summertime, my part-time job as a cashier only took up so much time in the week, and I was relishing the hot Florida days from the sanctity of my dark apartment in front of my computer. For months upon months I had told myself, “I should exercise,” or “I should get out more,” or “I should join a group,” among other things. Yet still my finger scrolled, still I closed then opened the fiery fox icon, just in case some droll image had eluded my ever present eye. It was aimless, meaningless, provided nothing of value for me. I knew this, and still I scrolled on into the infinite ocean of internet culture.

            12 Days of Ultimate is a community symposium consisting of tournament-style games and clinics for twelve straight days to increase awareness and recruit new members to Florida State University’s Men’s and Women’s Ultimate frisbee teams, DUF and SLUT respectively. My coworkers Connie and Jamie invited me out on a whim; we had discussed my previous experience with Ultimate while working together. I knew a great number of people who had played, even from the dark, monotonous, ‘I could live forever without experiencing that’ ages at Lincoln High School, but I had never had the courage (or the hand holding) to go out on the field myself.

            The main campus fields where I was supposed to meet them were only a five minute walk away but I gave myself at least an hour of preparation time. I stood in my tiny walk-in closet with garments in each hand, trying on different outfits and deciding they weren’t quite good enough. “How sweaty will I get? If I wear this tank top will I get scraped up? Do these socks look weird with these shoes? What’s a sports bra?” Eventually I scrambled something presentable together, still not entirely satisfied, and I checked my phone for the millionth time, looking for a missing text from my friend. The time was upon me, I gave myself a little bit of a “fashionably late” buffer and I headed out with my gym bag and a case of the shivers.

            In the months preceding this excursion, I had received inklings that my level of anxiety in everyday situations had begun to elude my control. Not having many friends, especially not many new ones, made trying new things very hard for me, and more times than not I sent a “Something’s come up, we’ll do it again soon!” text before curling up in bed and blocking out reality for another silent night alone. This being an attempt to remedy such masochistic behavior, I rounded the parking garage that separated my apartment from the fields. Meanwhile, my preordained instinct to back out whenever I felt anxious rose to my chest like a noxious wave and I felt it trembling up to my throat. I stood across the street looking onto the expanse of green: never before had I seen those fields so full of people, so many discs in the air at once, a cacophony of voices echoed over the street noises between us. My chest was filled with lead. “I can’t do this. But I want to do this. I can’t back out. I told her I’d go. I’ll look like a fool out there.” As my mind raced in circles, I received a text, “I’m here! Come on over!” Now I really can’t leave. My knees shook as I paced across the road and through the gate.

            I stayed for twenty minutes. Connie and Jamie tried to usher me into a game, but the weight in my chest had sunk to my feet. All the complex plays and movements they talked about looked like a bunch of girls running in haphazard circles, nearly crashing and tripping all over each other. “Cut to the break side, no bigs, clear out if you don’t get the disc.” I just couldn’t grasp it, any of it. It had been ages since I’d thrown a frisbee last and it felt like a lifetime ago as I watched the girls break away from the clump, sprint from one end of the field to the other, and catch the disc mid-air like clockwork. “Are you sure you don’t want to play?” Connie asked me after the second point. As I beckoned words to form, my eyes began to sting and I had to look away before I asked in a broken whisper if we could just toss on the side, just her and me. She saw the contortion in my face, and the crippling anxiety that overtook me. For a while we tossed back and forth, as I regained my bearings from afar and recalled that old method of throwing from the dusty shelf of my memory. I didn’t want to keep her away from the game, the one we were both supposed to be there to play, so I excused myself and rushed away, promising to actually join in next time.

When my apartment door smothered the beaming afternoon sunlight and my reclusion encircled me again, the iron pit in my stomach loosened, but its dark bile sank inside me. “Why didn’t I play?” For days afterward I asked myself this question. I dreaded so much the possibility of making a fool of myself on the field, that I made an even bigger fool of myself by just standing on the side while everyone sprinting through the grass rejoiced in their camaraderie. I’d put so much effort into choosing the right clothes, to make that picturesque “I clearly do this all the time” persona, and for what? Nearly crying in front of hundreds of people I wanted to get to know. Not quite the impression I was looking for, really. After a moment of black turbulence in my mind, I brushed the dampness from my cheeks and scooped up my keys on the way back out the doorway.

That afternoon I bought a pair of $40 cleats, tried them on in the store and lied to the clerk saying “I play Ultimate Frisbee, are these cleats good for that?” and I listened as she explained more than I could ever have hoped to understand that day. It had been years since I had played any sport, let alone one so unusual and unpublicized as Ultimate. “I will do this thing.” I told myself. One defining characteristic of mine is that I’m a frugal person. I wasn’t going to return those cleats.

My first moment of truth came a week or so later with the kickoff games for Tallahassee Ultimate League, a co-ed group of Tallahasseeans young and old coming out on Sunday afternoons for mild, carefree games in the local park. I was anxious, yes, but after what had happened before I knew nothing could be worse. When I arrived, Connie had just pulled into the adjacent spot moments before and I felt much more at ease; I wasn’t totally alone. Beneath the beaming 2 o’clock summer sunshine, we formed a group with three other girls on one of the baseball fields and tossed the disc around. As more and more people showed up, and the sun grew more blistering, we heard a voice echo across the fields from a megaphone that called us all together. My heart quickened. Once everyone was rounded up, we made a group of at least 75 people, several faces I recognized but many more were foreign to me. One of the women on the board, who’s name I learned later was Libby, said a few announcements about League, what they do and how in general everything worked before we were split off into drafting teams and sent to our designated fields.  

Luckily, even though I didn’t have my friend on my randomized team, I did manage to stay with one of the girls we had been tossing with earlier. Her name was Melise, and she was my first introduction to true Ultimate culture. Through all of the articles, videos, and playbooks I had systematically perused before coming out to play, there was a common statement that Ultimate players were known for being extremely friendly and supportive of each new player. Being the internet aficionado that I am, I have learned to take every statement online at face value alone. Yet, Melise was all I had read about: kind, helpful, excited to know there was one more person to join the motley crew. She sent me smiles across the field, patted my back when she recognized my muted frustration, and asked me how I liked it and if I understood. She didn’t know me any better than I knew her, and yet this stranger was friendlier than several people I had known for years. Whatever anxiety I had brought onto the fields that day dissipated like the sweat beading on my brow. My first turn in the game had finally passed and all I felt was surreal positivity.

I wasn’t completely wrong when I thought people just ran around in circles to catch the disc. At first, that is all it felt like to me. Even now, it feels like that sometimes. Being the home grown couch potato that I had become, a majority of the players were running farther faster than I could even grasp. As I dawdled behind the pack, out of breath and cursing my laziness, I watched my team move fairly fluidly across the field. At the end of the point, my moment of respite, I drifted to the sideline and picked up my nearly empty water bottle. I took my last sip and the captain of our team approached me to explain the mechanics of the play we had just run (I use the term “run” very loosely). “You were able to get open really well, the reason I didn’t throw it to you was because it’s a lot easier to throw to someone who’s running rather than someone standing still.” “Really?” I felt no condescension in his explanation, something unusual for me since I am such a sensitive loser in competitive sports, as evidenced from my youth. By the end of the games that day, I already felt more confident and eager for my next match. Whenever I had a question, someone was there to answer it for me with a smile. Only cut to the…handler? That’s the person with the disc. Yes, only cut to the handler’s open side. Run back to the middle of the field, to the stack, if you don’t get the disc. Don’t cut until you’re the last person in the stack, that way you have more room sprint. I had learned so much in just one afternoon, a new door had opened in my life and the light was washing over me. I rushed to my parents’ home nearby to tell them the good news. I was sunburned and sweaty, but still happier than I had been in years. That night as I looked over my boiled red skin, I checked my ears (which always burn, without fail) and I found two new freckles: a permanent trophy commemorating the change I had been craving for so long.

By the next week I was out on the fields again, clad in a purple shirt representing my newly christened team for the season. The gods smiled on me and Jamie was placed on my same team by random happenstance, so whatever anxiety I may have incurred over the week was alleviated. Things started slowly for me, nearly half of our team played for DUF or SLUT so the dynamic of excellence was already present amongst them, but as each Sunday passed I began to quicken alongside my team. I learned the stacks, my speed increased, I caught a disc every now and then and slowly but surely, they ushered me out of my shell. On the slow days at work, Jamie and I would huddle around a scrap sheet of paper covered in X’s and O’s as she explained the more finite details of each play, and answered my newfound, ceaseless questions.

            About halfway through the fall season, the DUF and SLUT players were forced to be absent due to preseason training and tournaments out of town. When they were around, we almost always won our matches. But when it was just the rest of us…it was more of a learning experience than anything else. My first introduction to “savage” play was surreal. I had heard mentions of it from all the vets, “We ran savage for three games! I was exhausted.” Whatever it was sounded very strenuous. When only two of our six girls showed up to play, it all became very clear to me. In Ultimate, there are fourteen people on the field at a time, seven from each team. When playing co-ed, there is a requirement of at least two girls on the field at a time, so in that game of savage, we were forced to play every single point, the whole ninety minute game without a turn on the sidelines.

            By that time, I had become more fit than when I started; no longer did one point on the field send stitches through my chest, thankfully. Not all of the League games were played at the same time; some dedicated players would be available to be picked up in case of savage situations. Several points into the game, our relief arrived. Her name was Simi, and she seemed so dainty and smiley to me when I first saw her. But the moment she donned our trademark purple, she led us into the end zone two, three times even. She was a fire ball in disguise. As I lingered in the back of the field, waiting for the continuing pass, I watched Simi dart between people and catch the disc over and over again like it was nothing. As we sat in the shade together during our halftime break, she asked if I had thought about joining SLUT. “I’m the captain for B team. If you joined we could play together more!” That explained a lot. We exchanged phone numbers, and a few days later, I was standing at the bus stop with my cleats dangling from my fingers, feeling a little hardcore inside (on top of my nervousness), waiting on my first ride to SLUT practice.

            The main difference between League and SLUT is that League is only games whereas SLUT consists of drills and conditioning for the betterment of each player’s individual skills. Connie and Jamie were also a part of SLUT, and when Simi and I arrived, I thought I saw their looks of pleasant surprise. The fact that I found my way onto the RecPlex fields that evening, simply from the new connections I had made through Ultimate, all on my own, sent an uncontrollable grin blooming across my lips. I was a different person; the sun was changing me (and not just the new speckles on my skin). Nothing existed outside of those fields, this was my new globe, the girl in the dark had no name. The practice was much more strenuous than I could have predicted, ask my stringy muscles, but I curled beneath my covers that night with an enlivened ember inside.

            Weeks of practices passed, my sock tan worsened, and I became a junkie. I applied my new knowledge every Sunday that passed, until the season ended and my team emerged victorious. The semester flew by, before I knew it finals had passed and winter break had sidled up the calendar. Our coach Christina implored us to exercise over the break, “Tournaments are coming sooner than you think!” What? Already?

            In January we travelled to our first tournament, Florida Winter Classic, in Gainesville. Not only was it our first tournament as a team, but it was our first trip together as friends, my first college road trip. On the road we played “I’m Gonna Be” by The Proclaimers on loop and we sang it in that weird Scottish accent until eventually I knew every word by heart, whether I liked it or not. The games were long and hot, we ran up and down those unfamiliar greens for nearly six hours in the central Florida sun until my feet sang songs of sorrow and my skin winked red at me, in spite of liberal sunscreen, yet again. What they didn’t really mention online was that once you start playing Ultimate regularly, your toes just become giant ugly calluses attached to your feet. Our evening eventually drew to a close, our snacks depleted and games completed, when Simi and Christina gathered us all together in the shade beside our emptied field.

            As we sat in our circle, our lungs still heaving and sweat dampening our drawn ponytails, we discussed the tournament. They asked us what we thought we did well as a team, what you could work on individually, and how we thought the team had grown since day one. As my teammates spoke, I felt like a detached spectator. Part of me was looming above, looking down on all the girls sprawled in the grass. I thought of my responses for the questions (“Oh god how do I phrase what I want to say with all this Ultimate jargon?”) but I also saw how I had grown inside. No longer was it about what I had lost, my missed opportunities, and too many lonely nights ignoring my personal promise. No longer was I passionless and half alive. I was hours away from that self instituted solitary confinement, when I was using the computer as an excuse, an escape. I was with a team firmly bound and now familial, and my heart fluttered next to my trembling lungs. I smiled as I exhaled my wobbly breathes, finally comfortable, finally home.

…

            I used to hate the smell of fresh cut grass. It was too earthy for me, too organic for my antiseptic tainted senses. Nowadays, the smell of grass clings to me like a lover. The blades stick to my skin next to the dirt scuffs and bruises on my legs, following me into my home and inexorably appearing amidst my laundry days later. The scent of it is relieving now, the crushed grass wedged in my cleats emits it at home and I’m brought back to the place that’s taken my heart. As I walk on campus, past those fields I surpassed so long ago, I can smell it just out of reach. The change is marked, and SLUT is no longer a slur.