Ultimate

I'm on an intramural ultimate Frisbee team. I must say, we're pretty good. Most of us have been playing together for a long time--minus a two-year break. However, we have always played casually. We were always competitive, but we were never sticklers on rules.

We won our first game. We were feeling really smug because we were down 1-5 at the beginning of the game but came back to win 12-9. After practicing over the weekend, we were feeling confident about Thursday's game. We came out strong. In less than five minutes we were up three-zero. But then they started calling fouls.

We were super annoyed because one of our players got hit hard on one of the plays. He good-naturedly said he was fine and told the other guy not to worry about it. Right after that, my friend caught a frisbee while running and took a second to come to a complete stop. One of the opposing team members yelled, "Travel!" We couldn't believe our ears. Then, one of our players slightly bumped another guy in the end-zone and he called pass interference. Even though the other team was playing even dirtier than we were, we resisted calling fouls.

So what?

We lost.

Now what?

If we are going to enter a competition, I guess we have to know the rules. I wasn't completely sure the other team wasn't making up rules. But in a game where no referee is provided and you call your own fouls, reviewing the rule book would be a good idea. Apart from that, we need to learn how to man up and call fouls, epecially if the other team is going to play that way.

Last of all, we need to take out our frustration on this week's competition.