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This game’s the ultimate

Phil Coburn, right, of the Sandpoint 2 team juggles a pass Saturday while Jeremy Greene of the Missoula Booty tries to defend during a game of Ultimate, the soccer/rugby style game using a flying disc. The teams were participating in a large tournament in Sandpoint on Saturday. (Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Revi / The Spokesman-Review)
By Tom Lutey toml@spokesman.com(509) 927-2179
Phil Coburn, right, of the Sandpoint 2 team juggles a pass Saturday while Jeremy Greene of the Missoula Booty tries to defend during a game of Ultimate, the soccer/rugby style game using a flying disc. The teams were participating in a large tournament in Sandpoint on Saturday. (Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Revi / The Spokesman-Review)

SANDPOINT – A white pie plate-shaped disc floats across the field of battle, over the heads of a dozen combatants in gym shorts, directly toward two women careening toward each other, one barefoot, the other shod in long, toe-tenderizing cleats. This is what atoms must feel like in a particle accelerator, what racked pool balls must experience when a cue delivers the break shot. Except, these women know glory. “Yessss!” shouts Jesse Adams from the sidelines as the woman in cleats, Shannon Gee, lands with the flying disc and JoSie Balster somersaults head down, toes skyward. Touchdown. Game point for the Missoula Booty, a tough defeat for Sandpoint 2, in the first ever Mountain to Lake Classic, an ultimate flying disc meet that drew 140 competitors Saturday to the practice fields of Sandpoint High School. Teams drove from as far west as Seattle and as far east as Bozeman, Mont., for the two-day playoff. Winners of the event get bupkis, zilch, zero, nothing, except maybe a sore back from camping in the parking lot of the nearby Bonner County Fairgrounds. “It’s great,” says Gee, who has given Balster a help up and a good-game handshake. “I got into it about two years ago through university intramurals and then city league.” Universities. It turns out the very gateways for marijuana and existentialism are also where young adults across the country pick up on this low-budget game with a cult-like following. More often called ultimate Frisbee, but properly called only “ultimate” because of copyright infringements on the Wham-O Frisbee, the game blends the end zone scoring of football with the handling rules of soccer and basketball. Its competitors are somewhat fanatical. Among the Montana competitors is John O’Connor, who has played the game for a decade or more. He once flew from Missoula to Chicago for a regional championship. He’s rarely been rewarded with even a T-shirt for his victories. “The best thing I’ve ever won is a cheese cow in Delafield, Wis.,” O’Connor says. “Just a little cow made of cheddar cheese.” Phil Coburn, of Sandpoint, actually played on the Pacific Lutheran University team. In the collegiate world, ultimate is no-nonsense sport, Coburn says. But at halftime against Missoula Booty, the Sandpoint 2 player gulps wind with teammates and joshes about their performance. A Sandpoint 2 teammate walks by with streams of dried blood caked to his left shin. One of Balster’s feet requires medical attention because she stepped on some glass early in the game. There are no Nike-sponsored ultimate athletes, no Michael Jordans being paid millions for endorsing sports drinks. On this hot Saturday of competition, for which many have driven a half day to attend, none of the competitors can readily name the sport’s best players. Yet, the white disc spins over the heads of 14 players, teasing them all with a chance collision with greatness.