The Breakside 11/2 - Colton Green
Edition #2
Welcome to the second edition of The Breakside. First, I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone for the outpouring of excitement and support you all have shared about this newsletter. I hope it only continues to grow. This week, Colton Green of Dallas Flash Flood and Twitter fame joined me to talk about the revamping of Flash Flood as a team centered around social justice and equity before we hatched a plan to change the landscape of Ultimate. Next edition, head coach of the back to back DIII Men’s Division Champion OC Eagles Garrett Taylor will be featured with a conversation on growing the game and the scholarship program.
Secondly, as of now, an edition of The Breakside has consisted of one in-depth conversation and not much else. Is that a format you like, would you want different segments throughout, shorter interviews, more interviews? Please let me know, I’d love to hear from you. Happy reading!
Creating Safe Spaces in the Ultimate Community, Ultimate vs. Pickup Basketball, and New Ways Forward
A conversation with Colton Green about the various states of the game
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I'm Colton, use they/them pronouns, am a non binary Ultimate player from Dallas, Texas. I started playing Ultimate a little bit at summer camps, but really started my freshman year in high school when I was bad at basketball. Sophomore year I started taking it seriously. I played YCC for three years, U17 and then U20. Started playing club after my junior year of high school. Played on Dallas Prime, a men's B team, and I’ve been playing in the men's division ever since. I played a year on UTD WOOF. Besides that, I played on the Roughnecks for a year, but am pretty anti-AUDL now. That's the history before Flash Flood. Before me it was a developmental team. A bunch of us in 2017, mostly YCC kids with two of our coaches, played. Then I made it a real team starting in 2019.
You've been very involved in the community in a lot of different ways, but I'll start with Flood. How did the idea for a team that prioritized positive social change come together?
It mainly started because I was tired. Texas is a pretty conservative state. You run into a lot of Ultimate players with terrible views. Some of the previous spaces I was in, I didn't feel like it had the right vibes. Especially in today's climate, I want to focus my efforts towards things I care about, and if I'm going to play Frisbee, I want to have fun with people who have good vibes and share the same things that I do.
That was the main reason for starting it. It goes back to wanting to play a lot with my friends. I talked about this when I interviewed with Ultiworld, but a lot of my starting people for Flood I'd met on the internet during Covid and convinced them to come play in Texas. Then I got some of my local friends involved after that.
There’s discussion about if you should roster someone if they “have a big flick huck” but hold certain exclusive views. How do you push back against that?
At the end of the day, especially in club divisions, you're not making money. I know with TCT, you get checks, but you lost money as a whole that year. We're currently at a point in Frisbee where there's no world where you should take someone with terrible vibes. As a leader of a team, you should want to make it a safe space for people with marginalized backgrounds. By taking people with those terrible views, you're not supporting them.
I've seen stuff on Twitter where it's ‘Oh, only far left people should be allowed to play Frisbee.’ It's not like that. It's just a matter of basic human rights. And sadly, some people just don't support that.
I guess it’s an empathy thing. Some people in Ultimate, they're not affected. They're not in these marginalized groups. So when they're choosing a team, if someone's bigoted in certain views, they think ‘it doesn't affect me.’ But it could affect people trying out for your teams and it could affect the teams that you're playing. It's a matter of thinking beyond yourself sometimes.
Also, from a competitive perspective, most times it's going to make your team worse. If your teammates don't trust this person and think ‘Oh, they're only here for their fire flick,’ that's terrible team vibes.
I'm so glad you brought up empathy. I think that's really important and at the heart of a lot of different issues. I think it brings up different conversations, about making a team’s spaces safe within the community or making playing the game against other teams safer through ideas of Spirit of the Game and how its applied to different players. Do you see ways to increase empathy within the community so it can be safer for everyone?
The first thing is listening to some of the marginalized people. If they're expressing discomfort with something, you should listen. I hear so many teams saying, ‘But what if we can change this person or talk to him?’ You can do that outside of the Frisbee space and if they truly care and want to get better, they'll listen to you outside of the Frisbee space. If you use the argument of ‘Well, if we kicked them off of this team, then they're not going to listen.’ Then they didn't care in the first place. They just cared to get on the team. It's really just having heart to heart conversations with people and knowing what is right and what is not.
In a similar vein, what have you sort of learned most about running a team, and the community in general since sort of taking charge of Flood?
I guess I learned that some people in the community just want to just play Frisbee. At the end of the day, there's no problem if you just want to play Frisbee, but you have to express that. We all saw in 2020 teams putting out their statements of [Racial Justice and Equity]. You can't put out a statement and then not follow it. So if a team says, ‘Hey, we're going to win no matter what, and we don't care who we roster,’ I have less of a problem with that than a team saying, ‘Oh, we care,’ and then not actually follow through. I think that's really harmful whenever you try to express on Twitter that you’re a safe space and then you're not.
Sometimes you’re going to have hard conversations. Not everything was easy running Flash Flood. Especially in Dallas, none of our leagues actually required vaccination. and it is quite on record that they tried to run a league in June of 2020. That's not a hidden fact. So especially being in Dallas, we had to tell people straight up, ‘If you're not vaccinated, don't even think about trying out for our team.’
It's not easy running a team where you're protecting marginalized groups, even if you're in those marginalized groups. It's still going to include having hard conversations and it's a matter of some people not wanting to put in that work, or getting scared of having to tell a friend ‘Hey, you're not a fit for this team.’
At the end of the day, it's a lot more rewarding when you listen to people. This is one of the first teams where I feel safe. It's not easy. If it was easy, more people would do it. You're going to mess up, but if you talk to people, and you're trying to get better, there's no problem messing up if you're trying to learn from it.
One of the reasons I admire Flood is because teams in male dominated spaces often struggle with toxic masculinity, a win at all cost mentality, or sometimes give passes instead of having hard conversations. How can people recognize that and change it?
That's a tough question. Other areas of the country do a lot better than Texas, but for me personally, I think it's cooked. I think the men's division is a cooked product. Toxic masculinity is so bad. I'm most likely done playing in the men's division for the foreseeable future. Everyone's trying to be a “macho man.” That's just my perception from living in Dallas and Texas. Some other areas might be better, but at least in Texas, it's not good.
I'm interested to hear your perspective on physicality. I joke about it sometimes but I do think physicality is a huge problem in the open division. I don't know where that comes from, but I don't see the same level of dangerous plays made in mixed and women.
Sometimes it doesn't bother me. I used to play other sports that are pretty physical, and the AUDL was pretty physical. One thing that I've noticed is that more dangerous plays happen against Non-nationals teams. The few elite nationals teams I played, I trust that they have body control and they're not going to backpack me. But when I go upline against some other team, sometimes I think, ‘Wow, I could really get killed here.’
A wild thing about Frisbee is the way from team to team, people have different views on physicality. [Flash Flood] went to the US Open, and some teams weren't okay with us touching them in the stack while other teams were playing super physical. I think it's kind of hard to regulate that in a self observed sport. But I think if there were a way to regulate that the physicality would be better, but I think just especially at non-national levels, when you're playing teams at different degrees, the physicality is so different.
Yeah, that also opens up another interesting thread about the standardization of the sport, whether it's through Observers, referees, but also updating rules and making things clear to people. People really like the grassroots nature of Ultimate, but at the same time it's undeniable that the decentralized vibe leads to some issues. Do you think there's a way to fix or change that in a way that's more productive and safer?
Yeah, I think too many people get in the mindset of ‘Oh, it would be refs everywhere.’ I'm pro-refs that are more engaged Observers at high level club tournaments and more serious college tournaments. I'm not saying you can't go to league without refs anymore. Just that having more centralized rules and people to arbitrate is better. In sports, sometimes you make bad calls and it's good for an outside source to tell you ‘Hey, I don't agree.’
One thing I think is interesting in Ultimate is some of the rules say if it doesn't affect you don't call it, but in literally every other sport they call it. Say in basketball you're dribbling the ball up. There's no defense on that side of the court. You still can't travel and double dribble. It's still part of the rules even if it didn't affect anything. I think that's where Ultimate gets blurry, when people can say something didn't affect the play, and you start arguing. Saying ‘A violation is a violation’ is easier. Otherwise you hear some random person say, ‘Oh, I have a 50 inch vertical. I could have gotten there.’ Some of the rules are hard for people to arbitrate when it says that if a call doesn't affect the play then don't call it.
I’d like more active Observer calls in some higher level tournaments or even off-season tournaments. Fly some elite players out for a weekend, or go to a city and say, ‘Hey, we're going to come to Boston and we want to try this out. We'll give you a free USAU membership if you participate in this and give us your feedback.’ That's pretty basic stuff that won't cost a lot of money. I think we need to be trying more things because there needs to be more punishment for bad bids.
Having refs as more actively engaged Observers is a better track. I also think some of the ways Observers are structured is not good. I don't know what a fix to it is, but most times when someone's on offense, they're just going to send it back because they don't want it to be a turnover. It doesn't make sense that if I go to an Observer on offense, I'm more likely to lose the disc versus if I'm on defense, I would always want to go to the Observer.
There shouldn't be a strategy for when you go to an Observer, but there is.
Exactly.
League is one thing, but I do think it's wild the amount of trust we have in people in high pressure situations to fully check in with themselves. I'm sure some people can, but there's no way everyone is able to do that. And as a secondary thing, there's this weird cultural aspect of Ultimate where people don't know all the rules.
I think that would be a positive of refs. In those moments I could get fouled and someone could yell, “No way!” If someone's being hostile, I'm not more likely to take back my call. And if none of my teammates have seen it, then it's good for an outside source to say it was a foul or it was not. Active Observers also make it easier because things will be called the same way throughout the game. That's what I like about other sports. Refs will call fouls but they usually call it consistently.
With Frisbee that doesn't happen. Some people on a team you'll play won't call a certain travel on a throw that you do every time, but then somebody else will. That’s a hard aspect of a self-refereed sport where I can do one thing in this game and I can't do it in the other. Beyond that, with Spirit of the Game stuff, why can I spike in one game and then in another game we get a zero Spirit score for spiking at the same tournament. That makes zero sense. I think that's a culture problem and just another issue of Spirit scores, which I can get into if you want.
The bottom line to me though, is that with a ref, the ref has no vested interest. If I win or lose, the ref does not care. The ref is not losing. The other team is trying to win, and I don't blame them. It's sports. I don't blame you if you make a bad call in the heat of the moment, I'm still going to be mad at you, but with a referee, it stinks, but it's just a ref.
People ask ‘Won't you be mad?’ I’ll respond, ‘I played plenty of sports with refs and I really haven't thought twice about a bad call because I know that's just sports.’ If that final call mattered, I should have played better earlier.
I do feel it's harder to have that mindset when the other team is who made the bad call.
Mm-hmm.
The Spirit Score discussion is interesting if you want to get into that. I personally struggle with the idea of Spirit of the Game because I think there are a lot of great things in theory that the Ultimate community attempts to embody. In reality, we are often just as flawed as every other community. When you don't acknowledge that, Spirit Scores open up a can of worms that is hard to deal with in an equitable way.
I've had issues with Spirit Scores and starting after the US Open last year, any team where I’m captain, we are not filling them out. They're targeted and people aren't trained. Spirit captains aren't trained. They may go to a 10, 15 minute meeting, but they're not trained. Spirit is such a different thing to some people.
Other sports have survived and thrived without it. You shouldn't dock people for what their vibes are and calling it Spirit scores is so weird because it's so subjective and there's just no real training behind it. Then there's not really anything negative if you get zeros, no one truly talks to you to fix your behavior. There’s no ‘Hey, this team got a zero on body control, how can we fix that?’ That doesn't happen. They don't get taught about body control.
It seems like we're just doing nothing here. We're not achieving anything. I know they have a Spirit committee and they try their best, but again, Ultimate is a game where the concept is amazing. If we all made fair calls then it would be amazing. But sadly, that's just not how it is.
Something that stuck out to me when you were talking about that was when I was a captain of my high school team, they would sit us down and say, ‘Oh, how did you think the other team was?’ Which is a crazy thing to ask a 16 or 17 year old right after a game where they're mad they lost. Specifically, there was a tournament where we played a team from a predominantly black community in Philly. A lot of their backgrounds were non-Ultimate sports, and we were a bunch of white kids whose backgrounds were Ultimate. We were very unhappy about the way they were playing, and there was no way we could have evaluated that fairly. To the credit of one of our coaches, they were telling us that. But I couldn't hear that because I was 16 and didn't have that maturity or know how to do things differently. I think it's insane to ask not only adults who are grumpy and yell at each other while they're playing to do that, but to have kids ranking their opponents.
Yeah. You're going to play teams that don't play the way you like. I wasn't complaining at basketball tournaments saying, ‘Oh, this team's fouling a lot. It's not getting called.’ That's just the way of the world. That's sports. And that's hard because in your mind, in Ultimate, you think they're cheating because we don't have refs. And that goes back to the thing about refs taking away all the biases. When you don’t have refs, certain people are going to be targeted. Certain people, brought up in different upbringings. If you didn't play Ultimate growing up, it's different and it's hard for some people to understand.
“But I fell in love with Frisbee because of Spirit of the Game.” Okay, good for you, but think about the oppressed groups. Too many times people think, ‘This only affects 10% of the people and 90% of the people are okay with it.’ If we make it so that the other 10% are okay with it, you're not going to lose 90% of people. If we have refs, how many people are truly going to say, ‘Oh, this is better for black and brown people who have been historically targeted, I'm not going to play anymore.’ You're going to keep playing.
I don't know how people are looking at this and thinking, ‘Yeah this is the right avenue but how would we pay the refs?’ Come on, what are we doing here? You can pay for Observers, they can make active calls. It's not out of the realm of possibility.
Instructional Observers were the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. What is the point with the children? I would argue that the adults should use instructional Observers rather than the kids. The adults should know the rules and [Observers] shouldn't be needed to make calls. It should be the children who don't know everything and have Observers make calls for them. It’s a weird high horse to be on. The adults have Observers, but the kids need the instructional ones? The adults should be held to the same standard. Why are they being held to a different standard than me?
What's interesting is even now I just wonder about how Observers are distributed, and what's the best way to do that? From my experience even at DIII regionals when we're playing games to go to nationals, there's no Observers. It's just us, which I think is kind of wild. I could go on a long tangent about DIII Ultimate obviously, but this is not the time.
I'll let you cook, but I do personally think it's kind of crazy that we can't find Observers for DIII regionals. At south central regionals though there were zero Observers. I thought that was absurd. I was seeing some absurd calls and thought, ‘There's no chance this is for nationals.’ These teams are in a game to go to nationals with no Observers and they seriously could not get anyone?
Yeah, there's no way that we just happen to have these two angelic teams in the game to go where nobody on either team would in the heat of a moment, make a bad call.
Just outsource looking for referees. It's not hard. YMCA finds refs all the time. It's not a hard game to understand. And it just makes no sense how for regionals you can't get referees or Observers in a game to go. It makes no sense.
Why are there no messages to the public saying, ‘Hey, we'll teach you this game for free and then you can go get paid 25 bucks an hour practicing this at different leagues?’
It's an easy bucket. That's free money, free literal money.
And then maybe these people like to play and maybe they get involved in their communities in more ways. People love sports and Ultimate is a silly game, but so is basketball, so is soccer, so is football. And everyone loves those too. There's no reason why people can't get interested in it.
There are a billion basketball games. YMCA, AAU, they all find refs. How can we not scrape together enough for eight different regionals? Makes no sense. It truly makes no sense. What are we doing?
I'm envisioning a future where you're creating a USAU alternative that has a more structured vision than the current vision we have now.
I can go on Google right now and search “pick up basketball with refs” and I could find places in Dallas. The fact that there can't be refs for Frisbee is astonishing. I'm literally going to look it up to double check, but I swear I get ads for pickup with refs in Dallas, come on.
I've seen discourse about Observers and not having enough, but it always centers on the fact that they're coming from within the community.
It’s also impossible to get trained. There's one in Texas per year maybe. How do you not have Observer training in each of the top 20 biggest cities? Makes no sense.
I literally found a place near me that has 10 minute pickup games with referees daily for basketball. What you can do is subsidize the biggest leagues, Bay Area, DiscNW, Boston and say, ‘Hey, if you train to be an Observer we’ll knock $15-$20 off your fee.
Then we'll have so many Observers. Just do it in the biggest cities, train 'em, and then we're set. But instead y'all will hold a training at some Midwestern invite in Dairy Oaks, Indiana. Come on, it’s impossible to get there. They make it hard to become an Observer, but it should be easy.
Before we go, how many pieces are the Mavs away from a title?
I think it's one solid piece. With Jalen Brunson, we made it to the Western conference finals and I think what we needed is a true good center and we might have found that with [Christian] Wood, but JaVale McGee's been stinking it up, sadly. I think we’re one major center away. Luka can keep us in any series, he's a killer.
About The Breakside
The goal of this newsletter is to tackle what I see as a gap in the present coverage of Ultimate as a sport. I hope that this newsletter will provide an outlet for important, yet overlooked people and stories to receive the coverage they deserve.
About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him), and I am a senior at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and am currently studying Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am one of the current captains of Brandeis TRON, our open division team. My claim to fame within the Ultimate community is running the @being_ulti account during the week of the 2022 WUCC tournament