The Breakside 12/28
Emergency Shredfest Edition (aka Shredfest part 2/3)
Here we are again. Despite my best efforts, Shredfest dialogue prevails. However, I do promise I have something that is not Shredfest-focused coming out eventually.
On a personal note, getting an edition out post-finals feels great when this is no longer something I am doing for class. I sometimes struggle to follow through on my ideas, and am so happy to have the motivation to write and work on The Breakside. A large part of that is thanks to you! The readers! Thank you all so much for supporting something I am passionate about.
Also, before we get into it, here is a preview of the next couple of weeks of The Breakside as they stand now. Coming soon: some youth Ultimate thoughts after traveling down memory lane with Grace Conerly and Clil Phillips. After that (or before, I don’t know how the timing will go), Shredfest part 3! This will be an exclusive for The Breakside. I am speaking to someone who attended Shredfest (only for the first day) in the next day or two, so send in any questions if you have them.
Shredfest Episode V: The Community Strikes Back
In case you’ve made it this far without knowing what I am talking about, here is some context from about two weeks ago. Since then, we received largely silence regarding a certain publication’s decision to publish the sponsored piece, and the event went off without people hearing much about it. Then, fast forward until December 20, when this update was posted featuring a screenshot from someone who was allegedly in attendance/knew someone who was.
I want to reiterate from the last edition that I am not here to discuss the merits of the strategies or concepts promoted. Still, I am definitely here to discuss the decisions made to support Shredfest and Frank Huguenard. The main point of contention is not the merits of the ideas Huguenard puts forward. It’s about how the person putting forward the ideas communicates. A lot of other noise is very distracting when people start talking about this, but that is the core.
One thing that has made me very happy has been seeing a response from a group of people, realizing that having more than one source for Ultimate-related news and stories is critical for continued growth. However, something that made me less happy was the actual apology issued regarding the original decision made.
Many people online have already pointed out flaws in this apology, the idea of “departmental guidelines” that need to reviewing when Ultiworld is not that kind of show. Other people have pointed out that the timing makes no sense and that Huguenard is and has been a known quantity in the community for years. I thought for a long time about whether or not I had something meaningful to contribute to this part of the Shredfest discussion, and ultimately decided that I do.
I started looking into some of the history Huguenard has had with different Ultimate spaces because the implication that people making decisions at Ultiworld had just now heard about certain harmful remarks made by Huguenard stuck out to me. As a result, I constructed a brief timeline of specific high watermarks of activity, including and regarding Huguenard in the Ultimate Frisbee community.
We begin in 2012 with a screenshot of an email Huguenard sent to a player he was coaching. As far as I know, this took place at Appalachian State University during his time coaching there.
Keep in mind that was over a decade ago. We then move to nine years ago, on Reddit, where a user was wondering what other people knew about Huguenard due to his notably “rude” online comments that caught this person’s attention. This post, once again nine years ago, showcased a widespread knowledge of Huguenard and his antics and even dated them back to a now-defunct chat forum.
Then, eight years ago, on Ultiworld, an interview story appeared profiling Huguenard. There are 123 comments on that story. I recommend clicking that link and reading through some of them. They perfectly illustrate much of the behavior that has frustrated people throughout the years, with additional comments from the story’s author, Ultiworld’s editor-in-chief.
Six years ago. Another Reddit post. This one urged people to ignore rather than engage with Huguenard’s rhetoric, again demonstrating widespread knowledge of Huguenard’s ideas and preferred methods of communication.
Next up: 2018. Four years ago, Huguenard was given the keys to the @being_ulti Twitter account. As you can see, this was met with much fanfare and dread of what was to come over on Reddit and Twitter. Much of what took place that week is no longer viewable to the public. The reason being, Huguenard managed to get himself kicked off the account after three or four incredibly combative days. This included rants about Cultural Marxism (which I will again point out is a known antisemitic conspiracy theory the Southern Poverty Law Center was onto back in 2013), among other things. I found one gem from his time on the account, which is a statement against gender equity.
Then, two years ago. Huguenard posts, via an alt account, an open letter to the Ultimate community. In it, he claimed to be a victim of cancel culture and that Ultimate is the “Original Cancel Culture.” This post directly defied the permanent ban r/ultimate moderators placed on his main account, as they explain under the actual post.
Since then, Huguenard has continued his contentious relationship with the sport and its community. Most notably, this includes a bet made over eight ounces of gold on whether or not the 2020 Presidential Election would end up overturned.
I am not a confrontational person. I sometimes lack the conviction to fully stand up for what I believe in out of fear of being wrong. Despite all of that, and in the face of (in my opinion) overwhelming evidence of a known pattern of behavior, I need to ask: Are we sure we didn’t know? Can the people running the sponsored Shredfest piece or promoting the event say they were unaware? If that were the case, it suggests a severe information gap well beyond what I already imagined being present in our community. To me, that seems nearly impossible. If it was a lapse in judgment, that happens sometimes, but in my ideal world, any apology takes accountability for that lapse in judgment instead of claiming something false. And if it was something else, then I think there are more significant problems in the Ultimate community than discussed here.
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. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions and more on Twitter at @noamgum, or via email at ngumerman@brandeis.edu.