The Ultimate Frisbee Tower of Babel Project
Featuring a sneak peek of upcoming Ultimate graphic novel "One More Year"
Announcements:
Hi friends! We are back. This was meant to come out about a week ago (sorry for the delay on the promo, Megan and Meghan), but my brain had other ideas. But here we are with some light ramblings, crowd-sourcing, and a super exciting sneak peek courtesy of Contested Strip!
P.S. While I do this for fun and for free, it can take up a lot of time, especially when working hard on some projects like the WUL stats work. If you’d like to donate to support my work, I’d really appreciate it, but just reading and sharing is more than enough if that’s all you’re willing and able to do. If you are interested in donating, my Venmo is @Noam-Gumerman.
Language and Ultimate
Not to go all philosophical on you all, but I have been thinking about language and communication in Ultimate. This started as some reflections on my first few weeks at Davenport University. More specifically, the experience of bringing in veteran players from different backgrounds, having them try to communicate with each other and establish a shared language collectively and for the newer players. It’s been interesting so far, but more relevant to this piece, it’s got me thinking about how we communicate in Ultimate. Some ideas seem so incredibly foundational to how I understand, yet not what one of my teammates would refer to using the same word that I’m thinking of. On that same thread, as I get more involved in coaching, specifically youth coaching, I want to understand the game and ways people teach the game more completely. I would especially love to understand how framing or emphasizing certain parts of Ultimate. I watched Arrival around the time I first got this idea, in case you can’t tell.
Building the Tower of Babel
In service of this slightly crazy idea, I have created yet another spreadsheet. This one is meant to be collaborative! In this spreadsheet, there are a couple of pages with different offensive and defensive terms and important concepts, how I refer to them, and their definitions. If you’re interested, please fill out any other definitions or terms that you’ve heard for similar concepts. Or even concepts that I left out or didn’t know about! Check out the spreadsheet here.
If this is something that gets momentum in the community, I’d love to come back to it and make some fun visualizations of how we all communicate and internalize the sport based on where we are from. Additionally, a little further down the road, I’d love to create some sort of master coaching resource document that can be shared and used for free to help anyone and everyone teach the game at a high level.
But now, without further ado:
A Special Message From Contested Strip
There’s an ULTIMATE FRISBEE GRAPHIC NOVEL coming out this fall! It’s called ONE MORE YEAR, made by Megan “Bacon” Praz and Meghan “Rho” Kemp-Gee. (You may know them as the creators of the iconic ultimate webcomic Contested Strip!)
Can an unlikely team of underdogs, misfits, and losers win a national championship?
CLINT HOLDER IS QUITTING ULTIMATE FRISBEE. After dedicating years of his life to the sport he loves, he has STILL never won a single tournament.
But when his hacker friends Modulus and Nadeem come up with a madcap plan to “hack” ultimate and win Mixed Beach Nationals, Clint is convinced to join them for one more shot at ULTIMATE glory!
Statistical outliers. Tragic tryhards. Washed-up weirdos. This team may be “mathematically guaranteed to win” on paper… but to become National Champs, they have to overcome a lot more than Clint’s epic losing streak…
There’s the captain who talks way too much. A skeptical MVP who refuses to follow his lead. Two rookies who are too busy with AP Calc… Then there’s the fiery defender who only cares about winning, and the party girl who doesn’t care enough… Plus a disastrous trip through a mysterious Eastern European dictatorship, deranged CrossFit classes, hangovers, injuries, psychedelic journeys… and that’s all before they even get to Nationals!
From the team who brought you the beloved webcomic CONTESTED STRIP, One More Year is the ULTIMATE graphic novel! It’s a classic underdog sports comedy for all you weekend warriors, obsessed hobbyists, and everyone who’s ever loved something that just doesn’t love them back.
To stay up-to-date about how to get your hands on ONE MORE YEAR, follow their newsletter! (https://tinyletter.com/contestedstrip/ ). They’ll be offering subscribers FIRST DIBS on preorders and special edition copies. You can also follow Megan & Meghan on social media (@ContestedStrip)!
Here’s a sneak preview!
About The Breakside
This newsletter aims to tackle what I see as a gap in the present coverage of Ultimate as a sport. I hope this newsletter will provide an outlet for important yet overlooked people and stories to receive the coverage and perspectives they deserve.
About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him), and I am a first-year master’s student on an athletic scholarship at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, MI. I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University as an undergrad. I was one of the captains of Brandeis TRON, the 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. I currently write for ClutchPoints Sports. Check me out here. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter at @noamgum or via email at noamgumerman@gmail.com.
Your ToB project could be especially helpful to newbie parents who are trying to sound like they know what's going on with their kids on the field. Keep up the great journalism, Noam!