On November 9th, it will officially be 4 years since I created this blog. Life was perfect as a college senior with way too much time on my hands to just think and write about frisbee. After over a year hiatus from writing on here, I can’t help myself but to return and post a few thoughts about the things I have learned in life since entering the wonderful alumni world.
Let me begin by saying that I love frisbee. I love
everything about it. I have been lucky enough to experience the Pacific ocean
at sunset, the Atlantic at sunrise, the view from the top of a mountain, a
completely silent street on the first snowfall of the season, but none of these
compare to the feeling of walking onto an ultimate field in the morning with
dew on the grass and the sun burning off the fog as you prepare to spend the
next two days with your best friends playing with all your heart against the
people who you will spend that night celebrating life with. That’s ultimate.
That is the happiest of my happy places. If you are a rookie, I am so excited
for you to fall in love with this lifestyle. If you are a veteran, I am glad
you are part of what makes me love this community so much.
Due to traveling and the time consumption of 4th
year of veterinary school, I was forced to take this year off from ultimate. For
the first time in 5 years, I was going to enter a year of life without a team standing
next to me, working together and providing support every day. It was scary, but
the hardest part was that all of my best friends, who had been my teammates for
the past 5 years, were continuing on without me. Frisbee and my teammates are
what have got me through the past 3 extremely challenging years of school, and
now I was about to have to finish this last year on my own… or so I thought.
The past 10 weeks I have been traveling around the United
States doing veterinary rotations in different locations. I have stayed in San
Diego, San Francisco, Boston, and Sanibel Island. The medical opportunities I
have experienced through this trip have been unreal but what have taken this
trip from “a great experience” to “the trip of a lifetime” is the people I
spent time with along the way. In every city I stayed in, I was able to find ultimate
friends who shared their lives with me and allowed me to be part of their team
for the few days or weeks that I was there. From playing pickup beach ultimate,
to getting my butt kicked at a workout in a foggy stadium in the middle of San
Francisco, to practicing with elite ultimate teams just weeks before regionals,
it turned out I was ANYTHING but without ultimate in my life.
The point I am trying to make goes far beyond the few experiences
I have had on this trip, and it lasts a lifetime if you allow it to. Ultimate is
about community, and it doesn’t stay on the field when the game is over. Spirit
of the Game isn’t just something that allows us to function without referees in
our sport. It is a level of respect that leads to concrete friendships that
form between you and that Asian handler you marked up against every time you
played Michigan or the guy you played on a team with that one weekend at Poultry
Days or the coach of the Wisconsin team who beat you all through college. SOTG
is about respect. When you respect your teammates and opponents enough to play
with spirit, a community is built that doesn’t let a win or loss keep anyone
from caring about each other and building “unforeseen friendships.”
Everything you do in life has consequences. When I was in
college, I joked around with my opponents on the field because it was fun. Never
in a million years did I think that it would lead to places to stay, friends to
hang out with, and opportunities to play ultimate in the middle of a veterinary
trip, but I am so happy that it did. I love ultimate, and I am so thankful for
all of the ultimate experiences I have been blessed with in my year off. I’ve
learned that it is possible to leave the game, but good luck escaping the
community. It’s about so much more than the game, it’s a lifestyle.
Lindsey Gapstur
Woman Scorned Alumni
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