Ultimate Goes Pro
CU-Boulder alumni rank among pro ultimate disc's top players and promoters. Can they take the sport mainstream and big-time?
Tryouts for the Austin Sol professional ultimate team were still weeks away lastNovember when team owner PatrickChristmas (CompSci’01) noticed asplashy press release from a rival. TheDallas Roughnecks had signed BeauKittredge (Comm ex’09), the game’sdominant player — winner of the fledglingAmerican Ultimate Disc League’slast two MVP awards.
Beau Kittredge, Dallas Roughnecks star
Patrick Christmas, Austin Sol owner
Jim Gerencser, Roughnecks owner
Jimmy Mickle, Roughnecks star
The league, with 26 teams from coastto coast and in Canada, was tooling upfor its fifth season, but 2016 would bethe first year for the Dallas and Austinsquads. They would be instant rivals, playingeach other four times in a 14-gamespring and summer season.
An imbalance between the Sol andRoughnecks seemed clear from the start.Christmas, a longtime player and organizerwhose club team won the 2014 “masters”title for players over age 32, has a day jobwriting software for National Instrumentsin Austin. He’s financing the AustinSol with no partners and no budget forsuperstars, unlike his deep-pocketed counterpartin Dallas, the founder and CEO ofa multi-state auto services company.
Weeks after Dallas signed Kittredge,Christmas could only marvel as Dallasdid it again — inking a deal for JimmyMickle (Engr’13), the young phenom whohad won college player of the year and thecollege club national title at CU-Boulder,plus a national title with Boulder’s openclub team, Johnny Bravo, all in 2014.
(Ultimate, which officially eschews theword Frisbee, is organized into recreationalleagues and college and club divisions, sanctionedby Colorado Springs-based USAUltimate. The pro teams are independentof USA Ultimate, but draw their playersfrom the elite college and open club teams.)
By February, Dallas owner Jim Gerencserhad assembled what many are calling adream team, with four of the biggest namesin ultimate on the roster and salaries said tobe as high as five figures, according to popularultimate websites — astonishing sums in a league with scant corporate sponsorshipand a devoted but small fan base.
Christmas, who pays his players $25a game, faced the prospect of beingtrounced by in-state rival Dallas. But hewas pumped all the same.
“I definitely thought this was good forus,” he said of Dallas’ superstar recruits. “Iknew I couldn’t afford the top talent, butby Jim getting them I knew I would begetting them to Austin twice.”
Still, Christmas was also perplexed. Inhis view, growing a fan base in the earlyyears of an upstart pro league meanscreating family entertainment, like what’soffered at minor league baseball games,not rolling out big stars.
“I feel like they’ve overvalued the effectof paying for the best players,” he said inFebruary. “Everyone needs to focus on thebest possible experience in their city andthat’s about more than just winning.”
A grueling aerobic game in which playersrun, jump and “get horizontal” — diveheadlong — while throwing and catching aplastic disc, ultimatepits seven players ata time per team on alarge field. They scorepoints by advancingthe disc into an endzone, as in football.
By now, the sport has matured farbeyond its 1970s cult status on collegecampuses in California and the Northeast,where it first emerged as a neo-hippiealternative to traditional sports. Withtens of thousands of players in organizedleagues, and recent recognition by the InternationalOlympic Committee, ultimateis now at a crossroads.
Among the big questions: How andwhether a sport that has never attractedmany spectators can succeed at theprofessional level.
Ultimate has always had a credo of fairplay, known as the “spirit of the game,” atits core. That has meant games are playedwithout referees, even at the highest levels.But the American Ultimate Disc League(AUDL) does use referees, which someview as part of a broader transformation.
“We’re starting to pull the betterathletes into the sport, and the playersthat were there are making the most oftheir athleticism by pushing themselves,”said Bob Krier, a foundingplayer and now coach of Boulder’sJohnny Bravo and also coach of the U.S.national under-23 men’s team.
These days, the top players are freakishlytalented athletes of the sort thatpopulate the best football and basketballteams, though they’re typically leaner.Kittredge and Mickle epitomize thetype: Tall and ultra-fast with great handsand 30-plus-inch vertical leaps.Still, despite occasional ESPN appearancesand highlight videos that cangenerate a million views, ultimate itselfisn’t yet mainstream entertainment.
“It’s about ready to be shown to theworld. It’s getting there. It’s close,”Kittredge said in a winter interview, aftermoving to Dallas from the San FranciscoBay Area. There he’d led his club team,Revolver, to two USA Ultimate fall seriesnational championships (and the AUDL’sSan Jose Spiders to titles also).
These days the top players are freakishly talented athletes.
Most teams in the AUDL are breakingeven or losing money. Adding to thechallenge of growth, there’s a newer rivalleague called Major League Ultimate ineight cities. In the near term, Christmassaid, ultimate would like to reach the levelof professional lacrosse, which attracts afew thousand fans to a typical game.
“It still needs to be figured out how exactlyto capture fans,” said Kittredge, “butthe fans that did show up had a good time.”
He added, “As far as legitimately growingthe sport, we need some smart peoplethat know how to do that.”
Christmas is one of the smart peopletrying to take the game mainstream. Hewas a hard-working player who, by his ownaccount, made the most of his athletictalent. And today he’s a hardworking, pragmatic organizer and team owner driven bya love of the sport.
“At some point in my life I had theability to do something that meant a lot to me,” said Christmas, 35. “You’ve got to be a believer to get in on the ground floor.”
Christmas grew up in Boulder, the sonof two engineers. He played ultimate inhis final three semesters but never joinedthe elite CU college squad, Mamabird.It was as a computer science graduatestudent at the University of Texas that heemerged as a top collegiate scorer, on ateam that made it to nationals.
Now married with children ages 5 and7, Christmas has spent years organizingrecreational leagues and clubs in Austin.He bought the rights to a local AUDLteam several years ago for $10,000, farless than today’s entry price.
He hired a well-regarded coach toassemble the team of 26 players and runthe show on the field, and he avoids thetemptation to meddle: “I certainly want to,but I don’t think that should be my role.”
Off the field, Christmas directs theshow, writing checks, even greeting fansat the gate. In all, he expects to spend$100,000 in the first season and hopes tosee $50,000 in revenue, including supportfrom at least one corporate sponsor.
Kittredge, naturally, believes the Dallaseffort to pay for big-name players is awinning formula, along with the other trappings of family entertainment.
“You get one, you get the other,” he said.“If you make the competition better, itbecomes a prettier sport to watch.”
Kittredge and Mickle, co-captains of theDallas Roughnecks, are both on the U.S.national team that will compete for theworld title this summer, and both led CUBoulder’s Mamabird team to national titles,ten years apart, in 2004 and 2014.
Kittredge, now 33 and the authorof several children’s books, arrived inBoulder in the early 2000s as a freespirit after growing up in Fairbanks,Alaska, and traveling for a couple ofyears after high school.
“He was a freakish athlete,” saidBob Krier, then the CU’s club team’sassistant coach. “We were like, ‘Who isthis guy, he just walked out of the Alaskawilderness?’ He was still raw with histhrowing ability…he didn’t like to showthat he was working hard.”
But Kittredge did work hard, makinghimself an all-around player.
“He’s stillthe biggestgame-changer,”said Krier, whoseU.S. under-23team won theworld championship in England lastyear. “You have to account for himevery time he’s on the field. … If you tryto cover him one-on-one, he’s going tobeat you by seven steps deep.”
Mickle, 24, made a name in the sportas a CU freshman. A powerful throwerand cunning receiver, he was a top-5finisher in college player of the year ballotingan unprecedented three times, andwas a standout on the summer “NexGen”all-star tour. (He also toured with acancer-awareness nonprofit, Early Recognitionis Critical, or ERIC, founded byDallas owner Gerencser, whose son, Eric,is a cancer survivor.)
Mickle has additional sources of appealalso, according to the Johnny Bravowebsite: “Vacillates between clean-cutand long locks, has been seen aroundtown from time to time with facial hair,confusing fans who have come to fall inlove with his boyish charm.”
Both Mickle and Kittredge aresteeped in the CU tradition of serioustraining and discipline.
“It’s treated like a sport rather than anactivity,” Krier said. “We spent as muchtime in the weight room and on thetrack as any D1 team. …That passes onto the next generation.”
So the pieces are in place for AUDL tosucceed, and Colorado may get in on theaction. The Boulder-Denver AUDL territoryhas an ownership group — led byCU alums — but hasn’t formed a teamyet because of the distance from otherteams, Krier said.
Back in Texas, the season opened forthe Austin Sol with an April 2 game atDallas, followed by a Roughnecks visitto Austin on April 9. Dallas took bothgames, as expected, in tallies of 30-18 and29-18. Still, the Sol attracted a healthycrowd of 1,300 at its home opener.
“We had a ton of people who had neverseen ultimate before,” Christmas saidafterward, including hundreds of kidswho might become lifelong ultimate fans— or, just maybe, players.