Re: Dls 19 Legendary Players Profile Dat Download
Jemima Torguson
Brian wanted players to run on the field with alacrity. I remember thinking that was an unusual and perfect word to describe the way Ultimate should be played. He made sure the Ultimate field was full of fun. He approached life with infectious alacrity.
It started with frisbee golf. Yeah. Dig it. Golf. CSU had a pole course that started at the lagoon and wound through campus and ended at the south end of the oval. The discs we used on the course were cool looking in their profiles, colors, and HOW THEY LOOKED CUTTING THROUGH THE AIR. We played disc golf a lot. The fairway for the 14th hole ran by the chapel on the north end of the oval, by Howe Street. Every time we played the 14th hole he said "my parents got married in that chapel." Every time. I'll always consider that chapel Holly and Claire's chapel.
The only store in town where you could get golf discs then was the coolest place on earth. The Wright Life occupied a corner in a section of downtown Ft. Collins that was not blighted, but wasn't thriving either. The people that worked there were WORLD CHAMPION frisbee throwers, pro disc golfers and professional skaters. Shit, they treated you like an adult and fellow visionary even if you were a 14 year old kid, just because you liked discs and skateboards. When the Zephyr Surf Shop dreams, it dreams that it is the Wright Life. But I digress.
Looking west from the tee of the first hole on the CSU golf course, towards Moby Gym and Horsetooth, there was an open grassy field, flanked by "The Trees" on the north and CSU cop shop on the south. Twice a week we'd look west before we started our evening round of golf, and we'd see the goddamn coolest thing in the world: a bunch rapscallions, men and women, streaking around throwing a disc. They were adorned in tie dyes and black concert shirts and shouted monosyllabic terms like "up," "pick," and "cut." They were older than us, probably college kids. They looked like they were having the most fun in the world. We wanted in.
We knew it was called ultimate. But we had NO IDEA what it was about or how to play it. After weeks of trepidation and watching from a distance we finally made the decision to walk up to these hippies and ask to get in.
The first time we went to practice we just walked up sheepishly. One dude towered above the rest of the group. He must have been 7 feet tall. Another guy wore a fierce look on his face and barked bizarre acid riddled statements at everyone. The smartest player on the field wore a black concert shirt -- we knew her from the Wright Life. Another dude had a cubs ball cap and easy going affect, one had thick glasses and mullet, and still another had long blonde hair down his back and spoke like the the dalai lama from Iowa. It was intimidating, until one them looked at us said "You wanna throw?" We were in. Just because we walked up.
I can't really exaggerate the impact this had on Brian. The notion that you could walk up to an ultimate team, with ZERO experience, ask to play, AND GET TO PLAY, without a tryout or reputation or ANYTHING, was the way Ft. Collins Ultimate rolled back then. There was only one take away from this first practice: ultimate was for everyone and anyone who wanted in. "If you want to play this game, with us, you've already passed the test, you're in, go long!" This was a philosophy Brian took with him the rest of his life, and it shaped his ultimate career and his path in life. This was a big moment for him.
Brian always had the gift the gab and could charm a SWAT team kicking in your door. His quick wit and wordsmithing won over these hippies instantly. It did not hurt that at the ripe age of 15 he had already mastered a sick backhand air bounce and inside out forehand. He could definitely hang with these pirates. We went in for our first point, on the same squad of seven. The pull came to our side and we both started running around like we were on fire. We cut off everyone, clogged the cutting lanes, and ran into each other. The whole time we were screaming "hey hey hey I'm open!!" Total disaster.
After a couple points we subbed out, exhausted. The smart player subbed out too. She said something to the effect of, "Hey can you two come here?" She was wearing a shirt that said "THE CLASH KNOW YOUR RIGHTS." She calmly said, "Do you know what a cut is? I want to tell you two what a cut is. A cut is . . ." Wait. They're going to teach us how to play this game too? No shit. This is free? Count us in.
These people, these ultimate players were going to teach us how to cut, how to play zone, how to break the mark, how to play help defense, and other game skills. It didn't matter that we were total corndogs seven years younger than them. We didn't know it at the time, but they were also going to teach us how to travel 500 miles on twelve dollars, how to smoke pot, how to deal with the cops, how to make friends in distant places, how to paint jerseys, how to do the sun cycle, how to problem solve when the van breaks down, and most importantly, how to be good people. Our futures were planned.
Brain is one of the best humans I have known. We played ultimate together on Horseplay, and he was so kind and funny! He had the best stories, and would keep an audience laughing at a backyard BBQ for hours.
Back in the day, like 1989, qualifying for UPA Regionals was a big deal. Our Section was Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. Yearly only two teams from those four states would qualify for the Western Regionals. Of course, the Boulder team, I can't remember their name, always qualified, and then the much disdained Albuquerque Anarchy and Phoenix Plastic Surgeons battled it out every for the second seed every year. By summer of 1989 Ft. Collins had had enough of being an also-ran, so we partnered up with Breckenridge to form a super-team and make serious run at Regionals. The power-sharing negotiations were heated between the two squads, but over several dozen beers drank at Wash Park Summer League, we reached an agreement with the another good spirited team from Colorado. Of course, the Boulder team took this development as a threat to its dominance and sought to poach the best players from both squads to water down our super team. The players Boulder sought would only get 1-2 points per game, but would be virtually guaranteed a trip to Regionals and viable shot at going to Nationals.
So anyways, one Thursday night at Wash Park Summer League, the Junta from Boulder was REALLY PUTTING ON THE HARD SELL to get one of our captains. Like it was intense. Brian and I, still teenagers but true blue FC Ultimate dudes stood by, beers in hand, watching the Boulder Team try to steal one of our captains, thinking "is this really happening?" Finally Finley had had enough. This was the year for us and we knew it. Finley drained his beer, then probably drained another one, and inserted himself into the conversation between our captain the Boulder team. Then he walked up to our captain, poked him in the chest, and said in his most serious inflection, "You going to play for [Boulder] is like Luke Skywalker catching Obi Wan Kenobi jacking off in the Millennium Falcon!!"
This was CLASSIC Finley prose. He boiled down the import of our mission to make it to Regionals, how much we valued this particular player, Star Wars symbolism, and his signature hilarity into one sentence that kept our team together.
Brian was the first person I met in the Fort Collins frisbee community when I moved to FC in 2008. I signed up for a fall league through the old message boards and ended up on a team of stragglers. BF organized some pickup for our team so we could all meet each other. When I found Brian at City Park, he was wearing a tie dye t-shirt and his big, welcoming grin. Brian was my direct line to getting to know the FC ultimate scene and being part of this community will always be with me. Brian was a force of welcoming friendship, spirited ultimate, and fantastic costume ideas. I have so many great memories of family dinners, brewery visits, and costumed events with Brian. I can't express how grateful I am to have known Brian's friendship and how much he (and the rest of the FC community) helped me become who I am.
Ft. Collins hosted Sectionals in 1989. That's a whole other story -- well okay, spoiler alert: picture hundreds of people, literally hundreds, maybe a thousand people, gathered on the sidelines of THE GAME TO GO to Regionals, right there in the shadow of Moby Gym. It was Ft. Collins versus Albuquerque for the last spot. Probably the biggest ultimate game played in Ft. Collins up to that point in history. Really, it was game we all wanted to play in -- defending our home against those invaders from out of state ...
So my Dad loaned Brian and me his 1985 S-10 Blazer to drive to Regionals in Stanford. SHIT YEAH WE BEAT ALBUQUERQUE! We had it all dialed. The team would stay with the legendary Skippy Jammer in Santa Cruz and drive up to Stanford for the tourney. It's just 18 hours away by car.
Coming back from Stanford we were driving across the salt flats in western Utah. Total moonscape. Like flat for miles in every direction. Finley was driving his shift. It was maybe 4-5 in the morning. We had been driving for 14 hours (we had to drop of a friend in Marin, not on the way). I was asleep in the front. I was awakened by a metallic KERRANG / cymbal bash from the front grill, then a bounce, as the Blazer left the ground for a split second. We came back to the earth at weird angle in the salt flats and slide sideways before we started fishtailing. The Blazer really wanted to roll over and kill us all. Finley, awakened by this set of circumstances, semi-calmly grabbed the steering wheel and got the car under control in a few seconds, as we slid through the sand and I think a little standing water. We were so lucky this happened in salt flats. One tree or ditch, or lump in the ground and we would have been catapulted. He kept the damn thing from rolling and started steering towards the highway, which seemed like it was 100 yards away. He got us back on the road and said "You ready to drive?"
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