Just a Number

Green team from summer league 2021. Note that I am wearing the wrong jersey.

This past Saturday we held our local Summer League end-of-season tournament. We had four team this year, around 70 players, and it was a lot of fun. My team was competitive the entire season and continued that trend on Saturday, losing by two points to each of the teams that ended up in the Championship. We had chances to win both those games and could not quite pull it out. 

But our team record is not why I’m writing today. Instead I want to look at how getting older has affected my ability to play three games in a row, which amounted to around 10 miles of running. 

The age range in the league was I believe 16 to late 50s. Most players were in their 20s or early 30s would be my guess, with a handful in their teens and maybe a dozen over 40. My team had one 19-year-old and two of us over 50, with most players in their 20s. 

Despite have a roster of seventeen people, my team started the day with just eight men and four women. We eventually added two more men as the day progressed. The game is played with seven on the field at a time: usually four men and three women or five men and two women. So, we did not have a lot of subs. 

(As a side note, I must mention that women in ultimate are used to playing with very few subs. There are just more men who play in general and finding enough women to fill out rosters can be tough. The best mixed teams are the ones with the best women, and our women carried us this season, often having to play without a lot of rest.)

I knew I could play multiple points without a break, so I planned to do that from the get-go to save our other men for later in the day. There’s a fine line between doing that and monopolizing playing time, so I made sure to only stay on if it looked like it was needed. 

The other 50-plus-year-old (Brewer) on the team also played a lot of points. And let me be clear, we weren’t just taking up space, we were running hard and playing good ultimate. At one point we needed another man to play a point - I’d already been on for a couple points and Brewer had as well and had just sat on the sideline. But he looked around and saw that no one else was moving to get in, so he hopped back up and ran onto the field. There were the two 50-year-olds on the field while younger players were trying to recover on the sideline. 

We looked at each other and laughed and and told everyone, “When you get to be older, you realize you have to stay fit all the time to keep playing.” Brewer claims he is faster now than he’s ever been, and I believe it. I don’t feel like I’ve lost much, either.

Yes, as we get older we have to train more to maintain the fitness level needed to play a sport like ultimate. When I was younger, I coasted by on being young but never did much outside the game to stay in shape. There’s a sports saying that goes “you can’t get in (insert sport here) shape just by playing (insert same sport here).” You have to cross-train and work on skills related to the sport. I wish I had learned that earlier but I’m glad I did in time to continue to play at the level I do now.