Nick and My First Flick of the Wrist

We play for hours at a time when we should be studying. But it’s 1979, and foosball, pinball, and darts are the black hole of procrastination available to us before computer games explode. Quarters the coin of the realm. Pac-man and Asteroids only hinting at the multibillion dollar time wasting industry on the horizon.

While I don’t live at Eclectic, my girlfriend Carrie and brother John do. The place was once the storied fraternity my uncle belonged to, but is now relegated to university housing of sorts. By my junior year spring, I am getting free meals at Eclectic’s eating club in exchange for washing pots on Sunday afternoons. Three to four hours of work earns me free meals for the week, and allows me to pocket the four hundred bucks my parents give me for food. Big money!

After each meal, a group of us make our way out to the foosball table where we have become quite adept. Our talent nothing to be proud of, and not much of an accomplishment given the time we spend twisting and turning those handles instead of penning papers. We all have nicknames, mine ‘The Reverend’ in reference to a cult I know almost nothing about. We are all putting off going to the library, or back to our rooms. During one of the many games we battle, my friend Nick starts in on me.

“You should play ultimate,” he says while defending the foos onslaught my teammate and I are raining down on him.

“What?” I say, pretending not to pay attention given the game’s intensity. Thwack! “Goal!” I shout and flick one of the little wooden beads over to mark the score. I should be in the library writing something due tomorrow, but not until we finish this game… or maybe the next.

“You should come out and play,” he says again. “You could be good.”

“Forget it,” my reply, not biting on his invitation to play a sport I know little about. “I play soccer, a real sport.” Yes, I say it, or something close, and likely more than once. What I don’t know, but will soon, is just how persistent Nick Donohue is, and how big a part of my life he and the sport of ultimate will become.

Nick and I hang out a bit together at Eclectic, but we live in different places on campus and know mostly different people. Still, we both come from New York City, and from competing high schools. We also share an insatiable love of competition. He wrestled, and played both football and lacrosse at Trinity in Manhattan, while I played basketball, baseball and soccer at Riverdale. We have a lot in common, if not yet ultimate.

At Wesleyan in 1979 and 1980, most of the ultimate tournaments take place in the fall, so playing on the team doesn’t make sense given my soccer schedule.

“How about you come out this spring and give it a try,” Nick says, over and over again. If you know Nick, you know he’s relentless. “We have a few games coming up. And you know Chris, Danny and Nietzsch. They’re are on the team too.”

“I don’t think so,” I say as I slip another shot passed his defenders. I don’t know if he’s playing because he likes foosball, or because he’s on a mission to recruit people for this new team.

“OK, how about we throw on Foss Hill sometime then?” he asks.

“Maybe,” my lame response.

Here’s a guy doing his best to build a team, and I’m being the jerk. Worse, I’m thinking ultimate’s not a sport, despite my wasting away precious hours on a foosball table instead of reading Crime and Punishment for Russian Lit. But it would be exactly those words, “wanna throw”, that lure me into the world of backhand hucks and layout grabs. Thanks to Nick Donohue’s ‘never give up’ attitude, I am introduced to a sport that alters my life. Thanks to Nick, along with Bill and Spike before him, ultimate exists at Wesleyan and I’m about to learn more about it.

At this point in 1979, my life revolves around soccer not ultimate, and it’s a minor miracle I garner enough credits to graduate at all. When my father sees I’ve been accruing quarter credits playing squash, he is completely nonplussed. He’s a Yale graduate and New York Times career journalist. Me, at this point, well let’s just say I’m a late bloomer.

“Stephen,” Dad uses my proper name when angry or disappointed, which is often. “I’m not paying tuition for you to play croquet and squash.” He’s appalled by an alumni magazine cover featuring a group of us dressed in all whites, holding cups of beer, and playing croquet on the green in front of college row.

Not only do I need those quarter credits to inch my way towards graduation, I also enroll in summer classes. And at the recommendation of my new teammate Chris Heye, I sign-up for a summer semester at UC Berkeley. We’ve come to know Chris as the guy we see walking around campus in bare feet while spinning a disc on his finger. The rest of us carry books, but Chris doesn’t seem to need them, as if knowledge is transferred into his brain via Vulcan mind-meld.

“And if you go,” Chris tells me, “there’s a pick-up game the Flying Circus holds once or twice a week on field just above the campus,” he tells me. “You should check it out.”

I need those two additional credits, and California does sound kind of great, so I enroll in introductory photography and a gut English class dedicated to reading and discussing horror stories like Dracula and Frankenstein. The combination of photography and ultimate will alter my life’s trajectory in ways I don’t yet foresee.

Sometime in the spring before summer break, Nick and I meet on Foss Hill for a catch.

“Hold it like this,” Nick says, showing me how to throw a flick. “Middle finger under the rim, and your index finger extended into the middle of the disc.”

“Like this?” I say, throwing what we will later identify by it’s official name — the quail. The backhand comes quickly, but let’s just say my two finger’s a work in progress.

“You should come out,” Nick says again, never one to let go of an opportunity. “Chris and I will huck it to you.”

“We’ll see,” I say, finally coming around a bit.

Throwing on Foss Hill is fun, as is hanging out avoiding class. Then, with time, the flick starts to click and I make it out to a practice.

“He’s not very good,” Chris whispers to Nick after watching me throw around for a bit. “But he’s tall and can run,” he adds. If you know Chris, you know one thing — the man likes to huck it deep. So they send me long and hope for the best.

Practices are on a town field situated behind Alpha Delt — a field you have to climb a fence to get to, which I kind of love. The team’s a few years old at this point, with about fifteen players on it, two of them women, Janet Crenshaw and Mary Freeman. Mary’s not happy with me or Nick. “Those two are too intense,” she tells someone. “Don’t we just want to have fun?”

My first tournament promises to be a near wash-out at Hampshire College.

“Can’t we just stay in bed,” Nietzsch and I say to each other before Nick pounds on our doors to roust us.

“Let’s go! Game on!!!” He shouts, not taking no for an answer. You know, Nick!

“But it’s raining,” we complain, to no avail. And so Nick, Chris, David ‘Nietzsch’ Garfield, Danny Haar and another five or six players hop in a couple cars for the drive to Hampshire College where we play one or two games, and maybe even win one. At some point, someone invents the name Wes-U-Bee, and we make our first shirts. This all before Nietzsch himself heads off to the Peace Corps in Africa, after which we change the team name to Nietzsch Factor, remembering his speed and uncanny ability to run down and catch Chris’s hucks. Nietzsch our secret weapon, and a phenomenal scorer. We may have also thought he’d never return.

After my summer in California, where I manage to find those Flying Circus practices, my love of the sport takes off. I join Danny Haar on Wes-U-Bee for the spring of my senior year, and return to play a full season with Nick, Chris, Danny and everyone else in the fall of 1980 after graduation. For the first time, and now as Nietzsch Factor, we advance out of Sectionals to Regionals but get rolled by the then powerhouse New York Heiffers. We’re good, but not yet great. We beat the Dukes, Central Connecticut, Williams and others, but not New York. In the winter of 1981, I move to Boston, Nietszsch returns from Africa, and Nick and Chris graduate. Together, we all join-up with some Williams College friends and form a team called the Rude Boys who go on to win a National Championship in 1982, and World Championship in 1983.

Thank you Nick, Chris, Nietzsch, Danny Haar, Carson everyone else who made the magic happen. Thank you all for getting the disc spinning those fifty years ago. Fifty is no small feat, and we are proud to return this year to celebrate with the current teams.

Go Nietzsch Factor. Go Vicious Circle. Go Wes!

Nick Donohue on Fauver Field 1975–76

(Photo credit: Bill Ritchey)