My Ultimate Career (Part 1)

I am terribly bored at work, so I've decided to post on this blog once again.

I was inspired by Quinton's ultimate history post, so if you ever wondered how Ryan became Schulz Schulz the Schultz Schulz, then this post is for you. If you don't like long, rambling autobiographies, then this probably isn't for you.

Before Ultimate

I've told this to some people, but not many know this about me. I used to be short and kinda chubby. I would post a picture, but no one is ever allowed to see me like that anymore. If you visit my house in Arizona my parents would be happy to undermine me and show you pictures though.

Like pretty much everyone else, when I was little, I played soccer. I guess I played for quite a while, starting when I was about 7 until 7th grade, but never that competitively. I used to be a fullback, but when I got a little faster I became a mid-fielder, always on the side though. My middle school required every student to do a sport after school, so during that time of my life I picked up track and wrestling as well. In track I ran hurdles. Keep in mind, this is when I was still short so I sucked at it. I was pretty awesome at middle school wrestling though. I conveniently fell in the top of my weight class, which made things easier. I got a few gold medals out of that.

In the summer before 8th grade, my family moved to New Jersey and I subsequently stopped playing sports. I probably got fatter. Also, I was a nerd. I was a nerd king though. I had a large posse of people who I could assemble at a whim to play Halo. Did this for the first part of high school. Things began to go awry though when one of my friends, Kevin, began hanging out with a few guys in the grade above us, most notable Ben Tong and Chris Oey. These troublemakers liked to spend their free time throwing around frisbees.

I should note that at this point in my life, I despised ultimate. It was just an annoying game we would play occasionally in gym. I had a slightly better backhand than most of the gym-ultimaters because I always used to play frisbee golf with my dad when I lived in Ohio. But I thought the game was stupid and generally avoided it when I had the choice in gym. Unfortunately for me, Kevin started hanging out with Ben and Oey enough to pick up some ultimate stuff. He slowly managed to get other people from my Halo posse to warm up to ultimate. Before I knew it, I was grudgingly tossing with them in the gym before school every day. And so it began.

The Early Years

This all began during my junior year of high school. Perhaps the most important take-away from this era of my ultimate career is that I sucked. Compared to most actual ultimate players my age, my backhand was pretty bad and I had absolutely no flick. I got pretty good at catching though, and I had one important development during this time.

I got bigger!

I got a hearty growth spurt around junior year and by senior year I had shot up to the impressive 6 feet you see today (5'11.75" if you want to be specific). The grand part about this was that I grew almost entirely vertically, and not at all horizontally. I went from short and chubby to tall and lanky, which did wonders for my ultimate career.

With my new long legs, I could run faster and jump higher. It was fantastic. I still couldn't throw, but at least now I could be a decent receiver. I still couldn't really jump that high though, so I wasn't nearly as good as I would have liked. I certainly wasn't skying anyone back then. It didn't help that most of my friends I played with were 6 foot or taller. But thankfully, another miracle was about to occur.

Up to this point in my life, I had never had a cramp. That was about to change. I was sleeping happily in my bed late junior year, when suddenly I was awoken by a sharp pain in my calves. I writhed in pain for a minute or two, trying to stretch out my ever tightening muscles until it eventually passed and I was able to go back to sleep, slightly irritated. I woke up the next morning to sore calves, and they stayed that way for a few days. However, later that week when we were tossing around, I discovered that I could suddenly jump much higher than before. My epic late-night cramps had somehow unlocked a new level of athleticism for me. Just like that, I became a deep threat.

I should remind you again here, I still sucked at throwing, so a deep threat was the only threat I was for a while. It worked out alright in the setting though. We were the founders of the ultimate frisbee team at our high school, so strategy was not a huge part of our game. Ours mainly consisted of running a bunch of ineffective in-cuts until stall 8 then hucking it and hope we're taller than the other team. Thus, I became one of the 4 or so guys on our team who just ran deep and skyed people. Good times.

Nonetheless, it was a little depressing since most of my team had developed at least serviceable flicks and pretty decent backhands, while I still floundered in my own suckitude. That was pretty much how my high school career looked. Eventually it became time to graduate and move on to college. Among many other schools, I applied to NYU. Then, like many other schools, NYU denied me admission. And so began...

The Rutgers Year

It's about lunch time now, am I'm particularly famished after finishing my last final, so I'm going to take a break now. If I have time after lunch I'll continue with the second part of this epic tale.