Sas Peters, a 65-year-old Amagansetter who has persuaded this country’s Ultimate disk governing body over the past years to add divisions for 40, 50, and 60-year-olds in officially sanctioned national and international play, contended last month in the first 60-and-over Legends world championship tournament in Sarasota, Fla.
Peters’s Mid-Atlantic team finished fourth in the six-team tournament, whose games were contested on the Sarasota Polo Grounds.
A five-time world champion, Peters is not used to coming in fourth, but his team’s chances were dealt a big blow before the tournament even began when “our defensive captain and best player,” Chris O’Connor, a Philadelphian, “suffered a stroke on the way down,” he said on Dec. 1. “He never got on the plane. . . . He’s rehabbing now. And then, at the end of the first day’s pool play, our second-best offensive player, Sven Peterson of Delaware, suffered a back injury that put him out for the rest of the tournament.”
Given those, and other injuries, and the fact that some of the Mid-Atlantic players were not used to such a high level of competition, “we did the best we could,” said Peters. “The Polo Grounds are a huge, giant open space,” and the wind flies in off the water, “which can result in turnovers galore. In that case, you want short, short, short passes, not long ones. I threw 150 and completed 149, but there were maddening mistakes. Frankly, our players weren’t quite up to it.”
“Triage, a team from North Carolina, won. They were really good, and the West — Colorado guys — was loaded too. They were the best teams in the tournament.”
There were entries from the Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast too.
When this writer said it was not that easy envisioning 60-year-olds running passing routes, diving or leaping for disks, transitioning seamlessly from defense to offense, and keeping it up for the duration of two-hour games, Peters assured him it was. He still plays year round against 20-year-olds. To keep in shape, he lifts weights, sprints, does plyometrics (jump training), runs long distances, and works out on a Cybex stationary bike.
Ultimate disk is not just a summer sport for him, though he must travel — the level of play on Long Island leaving something to be desired — to Stamford and Westport in Connecticut, and Chappaqua and Pelham upstate in order to keep sharp.
That’s not to say that there aren’t any good pickup games on the Island. There are some, at Stony Brook University and in Huntington, Peters said. And not all that long ago, there had been good Ultimate games at Southampton College’s field house, overseen by the late Jan Spoerri, and at East Hampton’s Herrick Park, overseen at first by Peters, beginning in 1987, and from 1997 on by Spoerri.
There are two professional Ultimate leagues now, Peters said, showing his interviewer videos of professional Ultimate games in which acrobatic receivers and disk-hawking defenders were unrelentingly battling it out. “Look at that 100-yard throw! And check it out: The defender gave the guy who caught that throw a high-five. In what other sport do you see that? You never see that kind of thing in football — quite the opposite.”
“There’s no sport that’s as wonderful as Ultimate . . . the teamwork, the way the disk flies, the athleticism in making catches. . . . And there’s the spirit of the game. You don’t see jerks spiking the ball next to the head of the defenders they’ve just beat. . . . At the end of a game, both teams circle up, congratulate each other, and give each other presents — Frisbees, T-shirts, tchotchkes. There’s none of this macho, hateful crap. In Ultimate there’s so much giving, so much positivity. I just got a call today from a guy I played against in the World Beach Ultimate championships in Portugal two years ago. He was on the British team. He was calling to congratulate me on successfully launching the Legends division.”
“Ultimate should be the paradigm for all sports, for getting along in the world, for that matter. In Ultimate, the players call their own fouls — there are no umpires, no referees. If there’s an issue, it’s worked out on the field. If Ultimate were the world’s sport, diplomacy and positivity would rule, and perhaps through adhering to the spirit of the game we’d be able to save the planet.”
The Ultimate tournament that Peters has held the weekend before Memorial Day at Herrick Park and on the fields at the John M. Marshall Elementary School for Grand Master, Great Grand Master, and, now Legend divisions will resume next year, he said. He also plans to revive “the wonderfully inclusive pickup games for everyone, children included” at the park on Friday nights come the spring.
As for the world championships, he can’t wait to get back next year.