Mackey Day (long as you’d expect. but it’s my day, dammit!…)
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Loading ...“Mackey, why DO you play ultimate?”
I thought for a second.
“…because what I get out of this sport is commensurate with what I put in to it.”
“Why don’t you do crew or something like that?”
“Are you kidding me!? It’s nowhere close…”
I’m not sure exactly what drew me to ultimate in the first place. I went to nerd camp where frisbee was the thing to do; we’d throw it around during breaks, play “ultimate” (good old amoeba play) during activities, and the like. I was (am) pretty athletic (yes, yes, self call, I know. Keep your shirt on), I jumped high and caught frisbees and boys and girls alike were impressed. I was smitten.
Going out of high school and looking at college, I knew I wanted to do SOMETHING with sports, but short of running/jumping on a track team (being a Division I fifth-stringer as a walk-on didn’t sit too well with me), ultimate was IT. I still remember going through the UPA rankings, trying to see if I could discern anything to distinguish the ivies I was looking at from one another. This school, Dartmouth, that my friend went to, they had just made it in 2003! Surely this was a team on the up-and-up, a team that I could jump on to and ride their ascention to the national stage with. And I had so much fun when I came and visited…such were my thoughts, among others, when I chose to come to Dartmouth.
I arrived a wide-eyed freshman, fancying myself the shit because I’d played in summer league–organized ultimate, man!–and showed up knowing what a stack was. I could throw a forehand (without a pivot). Sometimes my hammers went where I wanted them to! It made me really happy when I heard from Pete Gadomski at one point that he thought I was a ’06 because I looked so much like I knew what I was doing. Knowing as much as I did, and being in the shape I was, I had to be a shoo-in for the A-team, right? Right?
Not at all. The ’05s were the big dogs, Seigs and Agan explained to me in the backseat of a car (their “office” during practice), and they had a good feeling about this year–they didn’t have a lot of space to pull up new guys and train them up, taking just Cobbles and Pov from the ’08s. “We want you to work on your defense,” they said. “right now it just seems like you force guys out and try and run the disc down when it gets thrown (admittedly still my favorite thing in ultimate). Work on really sticking with your man and D’ing him up that way on the B-team.”
On the B-team? I put everything I had into getting better, into showing them how wrong they were to not take me on the A-team, to show them how committed I was. And it wasn’t just me. So many conditioning runs, so many wintry practices out at the turf fields, Dorner, Mackey, Crew, Socks, Watson, DeKrey…commitment. Hard work. If it wasn’t practice, it was Socks-Crew-Pov-Mackey doing marker drill on a Friday evening at the river dorms, playing boot, tossing.
My freshman summer, spent in the far East, I threw literally every day after class. I would spend hours perusing the internet for every last bit of information it held. I read the blogs. When I returned to Hanover, I started my own. I kept working, and kept improving, physically, mentally.
Sophomore year, Socks, Wats, and I made it (with a cameo by Crew). Junior year Crew returned, and DeKrey and Dorner came up. We’ve all continued to work through the years, and the fruits of our labor are evident to me every time we’re on the field, every time we toss. Every throw is a throwback. Turfed backhands, wobbly forehands, have become near certainties. Whereas I once dashed around haphazardly hoping for a floaty frisbee, I now cut with purpose for leading passes. While I used to wait and bait, I now dictate and dominate. My attachment to this sport, and the people I share it with, is the single most fulfilling component of my Dartmouth experience.
Riding back from a practice at Radcliffe with Dorner, DeKrey, and Crew, joking at an intersection, I was struck with the thought of just how perfect it all was, how there’s absolutely nothing else I’d prefer doing. I could’ve ridden forever, but these moments are fleeting. We’ve invested so much time in this sport, and in each other, and for what?…
“Are you kidding me!? It’s nowhere close.” With crew, what do you do? Pull strokes on the erg? With ultimate, there is SO MUCH you can do to improve. It’s not just the physical work, but the strategy, the teamwork…spending time together with my teammates makes us all better players. And not just better players, better people. I have gotten SO MUCH out of my time here at Dartmouth, and with the team…I’m an entirely different person now than I was before I got here, and it all stems from this singular obsession of mine, born of some nonchalant tossing and an innocent fascination with a piece of plastic.
So we come to Regionals. Whenever somebody who doesn’t really follow ultimate/somebody I don’t talk to about it regularly asks about my season, I refer to Regionals as “Pretty much the culmination of my four years here at Dartmouth.” Like Nate said, though, the results are not what define us. For me, going into this weekend with the strength and certainty of years of commitment and work and, why lie, obsession, with this sport, with this group, with Our Team, I am, simply, exhilarated. There is no greater feeling than the rush that comes with a hard-fought game, win or lose. The flow of the moment, the unaldulteated joy of letting it all go…it is for precisely these moments that I work so hard. To be able to give my best, alongside my best friends, there is nothing more than this that I can ask for.
I have to confess that I’ve actually been tearing up, if not crying, a fair bit reading some of these blitzes. The meaning that this team, that Our Team, has taken on, cannot be captured in words (despite my liberal use of them in attempt here). I see it when we play, though. Every time I hear a “hoo ungawa!” Every time Owen demands better from somebody, be it himself, his teammates, or his opponent. Every sprint down on every pull, every goal caught, every joyous celebration…every time we huddle up. It’s always there, that desire to give more, to become less a collection of 23 and more a team of one, united will.
I love each and every one of you. As I sit here typing this I feel a surge of energy–that energy doesn’t come from me; it comes from you. Our investment in one another is our truest strength. As we play this weekend, never forget that. Put everything you have into the moment at hand, into supporting your teammates, with your play, with your attitude, with your energy, with your HEART, and our united will will be put on display for all to see.
I don’t play for myself. I don’t play for Dartmouth. I play for Mike Zargham, Carson Thomas, Nate Raines, Watson Sallay, Alex Crew, Zach Dorner, Sam Haynor, Pete Bonanno, Will DeKrey, Dermott McHugh, Owen Roberts, Dave Schmidt, Nick Brown, Billy McCarthy, Graham Baecher, Misha Sidorsky, Robin Meyers, Alex Kell, Nathaniel Obler, Chase Raines, Lars Osterberg, and Alex Taylor. I play for YOU.
-Mackey
This is a great story. Ultimate is a great life. Dartmouth is a great place! This is what can happen when those things intersect.