Pictures of a rad Saturday in Missoula playing with frisbees.

The the first picture links to a gallery. The last three are pictures that were too big to include.

Click on the picture for a gallery from an Ultimate tournament last weekend in Coeur d’Alene Idaho.

I just found out that Bozeman’s neighboring Ultimate team, the Mental Toss Flycoons from Missoula, Montana beat Shazam Remains 15 to 11 for the Club Ultimate National Championship in the mixed division earlier today.

In case you aren’t totally familiar with competitive club Ultimate in the states, there are three divisions, Mixed (co-ed), Open (basically Men), and Women’s. The Club Championship, a four day tournament held once a year in Sarasota, Flordia and, has teams from all over. The two other teams to win national championships were Jam (Open Division) and Fury (Women’s Division), both from San Francisco. Shazam, the team the Flycoons beat in the finals, is from Seattle, Washington.

Montana Ultimate is the bomb! We (the Bozos) played the Flycoons in September and lost a close game 13-10. The Flycoons are a spirited team with some excellent chemistry. They play super hard every point, but still seem to manage to have fun, which I definitely appreciate. For some teams, an intense desire to win can block out what is great about Ultimate.

Beating a team from Seattle is especially impressive, given that Seattle is one of the premier cities for Ultimate in the nation and therefore have a much bigger pool of talent to pick from than Missoula.

Another key feature of their National Championship is that no less than three local Bozeman Ultimate superstars, Emily Kimmel, Camas Key, and Dominic Benincasa joined the team late in the season and helped bring this one back to Montana.

Oh yeah, not only did The Flycoons win a National Championship, they did it in impressive style. With seven wins and only one loss over all four days, against some of the best teams in the nation. They won their last three games (where a single loss eliminates you) 15-5, 15-11, 15-11.

As a tribute I scoured the archives for a couple more pictures of their game against us at sectionals. (Pictures already posted can be viewed here)

**Update** For a much more in-depth account of the tournament see Flycoon player Tim Murray’s blog here

The Bozeman Ultimate crew got together after their fine performance at Northwest Mixed Regionals. Joey took some video at the tournament and along with her husband Camas, had the team over to her house to watch it.

Towards the end of the night the bag game was played (This is when I realized I had my camera with me). The goal is to pick the bag up off the ground with your mouth, with only 1 foot on the floor. Every round the bag gets cut so it is shorter and shorter. I am not very good at this game.

It was a great evening though, thanks to the Key’s for having us over. And thanks to Cyn for making the most epic spinach-artichoke dip ever.

As far as I can tell this is what my right shoulder resembles now ( type 3 AC separation) after landing on it trying to catch a disc on Wednesday. It hurt like hell Wed. night but thanks to ice, ibuprofen, and Oxycodone it feels much better now.

Bozeman Ultimate played at the Big Sky Sectionals in Missoula this weekend. We went 4-1 in pool play, losing a close game to the number 1 overall seed, the Missoula Flycoons.

Sunday we went 2-1, losing to Pyschopastique from Edmonton, Canada and beating Boise to earn a spot to go to Northwest Regionals in Corvallis, Oregon in October.

Click on the photo for a gallery of some shots from the weekend.

Two days ago marked the one year anniversary of the death of Bozeman native Emily Gentholts.

[ also here , here , and here (starting w/ the 8th paragraph) ]

She was 20 years old and she died in a car accident coming home from an Ultimate Frisbee tournament.

Cars are dangerous, drive slow (You’ll save gas too).

Try and let the important people in your life know what they mean to you. (Certainly easier said than done)

Take care of yourself.

(*steps off of soapbox*)

It snowed about 6 inches today, so in another attempt to imagine better weather here are some pictures from the school team traveling down to sectionals in Pocatello from a couple weeks back.

I have discovered that when you’re taking pictures of Ultimate you are not playing Ultimate. Hence I didn’t take that many pictures.

Emily Gentholts was born 7 years and 1 day after me. She was from Bozeman, and going to college in Minnesota. She was in Bozeman for the summer doing research and playing Ultimate. She died last Sunday in a car wreck coming back from an Ultimate Tournament in Salt Lake City. You can read her obituary from today’s paper here I had played Ulimate with her a handful of times and talked some at an Ultimate Party a couple weeks ago. She struck me as being extremely pleasant and thoughtful. The type of person who was usually smiling with positive things to say. The Wednesday before she died we were playing Ultimate on a typical pleasant Bozeman evening and I was complimenting her attire of grey sweatpants rolled up above her knees with tube socks.

The tournament in Salt Lake City was a tournament I was seriously thinking about going to. There was a car full of Bozeman Ultimate Players behind the car Emily was riding in who were the first on the scene. Apparently an animal was involved, and Emily was sleeping in the back seat without a seat belt on. Thankfully the driver of that car is very much ok. The driver of the other car was 8-months pregnant,she deIivered her baby by c-section that night. Last I heard she was in the hospital in critical condition. I was told the impact literally split the car Emily was riding in the backseat of in half.

In case you forgot, cars are dangerous. I had not really been giving that a lot of thought recently but this has certainly brought it to my attention. Please be careful.

It seems like I’ve known more people to die in this past year than the rest of my life combined. Most of them did not have the chance to grow old. Grandma, Eben’s friend Wade ( I did not know him but I do know he was way too young), my friend Joe’s father, who was also Kezia’s uncle, passed away a few months ago at 52, and now Emily. It is very easy to forget that people don’t live forever. I wish people would be nicer to each other sometimes. I don’t understand why that is so difficult.

I woke up this morning and there was snow on the ground and snow falling rather rapidly. That was certainly a first, in Breckenridge it snowed a foot when we left on May 1st but up until now that was the latest snow I’d ever seen.

The town hosted the 22nd Bozofest this weekend, which is an Ultimate (frisbee) tournament. Technically it is just called “Ultimate” because the word “frisbee” is copyrighted. Teams came from places such as Salt Lake City, Portland, and Edmonton (in Canada), quite a drive for some people.

It was a exciting (and tiring) weekend of Ultimate and revelry in 2 days of warm and sunny weather. This was mildly astounding considering that the weather was cold and rainy all last week. It then proceeded to be about as nice as you could possibly want for exactly two days, then Memorial day was cold and rainy, and today it was snowing. Mother Nature must have wanted us to play some frisbee!

There was a fun party for the tournament (this an Ultimate tradition) about 30 minutes outside of town with kegs of beer, a bonfire, a live band, and spaghetti dinner. It was out in the country with horses and cows, and anyone that wanted to could camp in a nearby field. I managed to get my honda stuck in said field after I slightly overestimated its off-roading capabilities. But luckily thats what teammates are for isn’t it? Especially largish Ultimate players. Thanks to all the Bozos that assisted in unsticking me.

Mom and Dad are going to be here in a week. Also of note I now have a plane ticket to go visit Davy during the beginning of July.

After that I’m going to be back in Asheville during the first couple weeks of August. It should be a good summer.

Here are a couple of totally non Ultimate related pictures of a hike Kez and I did last week up to the top of Baldy Moutain. The last time I was up there was in September of last year, it is a tough hike towards the end but once you get up there it has some good views.