Top left-to-right: Chandlee Harrell, Chuck Schweitzer, Andy Takats, Peter Sullivan, Clark Wakabayachi
Bottom left-to-right: Bob Bing-yu, Dave Plant, Rich Topol, Kurt Fleischer
This is a team picture from a tournament in Boston (1981 sectionals?).
We just finished a great game against the reigning terror of
East Coast disc, Boston Aero-Disc (B.A.D.). With only two subs, we
played B.A.D a strong game, losing by
only three points, as I recall.
Or did we have three subs? I think this was the tournament where Gordon,
the funniest player on the team, blew out his knee in a spectacularly
painful manner. Gordon and I used to read Zippy-the-Pinhead
while driving to tournaments at high speeds in the back of ancient, tiny,
dilapidated foreign cars driven by lunatics. Typical college stuff.
Top left-to-right: Chandlee Harrell, Chuck Schweitzer, Andy Takats,
Peter Sullivan, Clark Wakabayachi
Bottom left-to-right: Bob Bing-yu, Dave Plant, Rich Topol, Kurt Fleischer
The disc shown here is the legendary Wham-O 80 C. The design (by Rob Seidenberg),
was much maligned, as I recall. Rob and Scott David used to
freestyle all the time, and were pretty good at it (see picture below of
Scott doing a foot-mac on the Green). I think
Rob came up with the "weavers", "spinners", and "artisans"
offense nomenclature.
This disc is broken, just like all of our discs in those days. There was a rumor Wham-o would replace broken discs, and we collected piles of broken discs before discovering this was untrue. I remember tossing out my box of a dozen or so. The thing about Wham-o's was that you had to practice for years to avoid shanking the forehand huck. With discrafts, its a piece-o-cake. Degeneracy.
We had another disc in 1981 that had the Brown U. coat-of-arms, and was quite popular -- appeared in the background of a photo in Time magazine! (can't recall what the article was about...)
My note on the back of this photo says
"Spring 1982, after a loss to Airbourne. 9th of 24 in Sectionals
Back: (Left-to-right) Bob Herold, Kurt Fleischer, Chuck Schweitzer, Bob Bing-Yu,
Clark Wakabayachi's Butt,
Front: Andy Takats, Mark Three Stars, Dave Plant,
Peter Sullivan."
Bill Mead playing disc with the dogs at the Haffenreffer graduation party, 1982.
Andy Takats prepares to throw a wheelie.
Billy and someone (Toupin?) at a practice on the old field by Marvel gym.
In 1982, Toupin and Rodriguez and Flower showed up as eager freshmen and added a lot of energy to the team. Of course, they had no forehands, but you can't have everything. After a lot of encouragement, they finally amounted to something, I hear :)
Scott David doing his patented foot-mac. Great counter-spin. Many
of us bruised our feet attempting to imitate this.
"Crazy Larry" from URI used to join our ultimate practices occasionally.
Sometimes he went to tourneys with us as a ringer (and other times against us).
He was a great freestyler, too -- here he is at the Conn. state
championships (summer 1981). Chan Harrell '82 is in the back left.