When I (Andres Leguizamon) first started playing Ultimate back in July of 2005, I was welcomed to the Ultimate fields by Dan Spada, Sprinx and Brian Gregson. At the time, they were working on T2, a.k.a. Tampa 2, which was planned to be the 2nd Open team for the Bay Area. This team had gone to some local tournaments as well as other tournaments around the area, including Sectionals of 2005.
After the 2005 Season, T2 decided to put a team together for the St. Petersburg Fall league, which was called Thunderbolts. This team included some of the men from the T2 team as well as their girlfriends and other women added to the team.
After a fun season with Thunderbolts, Brian sent me a flyer for the Sunshine State Games that were being held in North Miami in June 2006. This was the first time that the State Games would have Ultimate Frisbee as one of their sports, so I volunteered to organize a team to take to Miami. This team consisted of Thunderbolts players as well as some seasoned Huckaneers players and some Bulge additions (Poulos and Big City). Since it was a “new” team, I thought we needed a new name so I came up with “Disc-Connected”. This was our first tournament as Disc-Connected; we had a good show at the State Games finishing 5th out of 12 teams that participated.
Based on our success, I decided that Coed Ultimate would be a fun way to get into competitive Ultimate while still having the opportunity to enjoy and share the love of the game with our significant others. My recruiting started by attempting to recruit the girlfriends of each Disco player to have enough women to play in a 4/3 format. We knew that the Huckaneer players and Bulge players were committed to their teams for the 2006 season so we had to start recruiting, developing and continuing to play together as a unit to take our team to the Florida Sectionals in Vero Beach.
Sectionals was another great success for Disc-Connected, we placed second in our Section and earned a spot to go to Regionals. We turned down our Regionals bid due to the immaturity of our team and the costs related to going all the way to Little Rock, AR. Instead, we decided to stay home and start planning for ‘07.
Turning down Regionals was not the end for Disco, instead it was the beginning of what we have become today. Right after getting our bid to Regionals, we decided to schedule weekly practices and continue our recruiting and development of new players. With our love of the game and our great attitude on and off the field, we have been able to be a successful recruiting team. We have made some great additions to our team like Ivan, Dan Lee, Phil A, Erik, JK, and Jarrid, among other men added. We were also able to keep our entire core and continued to add women like Heidi, Jen D, Jen M, Kacey, and Melissa while keeping our original women (Erin, Becca).
During 2007, Disco was still a work in progress; we managed to continually grow as a team and added key players to our roster while still keeping our core group, attitude and love for the game intact. Our current roster has only been playing together for about 6 months and we have taken monster steps to our final goal: a bid to Nationals! We had a great show at Regionals 2007 and although finishing 7/10, we finished better than our seeding (9th), we played hard, we bonded even more as a team and we learned a lot from the more experienced teams. We now have a clearer point of reference to where we want to go and we will continue to work hard at it – while having fun.
In a few words, Disco is a great group of friends that love playing ultimate and working towards a common goal. Our attitude and dedication to our goal and our team will not only help us reach our dream but we will also continue to build life long friendships.
Do the Hustle!!!! D-D-D-D-Disco-Disc-Connected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!