The looks on the faces of McCallie’s varsity Ultimate Frisbee team were anything but positive Sunday morning, March 9. The No. 13 frisbee field at Camp Jordan was being whipped by frigid winds and heavy cloud cover. The Eclipse team from Forsyth County, Georgia, that McCallie was facing in the 25th annual Deep Freeze round-robin tournament, was already ahead 8-4 and gaining momentum. It was not shaping up to be a blue-letter day for the Blue Tornado

But after a brief strategy session, the sun suddenly piercing the clouds, head coach Jake Altemus broke into a grin and broke the huddle with the following five words: “Smile. It’s a beautiful day.”

A few minutes later, Altemus said, “This should be fun. We have too many guys putting too much pressure on themselves. At the end of the day, we’re really just a bunch of kids throwing a disc around a field.”

In the beginning, when McCallie first fielded an Ultimate team in 1999, that might have applied. It was a long way from becoming a varsity sport in those days. There were no uniforms, for instance.

“We were a club sport,” said Bryan Sansbury ‘03, a student on the very first team who is now Altemus’s top assistant and the school’s Swiss Army Knife of a faculty member, teaching Latin, Ancient Greek and history while coaching cross country, mountain biking and Ultimate.

“Steve Cobble, who’s known as the Grandfather of Chattanooga Ultimate, was our coach. We had to sell McCallie discs to raise money to buy game shirts. It wasn’t nearly as organized as it is now.”

Twenty-six years later, all 18 varsity players and 12 JV players wear numbered game jerseys. They practice with official 175-gram Discraft UltraStar white discs with a blue M stamped on them ($12.99 each). They travel in school buses. They will play for a state championship in Nashville on May 3rd and 4th.

“It’s very competitive,” said Altemus. “There are a lot of very good athletes on these teams. Very high skill level. What we’re trying to do is teach, build, grow. Everybody on the team gets runs (playing time) because we’re trying to make all of them better players.”

McCallie’s best athlete on this team could be senior Phillippe Robert, the football player who may have made the biggest tackle of the state championship win over Baylor when he crushed Red Raider running back David Gabriel-Georges at the line of scrimmage in the second half. Gabriel-Georges, who was running wild against McCallie before then, never was the same after that hit, heading to the bench for good a few plays later with a lower leg injury.

A few weeks ago, Robert decided to give Ultimate a try. “I was atrocious at first,” he laughed. “But I’ve gotten better.”

Asked what he liked playing more, football or Ultimate, Robert said, “Ultimate’s more fun.”

Altemus, who’s been coaching Ultimate at one level or another for over 30 years, points to the 70-by-40-yard field with 20-yard end zones, one point for every end zone catch, 90-minute games (same as soccer) and says, “It’s got traces of soccer, basketball, football and lacrosse in terms of movement. But on the field, you’re kind of both a quarterback and a defensive back.”

Robert, a defender in football, scored two of the Blue Tornado’s five goals in its eventual 12-5 loss to Eclipse. They rebounded in Sunday’s final three games to finish the Deep Freeze tourney with a 4-3 record, good for third place on the weekend.

“Let’s flush this game,” Altemus told the team after the Eclipse loss, and obviously they did. But the sport is much more than wins and losses.

After the Eclipse defeat, the McCallie team handed out Moon Pies to the winners and both teams formed a “Spirit Circle,” locking arms, chanting and then breaking on “One-Two-Three-LeBron.”

Why LeBron?”

“Who knows?” said Altemus. “They’re teenagers.”

Jared Beazley is a UT-Chattanooga grad student and an assistant for McCallie. He says what he likes most about the Blue Tornado players is “They listen.” He added, “And they don’t have egos, which is rare in any sport.”

This is also rare: Just after the Spirit Circle broke up after Sunday morning’s loss, junior Johnny Blessing, who has played both JV tennis and volleyball while at McCallie, said what he most enjoyed about the sport. 

“I just like the people,” he said. “It’s fun. And when the game ends, even your opponents are your friends.”

Or as Altemus noted, “The first rule of Ultimate is this: Nobody is trying to cheat you.”

Smile. It’s a beautiful sport.