Damfast, a new Midcoast ultimate frisbee partnership between pick-up teams from Damariscotta and Belfast, took on teams from around the Northeast on the weekend of Oct. 16-17 at the annual Red Tide Clambake tournament at Bowdoin College. On Sat., Nov. 13, Damfast was back at Bowdoin for the one-day tournament called the Frozen Butterball.
Damfast was created by Whitefield sheep farmer Perry Ells, who convinced players from both groups to join together and put in a bid for the famous Clambake tournament, now in its 22nd year. To play at Clambake, Damfast was required to make a generous offer of some kind, because more teams than can fit apply to play.
Since Clambake serves as a fundraiser for Maine Special Olympics, some teams offer large donations, while others offer to help with tournament logistics. Perry and her MOFGA apprentices, Laura Rodgers and Judy Dahl, succeeded with their bid to assist with Saturday evening festivities.
Ells and Rodgers helped Dahl dispense libations during the infamous Clambake party, which this year was a masquerade ball held at a site in Gorham where many of the tournament’s players were camped out.
Clambake is managed by the Portland Red Tide ultimate team, which invited 36 teams from around the Northeast and the Canadian Maritimes to play hard at Bowdoin and have a great time at the party. Unlike many tournaments, the Clambake hosts mostly club teams rather than college teams, which means that players are in their early to mid-20s.
Members of the Damfast team, in contrast, range in age from 24 to 56, and therefore lacked nothing in the way of experience and enthusiasm.
Damfast showed up at Bowdoin with 26 members, many just meeting for the first time. Roughly half of the team’s men and women came from the Damariscotta group known as 52 Pick-up, and half from the Belfast area. They come from towns throughout the Midcoast, including Waldoboro, Bristol, Montville and Vinalhaven, and make their livings in diverse ways.
At any given point, the seven frisbee players on the field might include a teacher, boatbuilder, chef, sheep farmer, café owner, robotics engineer or fisherman. Many work for non-profit organizations or run their own small business. All have at least two things in common: a love of ultimate frisbee, and an appreciation for the people who play it year-round here in Maine.
At Clambake, three divisions – men’s, women’s and mixed – competed in pool play on Saturday, which determined where they fit into Sunday’s final brackets. In the mixed division, Damfast played – and lost – three games on Saturday, but had a great time doing it. Against three strong teams – the Chowdaheads from Rhode Island, Quiet Coyote from Boston, and Who Wants to Party from Halifax – Damfast made great fast plays, long beautiful throws and incredible diving catches, but as a new squad there had been little time to coalesce as a team.
Everyone had agreed to let chaos and laughter take priority over competition.
On Sunday at Clambake, Damfast’s record improved dramatically, if only because two teams forfeited. The first forfeit was a morning game that the other team, Hidden Stache from Brooklyn, was too hungover to play (Judy had done her work well at the Saturday night party), and the other was the last game of the day that unknown opponents blew off because they had a long drive home. Damfast lost a close game to Boston-based Flight School in between those two forfeits.
Among the great memories of the Clambake tournament are three fabulous end zone catches by Bruce Morehouse, one of Damfast’s pentagenarians. Morehouse leapt over opposing (much younger) players to snag the disc and then tumbled to the ground, where he was mobbed by his teammates.
“Throughout school I avoided team sports because I didn’t like the feeling of ‘win/lose’,” Morehouse said. “Now in my fifties, I know I should have started playing ultimate sooner. The math has changed. We won the game; I caught three of our passes in the end zone for three points – the other team just ended up with more points overall and won a different way.”
On Nov. 13, Damfast showed up at Bowdoin again for the Frozen Butterball (FBB) tournament. FBB is a smaller, one-day tournament with just 12 Maine-based teams, half of them college and alumni squads from Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby. Notorious for miserable late autumn Maine weather and hard frozen ground, FBB was a very different scene this year. Warm, sunny and windless, the weather was weird for mid-November but perfect for playing ultimate frisbee.
Damfast rose to the occasion, winning two out of five games, showing teams of lithe 19-year-olds from Colby and Bates what adults twice their age were capable of, given enough practice and ibuprofen.
Damfast lost to Bowdoin’s alumni team, the Old Fat Claos (that’s a mix of Clowns and Chaos), who played in immaculate three-piece suits, and to the Serial Swillers, a Portland club team dressed only slightly less immaculately in bright Hawaiian shirts.
At the end of the day, Damfast lost a close game to Colby’s A team, partly because some players had left early to tend to children only slightly younger than those on the Colby team, and partly because the ibuprofen was no longer proving effective.
The Damfast women include Perry Acworth Ells, Laura Rodgers, Jenny Mayher, Julie Lamy, Christine Russell, Larkspur Morton, Emily Hallett, Cynthia Deveau, Tana Scott, Maria Jenness and Judy Dahl. Men include Geoff Scott, Josh Jacobs, Luke Lyndaker, Neil Morton, Conor Gately, Adam Lachman, Darin Carlucci, Leif Weaver, Jason Anthony, Ryan Jay Stanley, Bruce Morehouse, Bill Silver, Greg Bazakas, Jacob Brashears, Ben Dorr, Calvin Maginel, Deneb Puchalski and Bill Yori.
Anyone interested in coming out to play with 52 Pick-up in Damariscotta can contact Jason Anthony at 677-2354. The team plays every Sunday, 2 p.m. in winter, 3 p.m. in summer. Games are held behind Great Salt Bay Elementary School on Bus. Rt. 1 in Damariscotta.
To play in the Belfast game this winter, email midcoastdisc@gmail.com, or show up Tuesday and Thursday, 5-8 p.m., inside Point Lookout in Northport until the weather is good enough to play outside. A couple of times during the winter the court is not available, so it is always good to check in first. To subscribe to the email list (names guarded, and never distributed), email midcoastdisc@gmail.com and put “subscribe” in the subject.
Ultimate Frisbee is known for its unique combination of athleticism, fairness, and an idiosyncratic joy of playing. Where else can spectators find players wearing capes, suits or Hawaiian shirts throwing themselves at full speed into a diving end zone catch. And in what other sport do players call their own fouls? Ultimate Frisbee is unique particularly for something called “spirit of the game,” defined as a dedication to fairness and self-governance in the midst of intense competition. There are no referees.
Everyone is welcome, regardless of experience or age.
