The major league baseball season of course has the attention of most sports fan right now, with our Toronto Blue Jays hitting the field for their season opener on Mar. 29.
It was a four-game set with the Jays hosting the New York Yankees, with each team taking two, and the Jays looking solid, and then thrilling fans in Sunday’s final game of the set with Justin Smoak hitting a grand slam in the eighth inning for the eventual win.
But sports fans who are just a bit more on the fringe in terms of their sport interests, some might even say on the cutting edge of things, will also be aware the American Ultimate Disc League kicked off its 2018 season Saturday.
If you do not know what ultimate is in terms of a sport, it uses a flying disc (think Frisbee), with teams passing the disc down a roughly football-sized field to score points. The points come regularly in a game played over four 12-minute quarters.
In fact, when I initially watched the sport I lamented the lack of defense, or more accurately, the rarity a defense makes a stop. But, I soon came to recognize ultimate flows a lot like basketball with offences moving up and down the field trading scores. Blow-outs are rare, at least at the pro level.
In terms of professional ultimate there were two leagues for a time, but the smaller of the two; Major League Ultimate, suspended operations as of December 2016.
That leaves the AUDL to carry the sport toward greater exposure, which it certainly deserves if you like offense and scoring carried out by some amazing disc throws and catches.
The league has become well-established, starting the season with 23-teams, after the Vancouver Riptide suspended operations. The team is expected to rise again in 2019, but in Portland rounding out four, six-team divisions in the AUDL.
It leaves Canada without a franchise in the west.
Fortunately, out east the Toronto Rush, a perennial powerhouse, is joined by the Ottawa Outlaws and Montreal Royal, all battling in one division along with New York, Philadelphia and DC.
If you want to check out AUDL, and I highly recommend it for open-minded lovers of sport every weekend during the regular season, you can tune into theAUDL.com or Stadium for professional ultimate’s marquee matchup for free denotes www.theaudl.com. Each broadcast will be produced by Fulcrum Media, the official production team of the AUDL in each of the past six seasons.
The game of the week schedule includes;
• Montreal Royal at DC Breeze Saturday, Apr. 7 - 6:30PM
• Toronto Rush at San Francisco FlameThrowers Saturday, Apr. 21 - 9:30PM
• Toronto Rush at DC Breeze Saturday, June 9 - 6:30PM
• New York Empire at Montreal Royal Saturday, June 16 - 6:00PM
At some point as the league grows it is to be hoped some of the Canadian teams will start to broadcast some of their games online, or maybe rather than playing a rerun of a Spengler Cup hockey game or CFL game from last season, one of the Canadian sports networks will pick up ultimate.
Until then I’ll take what is offered and relish being a fan of an emerging sport well worthy of more attention.
