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Conner has hopes of turning this photogenic sport into a league, if he can get some corporate sponsor to buy into this "sport of the new Millennium."

Sometime during the first day of the first official Goaltimate tourney in the history of the world, I found myself eaves-dropping on a conversation between Jim Herrick, one of the founders of the sport, and Tom Kennedy, one of the founders of the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, from which Goaltimate is derived.

Herrick was commenting on a conversation nearby; someone was discussing "what it would take to win" this prestigious tourney that San Diego transplant and deep-down Texan Rick Conner had sponsored to the tune of $30,000. Conner put out more money than that flying out Ultimate's present stars like Kenny Dobyns and Jim Parinella from Miami and New York to add cachet to the event. To win a tourney like this fostered what Herrick called "monkey talk." "There's some more of that monkey talk" was all he had to say to make his point to Kennedy, better known as TK. No one, not Herrick, nor TK, nor the eventual winning team from San Diego, with the moniker "Ground Zero," was sure what it would take to win the 30 Gs. But 130 disc players were interested.

At seven players per Goaltimate team to share the prize, this tourney promised the best payday these athletes had ever seen in their careers. Goaltimate players are first Ultimate Frisbee players. Ultimate players pay for their addiction to plastic with their own cash, and often with a string of failed relationships and truncated careers. That's not to say that just as many are doing fine, as it's also likely your average 30ish Frisbee stud has at least a university education or graduate degree.

The very best Ultimate players practice three to five times a week, sometimes for most of a weekend to get in the kind of ripped shape that allows them to run full speed nearly constantly for an entire "point." Ultimate points last from a few seconds to ten minutes or more, and subbing during the point is problematic; you can only sub out if your team burns one of its few time-outs or either you or someone else gets injured. Goaltimate allows subbing as play continues, similar to hockey substitution. Therefore, Goaltimate requires a different type of stamina and mindset. An Ultimate field is 120 by 40 yards, while a Goaltimate field is 45 yards wide by 30 yards long. Moreover, Goaltimate is a half-court game. You have a "clear line" about 30 yards away from the goal, which is a parabolic arch 11 feet high by 7 yards across at the base. (For exact standards, try Conner's website: www.goaltimate.com.)

Because all scoring happens in a small and cramped place, the 7-yard radius directly behind the goal, teams can ignore playing defense except in that narrow space. Having strong legs helps, but decent legs (and lungs) will work if you're savvy and you can throw a disc in ways that an Ultimate player would never attempt during a competition. Ground Zero was the savviest bunch of junk throwers and catchers at the Rancho Santa Fe Polo Club all weekend.

Mike Blackard, who threw the winning goal to Jim Ingabritsen (Jim Daddy or Inga to all that know him), had told me a few weeks previous that he had serious doubts about the legs of some of his fellow teammates. Inge doesn't play much disc, Ultimate or Goaltimate anymore, favoring basketball instead. Greg Pinz (Pinzer or just Pinz) was in the same category and had only recently been practicing with the team. Frenchy (Mike Boisvert) and Fergie (Steve Ferguson) were playing a lot, as was Cliffy (Cliff Smith) but the seventh man made everyone a little nervous. John Cione (Bullet) is known citywide as a man capable of the most dramatic meltdowns. Screaming epithets at his fellow teammates, mocking their reason for playing, and questioning their fundamental character -- this was Bullet's MO. Herrick refuses to play with Bullet. I enjoy playing with him; for those of us who need an emotional jolt, having Cione sandblast your ears can be beneficial. But for most old-school players and tenderhearted young guys, Bullet can be a handful.

Most disc players make some concessions to the founding dogma; to a special Ultimate "Spirit of the Game" in which competitors temper their selfish urges with a code of honor. This inner governor, SOTG, was thought of as the aspect of the sport that separated disc players from their baseball, football, and basketball counterparts. Ultimate Frisbee just recently added referees to their competitions. The refs in Ultimate are not active; they only make calls when they are asked to and generally only in big games, like the finals of a major tournament. It was from the position of an observer/ref that I participated in Conner's promotional extravaganza.

Conner has hopes of turning this photogenic sport into a league, if he can get some corporate sponsor to buy into this "sport of the new Millennium," as he has dubbed it. Before he can do that, he will have to convince many dubious Ultimate players that Goaltimate is worthy of their respect. Most of the players who participated in the tourney in Del Mar last month enjoyed the quality of the event. But for all the great players who came out from Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Miami, Indiana, Vancouver, Texas, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, few of them look like Goaltimate players yet. Even though only one team from San Diego did well, and there were three -- including an over-40 crew led by Herrick -- Ground Zero dominated the younger, more athletic teams with fast-break give-and-go that left few of their matches in doubt. Only the Founders, a Boston-based team led by a nucleus of Death or Glory Ultimate players (five-time National champs) had any real strategy for dealing with GZ. The Founders, named after those who (like Herrick) played in the first Goaltimate games that took place back in 1978 at Wellesley College, executed a zone defense in the mouth of the goal that looked insurmountable to an untrained player.

GZ decimated San Francisco on one semifinal, allowing only four goals while rolling to a 3-0 match victory. The other game between the Founders and the Santa Barbara Condors, one of the few teams that kept the Ultimate name for use in the tourney, was close but boring. A Goaltimate match consists of five games to five points; after one team wins three games, the match is over. When the San Diego players practice, either across from the Mission Beach roller coaster or on a little triangle swatch of grass next to the boat-launching ramp at Ski Beach, they usually play five to seven games, depending on how many people show up. For many years the goal was the arch between two Magnolia trees on the grass fields opposite Mariner's Point. The constant pounding around the trees began to worry the park caretakers, and eventually they kicked the players off the field (later on, plastic goals were developed, which can be placed anywhere).

Conner, who ran the tourney while Donnie Wallace ran the referees, added nuances in preparation for an imagined television audience. After each game, a one-minute break was established. Teams were allotted three time-outs of two minutes each. But in order to make sure games finished in time, a one-and-a-half-hour time cap was placed on each match. In the Founders vs. Condors semifinal, this led to the stultifying -- yet wise -- decision by the Founders to use their last two time-outs at the end of the game to burn out the clock once they had built a 2-1 game lead in their match with Santa Barbara. If Santa Barbara had won the fourth game of the match before time ran out, the game would have been decided by whoever was leading the final game or, if it was tied when the time cap went off, by whoever scored the next point. The Founders won the third game of the match with little time left on the clock and knew that they could stall the time-out. On Sunday this stalling led to a rethinking of the use of time-outs, and for a moment it was decided that no time-outs would be allowed in the last five or ten minutes of play. This elicited groans from the Condors and was quickly rescinded. If you were smart enough to save your time-outs, then how you used them was your own business.

The final was close to a point, with Ground Zero scoring quickly and often in the opening game to roll to a 1-0 lead. Then they became too passive, allowing the Founders to storm back and win the second game of the match by an identical score, 5-1. It was at this moment, with three ESPN film crews covering the field, that it looked as if the better team might melt in the morning sun. In the GZ huddle, they decided to put more pressure on the Founders getting back to the clear line. I counted several times where the Founders needed 20 passes just to get back to the clear line. The added pressure worked, and the Founders' defense, which gave lesser teams absolute fits around the goal mouth, succumbed to weird upside-down throws, caught inches off the ground. Cliff Smith caught eight of these funky goals including the third and fourth of the last set.

If there was any play that might have been controversial, it was Smith's third goal in the final game. Catching the disc in the air outside the goal mouth, like a fullback he cradled the disc toward the plane of the goal line. This game situation, where a player running hard toward the goal mouth leaps in the air and lands in the goal, has not been sorted out in the minds of most players and refs. The rule is that the receiver (in this case, Smith) is allowed a place to land. Stu Downs, a big-shouldered, salt-and-pepper haired defender for the Founders, closed off Smith's landing zone like a linebacker, knowing he must prevent the disc from breaking the plane. The resulting collision was compelling as Smith was knocked back through the goal. Wallace ruled that Smith had broken the plane with the disc, although it was unclear if his feet landed in the goal. The Founders complained and became lax on defense. GZ moved the disc to the clear line and back, and Blackard threw something ugly and upside down to Smith, who grabbed it with two hands over his head as he was falling backward with his feet just inside the goal boundary. Suddenly it was 4-1, and the next goal by GZ would win it. Even though the Founders rallied for three straight goals, tying the score at 4-4, Ground Zero had many near misses and it seemed only a matter of time before Blackard found "Daddy" for the winner.

The oddity of watching seven of your friends all place their hands on an oversized check for $30,000 was disorienting, as if suddenly you didn't know them anymore. I didn't get a chance to congratulate them, and within 30 minutes of the last goal the polo club had mowed over the chalked lines and kicked every disc player off the field. The next day, I ran into Fergie on the Muir fields at UCSD, and he gave me a nice compliment on my reffing. The day after, Pinz called to ask if I wanted to go play some golf with Daddy, Blackard, Fergie, and some others. Conner's show got 30 minutes on ESPN, and it's already been rebroadcast twice (it airs again on ESPN2 Tuesday, August 24, at 5:30 a.m.), but getting that call and that compliment made my Father's Day weekend.