Seattle's world frisbee champions turn moves into poetry in motion

It takes a special kind of person to execute an under-the-leg pull followed by a double-spinning triple fake that finishes with a double-spinning flamingosis.

FRISBEE VIDEO

Watch a video of Lisa Hunrichs Silvey and Cindy Kruger, both of Seattle, as they perform their winning routine from the 2004 Freestyle World Championships in Rimini, Italy. You can also see clips of Silvey and Matt Gauthier, of Oregon City, executing their winning routine in the mixed pairs division. (Courtesy of John "Z" Weyand)

Watch the video:
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And certainly not just anyone can pull off a phlaud followed by a body roll that transforms into a bad attitude.

Then again, Seattle's own Lisa Hunrichs Silvey is no ordinary human. She's a world champion who can execute physical maneuvers with names like "phlaud," "flamingosis" and "bad attitude."

Although it sounds as though it might be a form of nasal congestion, a "phlaud" is actually an athletic maneuver in which you have to bend over at the waist, reach across your body and then -- get this -- actually catch a moving frisbee behind your ankles. Go on, you try it.

As for the flamingosis, you stand on one leg (like the bird) and then, with the other leg in the air and your head pointed at the ground, you catch the fast-moving frisbee behind you. Toss a couple of pirouettes in there to make it a "double spinning flamingosis."

Silvey, a senior project coordinator for an environmental consulting company, is the world's No. 1 ranked women's freestyle disc player (aka freestyle frisbee player) who in August won two freestyle World Championship titles to go with the six titles she earned at previous world championship events.

"The thing I love about freestyle is that it's a spontaneous creation," Silvey says. "You never know what's going to happen."

Frisbee athletics

For many of us mere mortals, throwing a frisbee in the kind of reasonably straight line that makes it so a person standing 10 feet away can actually catch it is pretty much a major triumph. But for freestyle frisbee players -- and especially for Silvey and the other players found practicing in Seattle at Green Lake most weekends -- asking them to simply throw a disc back and forth is sort of like asking Chopin to simply play chopsticks.


		JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I
	World champions, from left, Cindy Kruger, Matt Gauthier and Lisa Hunrichs Silvey keep Seattle on the frisbee competition map with their intricate, rapid-fire series of maneuvers.

Freestyle players don't just throw the disc back and forth to each other, they pass the disc back and forth while executing an intricate, rapid-fire series of maneuvers that often involve jumping, twisting, spinning and just sort of generally defying gravity.

Playing freestyle frisbee (the lesser-known sibling sport to ultimate frisbee and frisbee golf) is a bit like performing a dance or a gymnastics routine, only with a flying disc and an element of spontaneity tossed in just to make things interesting.

"I think it's an art form," says Matt Gauthier, the 25-year-old dental technician from Oregon City, Ore., who won the mixed pairs division with Silvey at this year's Freestyle World Championships in Rimini, Italy. "We're creating with the disc."

Seattle has become a freestyle mecca of sorts. Three of the planet's top four women players live in the area and, in 2005, the Freestyle World Championships will take place at Green Lake (the weekend of July 29-31). Sponsored by the Freestyle Players Association, with Silvey playing the role of tournament director, this event will draw the best players from around the globe.

And although freestyle frisbee is hardly a new sport, it is a sport experiencing a new boom in popularity, says Arthur Coddington, a member of the freestyle association's board of directors and author of an upcoming freestyle instructional book.

"We're seeing a lot of new young players who are learning very quickly and having a lot of competitive success after a short time," says the 39-year-old elementary school teacher from San Leandro, Calif. "Those of us have been playing for a while are really encouraged by seeing this new blood in our sport."

The basics

But first, let's get down to the basics.

The disc used in freestyle is a bit flatter than the standard frisbee and smooth on top. Players wear a false fingernail secured to their index finger with Crazy Glue. This allows them to perform a fundamental move known as a "delay," which involves spinning the disc on a finger for extended periods of time.

Another core freestyle move is the "air brush." To add spin and help keep the frisbee aerodynamically stable, players brush the disc on the outside rim while it floats in the air.


		JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I
	Lisa Hunrichs Silvey of Seattle is the No. 1 ranked women's freestyle disc player in the world; She holds eight championship titles.

With one throw of the disc, players try to execute as many moves as possible. And proving that they have a robust sense of humor, freestylers have come up with a colorful lexicon for the seemingly infinite variety of moves they've developed.

There's the "skid vicious," the "brain motel" and the "gimp." And let's not forget the "diddyboo" and the "floorpie." Seriously.

As funny as some of the names sound, "the difficulty and the complexity of the moves that are being done now are phenomenal," says Dan Magallanes, a Seattle player who got into the sport back in 1981. "They bend your brain."

Freestyle play itself usually takes three forms: jamming, competitions and demonstrations.

Jamming is a free form of play in which a group of participants (it doesn't matter how many) move the frisbee between themselves. Silvey says that jamming among freestylers is similar to jamming among musicians. The players together build an intricate and spontaneous creation.

"You're all moving toward one goal of creating something beautiful that only lasts a minute in time," Silvey says. "What you create together can be really fun and inspiring."

"When you're jamming it's pure," Magallanes says. "There are no rules, you're not being judged. By far the best, most amazing stuff I've seen is when people are jamming."

On a recent weekend, Seattle's freestyle fiends gathered at Green Lake to jam in the grass. As they passed the disc in what was a fluid and often gorgeously cooperative dance (not to mention a phenomenal display of athletic prowess), passers-by stopped to watch in awe.

"Who are you people and what are you doing?" one man asked.

Silvey explained later: "We get that a lot."

"Each region has its own style of play and Seattle's style is one of the most intricately cooperative styles that we see," Coddington says.

When it comes to the competitions, freestylers play in twos and threes and are given four minutes to perform a routine. There are four competitive divisions: Women's pairs; mixed pairs (it must be a man and a woman); open pairs (any mix of women and men); and co-op (three-person teams). Nine judges watch and evaluate each routine based on difficulty, execution and artistic impression.

Most freestyle frisbee is played outdoors -- even the competitions -- so wind is an important and unpredictable element in the sport. A steady breeze of 3 to 6 mph is ideal.

"As the wind picks up it changes the way you play," Magallanes says, pointing out that judges look to see if you used the wind to your advantage or disadvantage.


	Joshua Trujillo / P-I
Green Lake is where world champions Lisa Hunrichs Silvey and Matt Gauthier hone their disc artistry, inspired by a medley of music. They won the mixed pairs division last August at the 2004 Freestyle World Championships, held in Rimini, Italy.

Music also is an integral part of the sport. Much like with ice skating, competitive freestyle players choreograph their routines to music. At this year's championships, Silvey wore a black mini dress, Gauthier sported a disco shirt and they performed to a medley of disco hits ("Stayin' Alive" among them.) Even at their recent Green Lake practice, everything from Cat Stevens to Interpol bellowed from a nearby boom box.

An older sport

Tall and lithe, Silvey is an elegant blur of muscles and black hair when she's playing with the disc. She had never done anything more than toss a frisbee around casually when she was first introduced to freestyle by her now-husband Randy Silvey. That was back in 1991. Four years later, Silvey had not only become a freestyle player, but she had won her first world title in the women's pairs with Mary Lowry of Seattle, who currently is ranked No. 4 among the women players in the world. Partners for six years, Silvey and Lowry won the world championship women's pairs division three times.

For the past three years, Silvey has been partners in the women's division with Cindy Kruger of Seattle, who is No. 2 in the world. The duo won the women's pairs title the past two years.

"What makes these two champions is they do difficult moves, they do well-choreographed routines and they execute," Magallanes says. "When the money is on the table, they're going to perform."

"It's definitely an addiction once you get to a certain point," says Kruger, a 37-year-old fitness instructor who also works in wholesale mortgage sales.

An interesting fact: The vast majority of the world's top freestyle competitors are 35 or older.

"There are few sports where people, with time, only improve their abilities," says 41-year-old Silvey, pointing out that with age comes experience and thus better control and better understanding of how the disc moves in the air.

"I feel more fit now than I have ever in my life."

European revival

Coddington says freestyle got its start in the late 1960s and early '70s as people began experimenting with the kind of tricks they could do with a disc. It was also in the '70s that the sport of frisbee as a whole experienced a massive boom.

"Frisbee really made a connection with American culture and Wham-O aggressively promoted it as well," Coddington says, explaining that back then the World Frisbee Championships took place at the Rose Bowl with 40,000 spectators in attendance. A frisbee documentary called "Floating Free" was nominated for an Oscar in 1977. "That was the peak in terms of its visibility."

In the 1980s, ownership of the frisbee business changed hands and soon the flying disc was being marketed as a toy rather than as a sport. Interest in frisbee as a sport began to dwindle even as the various frisbee offshoots (freestyle, ultimate and frisbee golf) began exploring and developing their own identities.

Freestyle fans concede that ultimate frisbee -- a team sport -- is a bit more accessible and easier for beginners to pick up. But these days freestyle is back on the upswing, thanks in large part to a boom that's taking place in Europe.

Coddington says a bumper crop of European mentors, as well as a flashy Nike commercial featuring freestylers Dave Lewis, Dave Murphy and a computer-generated stick figure have all helped boost interest in the sport.

(Check out the Nike video at www.freestyledisc.org.)

This year's Freestyle World Championships in Italy saw the largest international field in the event's history. And both Coddington and Silvey believe the boom is slowly making its way to America. They hope for an even bigger turnout at the 2005 championships in Seattle.

"We really want to encourage more people to enter the sport," says Silvey, who hopes one day to see freestyle in the Olympics. Gauthier agrees enthusiastically. "I totally want to fire people up."

Coddington says the players association tracks about 350 serious competitors, but he says that number is misleading when it comes to judging how many people actually play.

"Millions of people play even if they don't yet know they're freestyling," Coddington insists. "If you're playing catch and you do a catch with style, whether it's jumping in the air or a behind-the-back, that's freestyle. If you're pushing your own limits, that's freestyle."

FRISBEE LINGO

Spend any time around freestyle frisbee players and you soon realize they speak their own language. Freestyle is a bit like skateboarding in that the players have developed a plethora of maneuvers, each with its own colorful and distinctive moniker. Here's just a peek at the rather large freestyle lexicon:

Cuff: Changing a disc's angle by touching the outside rim of the disc with the back of the hand.

Delay: A fundamental freestyle move that involves balancing a spinning disc on a finger that has an artificial fingernail glued in place.

Air brush: Brushing the disc on the outside rim while it floats in the air to add spin and help keep the frisbee aerodynamically stable.

Bad Attitude: Reaching the wrist behind the ankle, while the leg is bent back behind the body (similar to a position seen in ice skating) to catch or delay the flying disc.

Body roll: A staple move in which the player rolls the disc on its outside edge from one hand to the other across the chest or across the back.

Jamming: A free-form interaction in which a group of freestylers (it doesn't matter how many) play with the frisbee. Jamming among freestylers is similar to jamming among musicians because together the players build an intricate and spontaneous creation.

Padiddle: A way to keep the disc spinning on the tip of the finger by making tiny circular motions with the finger.

Spaunch: A word for something bad, a terrible wind for example. "It was a spaunch wind."

Toejam: Letting the disc spin in place on the toenail or on a device attached to the tip of the shoe.

Zees: A measurement of the spin on a disc.

For more information about freestyle frisbee, check out the following Web sites:

www.freestyledisc.org

www.shrednow.com

www.gitishome.com

www.jammingonthebeach.com

E-mail info@freestyledisc.org for more information.

Winda Benedetti is a Seattle-based freelance writer who can be reached at Goodgirlfriday@gmail.com.

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