Moments before setting foot on the field for its first game in the first professional ultimate league April 14, the Indy Alley Cats paused. Someone needed to say something to capture the moment, something to put their minds in the right place and their hearts at ease. Someone needed to give the Alley Cats its first inspirational speech.
Brodie Smith, the team's best player, rose to the occasion.
"All right boys, we need a song to pump us up before we get off the bus," he said.
Smith hit play on his cellphone.
"You are my fire, the one desire," crooned Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys. "Believe when I say, 'I want it that way.'"
Soon the whole team was singing along.
"Tell me why, ain't nothing but a heartache. Tell me, why ain't nothing but a mistake. Tell me why, I never want to hear you say, 'I want it that way.'"
It is difficult to imagine the first professional football players belting out the latest Scott Joplin song before their first game in 1902, but then again, it is also difficult to imagine a professional ultimate league at all. For most Americans, ultimate is something college kids do on the quad, not an actual sport. And while you can walk through any of Ball State's various grassy areas and probably see a group of students throwing a flying disc around, only a few are ready for the prime time and big lights of the newly-created American Ultimate Disc League.
Cameron Brock and Hans Rasmussen, both seniors, as well as Keenan Plew, a 2011 Ball State graduate, are among the 25 players on the Alley Cats roster. They made it through a long series of tryouts and cuts that began in September to make it onto the roster and be able to play in this game.
Indy would lose to Columbus 22-21 in double overtime that night. But to be a part of the first professional ultimate league, with between 300 and 400 paying fans in the stands, still was an incredible feeling for Rasmussen.
"It was way more intense than any other game, really any sporting event that I've ever been a part of," he said. "I've played in front of fans before. But the fact those people paid to see ultimate and they knew what they were paying for and that's all that they were watching, that's awesome."
As a sport, ultimate began in 1968 at a New Jersey high school. It quickly became popular on college campuses and Rutgers and Princeton played the first collegiate game in 1972. In the 40 years since, ultimate has spread around the world, entirely on an amateur basis. While flying discs have entered America's consciousness, the actual sport still has much more of an indie-subculture vibe.
"It's got this real stigma of being a nerd sport or a hippie sport or something a bunch of college kids do on a Sunday afternoon," Brock said.
Rasmussen said one reason for this could be that people haven't seen good players throw the disc.
"Most people don't understand 'oh, you can throw it that far, like that? You can run that fast and jump that high?'" he said.
Ultimate, when played at a high level, actually requires a lot of athleticism. The AUDL plays on football fields, with the only alteration being that the end zones are 20 yards deep instead of 10. For four quarters lasting 12 minutes, seven players per side try to score points by catching the disc in the end zone. Players have seven seconds to throw the disc. They cannot run with the disc and if it touches the ground, possession changes.
The skill-set ultimate requires is similar to that needed for soccer or lacrosse, though it really is different from any mainstream sport.
"It's like soccer where you have to be good at everything," Brock said.
The AUDL hopes to raise ultimate's profile in the minds of American sports fans. The league is made up of eight teams, clustered in the Northeast and Midwest. Teams play a 15-week schedule, with one game a week. The league championship is scheduled for Aug. 11 in the Silverdome, the former home of the Detroit Lions.
The Alley Cats said it is already seeing signs that the AUDL is changing some minds about ultimate. The team drew a crowd of 1,027 fans at Roncalli Stadium for its home opener on Saturday.
Some of the fans have come away impressed. After the first game, Brock said a pair of fans approached Smith.
"They said, 'I have never watched ultimate before in my life and you guys made me a believer,'" Brock said. "And I think that's what's going to happen. Not everyone is going to want to watch it, but you can say that of any sport."
That game also got broader recognition when Smith sent a clip of his catch in the end zone to send the game into overtime. Smith out-jumped two Columbus players to snag the throw from Troy Revell. The catch was No. 7 on SportsCenter's Top 10 plays on April 18.
Still, making it from SportsCenter to the mainstream is an uphill battle. While showing the highlight, anchor Linda Cohn sounded incredulous to be talking about ultimate.
"Would you believe this is professional?" she said. "Yes, pro ultimate Frisbee."
Two games into the season, the Alley Cats are 0-2. After losing its first game, Indy lost its home opener 20-18 to Bluegrass on Saturday. Both games came down to the final minute before the Alley Cats lost, but that hasn't made the results any easier for Brock.
"It really sucked losing [to Columbus]," Brock said. "This is by far the hardest loss I've participated in."
No matter how the season goes, however, Rasmussen and Brock can think of nothing better to be doing than playing ultimate and getting paid for it. Both will graduate this semester, but plan on playing as long as they possibly can.
"What would I rather do with my life?" Rasmussen said. "I want to play Frisbee. Like, how cool would that be?"
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