History of Selected TUC League Teams

With over two hundred teams participating in our summer leagues annually since 2001, it's an impossible task to compile a history that's even remotely close to being comprehensive. Even if we could, nobody would read it all! Instead, the decision was made to focus on top-tier Wednesday teams, as this is where the league started and (arguably?) is still home to the highest level of play in any TUC league.

Beaches to Hot Cousin

based on input from Jim Lim

The first year of TUC (called TUL, Toronto Ultimate League, at the time), there was a team called Beaches. Jim Lim recalls:

“I assumed the captaincy of Beaches and the team stayed on as the same roster (with the normal odd add-ons and departures from year to year) until we became O'Boy. It was completely the same team but around 1995 we changed the name because one of teammates opened a sandwich shop called O'Boy and so he sponsored us. In hindsight, I wish I had kept the name Beaches because how cool would that be today... but I never thought into the future like that, I never thought I'd still be playing and captaining a team.”

In 2000, O'Boy renamed to Cougars (or Cougrrrs), because, according to Jim, “most of the women on our team were getting old by then”. In 2001, they got a new sponsor, and renamed to SuperBurgrrr. That sponsorship soon ended, and they again renamed for 2004, settling on Hot Cousin (sometimes Hot Cuz'n), because “so many of us on the team have been together for so long, and even have married or are somehow related to one another, that we feel like an inbred family!” Hot Cousin still competes among the elite every year, usually at least making it to the playoff semi-finals. Through it all, Jim has been there as captain, an amazing 30 year run.

Vertical Reality to IMOD

summarized from input from Daniel Coutts

TUC isn't the only Ultimate league that's been in Toronto for a long time. Vertical Reality started as a team in the IBM Club Ultimate Frisbee League back in 1990. The team moved to TUC in 1992 in search of better competition and improved over time, but the captain moved on to Ground Control in search of a more competitive team in 1995. Daniel Coutts (who had started an Open touring team called Dead Baby Seals, comprised mainly of men from Vertical Reality, the year before) stepped up as captain, and the team was renamed The Richard Heads, after one of the players. Daniel recalls that “Richard, or Dik as he is known, was a hard-running, hard-living member of the team, and a bit of character.” The Richard Heads continued to improve slowly, but in 1998 a number of players, including Richard, moved to the US. Daniel says “We felt we needed a new name along with a few new players. We came up with In Memory Of Dik, or IMOD.” The new players brought a new level of play to IMOD. Daniel recalls:

“In 2003, after 11 seasons, IMOD won the League Championship. IMOD did well again in 2004, making the finals, but losing. In 2005, with many of our players unable to play the final weekend playoffs, we didn't get anywhere near the finals even though we entered the weekend ranked first. As a result of our touring players having dual-commitments, IMOD decided to fill the roster with non-touring players. In 2006, IMOD brought on many new players, mostly spouses of existing players. It took only one year though, for us to regain our form, and in 2007 IMOD won the League Championship a second time.”

Since then, IMOD has remained near the top of the league, still with a number of original IBM players.

The Big Kahunas

based on input from Harry Burkman

The Big Kahunas were formed in 1991 by Pete Tostevin. The initial name was Mars Platters, but this name didn't last long. Pete ran things until 1994, but left to form Black Toe in 1995, taking along a few others. Harry Burkman had been handling administrative duties for the team since early on, and took over as captain for 1995. Kahunas have been near the top of the pack, with Harry at the helm, on Wednesday nights ever since.

While the Big Kahunas don't have the roster full of high-level touring players boasted by some other teams, they can often be found attending a variety of mid-level Mixed tournaments around southern Ontario (at least on weekends when Harry's Open team, Too Bad, isn't busy). There is also a large overlap between the Big Kahunas roster and that of Red October, perennial contender and winners of six consecutive championships (nine in ten years) in TUC's Sunday outdoor fall league.

Flatliners and Pull Pee Wee Pull

based on input from Geoff Simonett and Cam Lille

Flatliners came together in 1993 under captain Frank Dionisi. Frank had been playing for one year, and attended the captains' meeting without a roster, recruiting a bunch of athletic new players. In 1996, the team split into Pull Pee Wee Pull (logo at right) and Fun With Dick. Pee Wee made it to the semis or finals every year from 1997 to 2006, and won the championship in 2000 and 2004. Pull Pee Wee Pull folded after the 2006 season, with some players making their way over to Hot Cousin.

Hood, CyCo, Mon Ami Burundi, Alien Sex Show and UHUBUS

based on input from Greg Lang

In 1994, a new team called Hood joined TUC. That first year, they lost in the semi-finals. In 1995, they improved on that, and made it to the finals before losing out. In 1996, they rebranded to CyCo, and again lost in the finals, but in 1997, they would take home the trophy. In 1998, they once again rebranded. Now calling themselves Mon Ami Burundi, they went on a two-season-long winning streak in league play, taking home two more trophies without losing a game all year. MAB is also important in our history as being the first Toronto co-ed team to achieve significant success at a national level.

In 2000, MAB split into Alien Sex Show (ASS), playing on Wednesdays, and Fluffy, playing on Mondays. (Fluffy would win the Monday championship that year, later renaming to You're Dead at Recess and finally Mandrew, who won Mondays in 2004, 2005 and 2006.) The following year, ASS renamed to UHUBUS (U Hate Us Because U Suck), who folded a few years later.

Banana Cream Pie

summary by Noah Goldstein

Banana Cream Pie started in 2000, when Noah Goldstein and Chris Schindler were at work talking over cubicles. Noah had played one season with Torontula (University of Toronto team) and Chris had played intramurals and liked it. They were busy with actuarial exams and didn't want to think too long about it, so they gave themselves a one-day deadline to find people. Within a couple hours, they had a full line. A no-name team was entered right away, and recruiting the rest of the team started a few weeks later. Soon, the name Banana Cream Pie was chosen for tasteless sexual pun purposes.

BCP had a lot of youth and athleticism, so despite its inexperience, had large winning records every season segment for a few years, starting in Tuesday C, gradually moving up to Monday A by 2004 and making its first finals in 2005, losing an unexpectedly close game to the dominant Mandrew. BCP's players had been playing Wednesday league on CSR (Colonel's Secret Recipe) and DVP (Donkey Venom Pie), but as the end arrived for those two teams in 2007, BCP moved over to Wednesdays, making all quarterfinals since then and making its first finals in 2010, knocking off the undefeated Redi before losing a heartbreaker to Sweet.

More than half of BCP's current roster played their first ever game of ultimate with Pie. After 11 seasons, BCP no longer has youth, but has some experience, skill and 11 babies (plus at least 2 on the way).

Grimace and Sweet

based on input from Rob Camp

In 2001, a few players left The Big Kahunas and formed a new team called Grimace. Grimace finished the season as the 16th seed in their first year, but stepped it up in playoffs, finishing 9th. In 2005, they rebranded and overhauled the roster, emerging as Sweet. Sweet won the championship in 2006 and continues to contend for top spot every year, repeating as champions in 2010.

COOL

summary by Andy Milne

COOL came together in 2003 for TUT, as a mish-mash of players from TCSSC, TRSL and TUC leagues to play in our very first tournament. In that tournament, I think we actually wore pink, which soon led to our more famous catholic school girl uniforms. The weather was cold and wet, we learned zone on the fly and I have no idea how we finished but we must have enjoyed slagging strangers since we all hit it off. Strong friendships formed and our love for ultimate grew. COOL joined TUC in 2004, and within a couple of years we had players going to CUC and international tournaments as part of ROY, Zen, Eve, GT, Diggers, Too Bad, Bodhi, BMF, Monster, Hammers and Tundra.

We've had many great moments, some of them not even fueled by our infamous Schlitz: We captured the B Pool Championships in our second tournament: Solstice in 2003, hollered late night "Yes Headmistress" cheers in the streets of Ottawa while playing Frisbee over cars and from sidewalk-to-sidewalk, epically hosted the 2004 Stanley Cup finals on our big screen at Gender Blender in 2004, helped Fireball's stock increase exponentially in the past 5 years, were sponsored by COOL beer, organized the inaugural Subway Crawl and most recently won back-to-back TUC Mid-Season Championships in 2008 and 2010.

6 founding members remain: Amanda Moore, Shane Creamer, Chris Chapman, Nicole Hunter, Dave Shimoda and Andy Milne. Although players have come and gone, the spirit of the team has always remained. Harry Burkman likes to remind us of how we took TUC by storm, coming out of nowhere to finish 9th in our first Playoffs. I think our success has been based on some hot play, good spirit and never taking ourselves too seriously. After all, we've been Counting On Our Looks (COOL) for the past 7 years.

Guanxi

summary by Rajesh Sthankiya

Guanxi was started by Alex Iverson and Inian Moorthy back in 2003 when we entered Divine 9's. The original intent of the team was to play co-ed tournaments as all players were either playing Open or Women's. As we started playing tournaments, having loads of fun and doing well, the idea was bandied about playing TUC league. With that, Alex registered the team for Wednesday nights starting in 2004.

The name Guanxi was conceived by Alex. As he was fond of telling stories starting with the phrase, "One time when I was drunk in Taiwan..." it was a natural fit. Guanxi means "relationships." We modified it to refer to treating your teammates well on and off the field. For example, if I threw a swilly hammer to Heather, she was entitled to throw one right back at me! Furthermore, Guanxi embodied the meaning of having fun. This was evident through the players on our team and our spirit on and off the field. While the players on Guanxi have changed over the years, the ideals that started the team have remained. In a lot of ways, we are like family.

Guanxi won the league championship in 2005.

Rump Roast

summary by Rich Chao

People always ask me about the origin of the Rump Roast name. We originally had called ourselved Discheads, which was a pretty lame team name as it adhered to all the lame team name criteria: 1) it made reference to Disc or Frisbee or Huck or Ultimate, 2) it had a cheezy double entendre and 3) it had sexual innuendo. So we decided to have a team competition to come up with a better name. We had several interesting options, but in the end, it was my buddy John who had come up with the best name. He had been inspired from a 1950's vintage advertisement (see right) which featured a cartoon of a young woman serving a pot roast on a platter. So Rump Roast became what we were known by, and that cartoon became the logo for our first set of jerseys.

Our first foray into 7 on 7 TUC competition was the Sunday Fall 2004 outdoor league. We did well, considering we were making a transition from the 5-on-5 TCSSC format. We then entered into the Monday night league in the summer of 2005 in tier 5, and as we evolved and improved, we decided to try our hand at the Wednesday night league which was regarded as the most competitive night. We had our best finish this past summer, with a 6th place finish.

I knew we had made it the moment when Rob Camp actually calculated odds for us in his annual write up for Wednesday night playoffs.

Over the years, many talented players have donned the Rump Roast jersey. We have had representatives from all the major touring teams in Toronto play with us at some point over the course of our short history.

SPIN

based on input from Paul Lindala

There is one last team that must be mentioned, though they don't play on Wednesdays, and are not even in the competitive bracket. SPIN currently plays in the Monday West ladder, but earn a tie with The Big Kahunas for the “Longest Lasting Team Name”. Paul Lindala recalls:

“We started in 1991. TUC would hold captains' meetings in people's living rooms! I remember that each week we would play a different night depending on field availability. Only one of our players has participated every year: Ross Speigel.”

These histories have been pieced together from various sources for TUC's 30th Anniversary, and almost certainly include minor inaccuracies or one-sided views. Please send any suggestions for improvements or additions to webmaster@tuc.org.