My new team, the Flying Circus, recently won the spirit prize at a tournament. I was just thinking about this and came up hard against this age-old question:
What should mean more to an ultimate player, winning the spirit prize or the
tournament?
If you think winning the spirit prize is more important than winning the tournament, then is that bad spirit because you aren't focusing on playing competitively?
If you think winning the tournament is more important, are you then willing to do anything to win, including things that are against the spirit of the game?
Incidently, the games in which I think we played in the best "spirit of the game" were those where we played our hardest, and best, ultimate.
I think there is a tendency among some ultimate players to associate good spirit with uncompetitive play. Actually, that isn't quite right. I think some players associate competitive play with bad spirit. I absolutely believe that if you are to play in the proper spirit of the game you have to try your hardest, within the rules, to win. That doesn't mean you have to act like an asshole. But it dies mean that sometimes you have to exploit weaknesses in other teams and do your best to hide your own deficiencies.
