London Summer League 2009. How far have we come?

This week sees the start of the London Summer League. Quite simply a league that aims to make the most of the long, 'warm' evenings by playing fun, competitive Ultimate in both Balham and Clissold park. Here are the results and fixtures for the coming weeks. At the moment there are just the crossovers and pre-league friendlies with early reports of a Curve win against Herd Oxtail. The teams signed up this year (in no order):

1. Darth Herd
2. Herd Oxtail
3. Curve
4. Flump
5. Lucky 7s
6. Galahs
7. Herd Cocktail
8. Stacks and Switches
9. T'Pick up team
10. ABH S
11. Galahs 2
12. XX
13. Cowboys
14. Choke Hazard
15. Ovathrow
16. Lurve
17. PAF
18. Fugazees 2
19. Tossers
20. The Old Masters
21. Cutty Sharks
22. ABH N
23. Da Pickup Team, innit?
24. Fugazees

This initial part of the league will split the teams into 3 divisions. The archives for LSL go back to 2001 with earlier LSLs taking place as far back as 1999. Recently, a Midlands Summer League has been announced, it's great as always to see more and more people wanting to play more and more ultimate around the UK.

It's very easy to see the constant activity within the global ultimate community as progression within our sport but I do wonder how far we've actually come. The tactics we use, the way we train, the discussion about observers and referees, upholding SOTG as central to our sport, Ultimate in the media. None of it seems to really have come on that far since 1968 when Joel Silver and others at Columbia high school in Maplewood, NJ, USA invented the Ultimate Frisbee that we play today. On the other hand it is possible that with the relatively short period the sport has been around it has actually seen exponential growth and development but in our era of free information, the internet and technological advancement almost all but the most radical of changes can be likened to just one more step along the Pan-Am Highway.

Decide for yourself, one of the earliest games of Ultimate that I've found online is this video of the 1975 World Frisbee Championships.