Forget baseball. For Alexander Peters, spring means the start of ultimate frisbee's new season. Peters, '80, is captain of Cigar, the world champion over-30 ultimate team. In August, he scored the final goal in Cigar's 19-9 victory over an Australian squad at the international games in Scotland. It was a bigger triumph than most people can imagine.
When Peters was 16, he fell 300 feet down a mineshaft while hiking in England. Doctors didn't expect him to survive. As a student at Stanford, he spent about six hours a day in physical therapy. By the end of senior year, Peters's left knee was starting to bend again. In his last quarter, he was able to play on Stanford's ultimate team.
The Manhattan real estate broker has played competitively ever since. He relishes the game's intense athleticism: for roughly two hours, players run, leap, catch and throw a flying Discraft (which has replaced the Wham-O Frisbee as the disc of choice). "It's completely exhausting," he says. "You're sprinting from the moment you're on the field to the moment you're off." But he is even more passionate about the game's ethical component. Players operate under an honor system, and even at the world championships there are no referees. Imagine the Yankees and Dodgers calling their own plays in the World Series.
