History
The first International Frisbee Tournament was held in Eagle Harbor, Michigan, in 1958. The sport grew from a pastime of the Healy family picnic and, in the 1960s, its national profile was increased by Jim Boggio Sr.
As guts evolved during the 1960s, players started throwing faster and faster, until it wasn’t unusual to see presumably unbreakable discs traveling at 60–70 mph shatter on impact with an unlucky defender’s hand. Catching a speeding disc directly was said to really "take guts", thus the name of the game. One tournament player even required fifteen stitches to close a gaping wound across the palm of his hand.
By the early 1970s, the game had spread across the United States and to other countries, with coverage on radio, television, major newspapers, and magazines such as Time.
With over 60 teams at a tournament in the heyday of the game, matches became intensely competitive affairs, seeking the IFT’s Julius T. Nachazel Trophy. With radical curving shots, deflected Frisbees bobbled frantically among teammates, and spectacular diving catches, guts had become an extreme sport demanding fast reflexes, physical endurance, and concentration.
Since its rise in the 1970s, when even ABC’s Wide World of Sports was televising guts action, and numerous tournaments were springing up, from Toronto to Chicago and Los Angeles, the sport has gradually declined in popularity in America. Guts had been introduced in Asia by the toy company Wham-O in the 1970s, and by the 1990s it had become even more popular in Japan and Taiwan than in the US. Recent years, however, have seen pockets of strong new American players renewing competitive American interest in the game, also drawing some older players out of “retirement”.
Read more about this topic: Guts (game)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)