Non Contact My Ass

For the most part, Ultimate is supposed to be a sport where there is little to no contact. Ideally it should be that way, but in reality it is not. I've never sustained any real heavy injuries from Ultimate playing. That is, up until this year.

Last night during our game, I sustained my third frisbee related injury of the year (the first being my hyperextended knee in the winter and the second being my sprained thumb from a few weeks ago). This time it was definitely contact related whereas the other two were only sort of contact related.

As I was going up to defend a disc that was thrown to a player I was playing defense on in our end zone, my jaw made contact with the offensive player's shoulder. I jumped into the air before the offensive player did in order to attempt to knock the disc away, and as I was at the peak of my jump the other player jumped up in a direction that made some pretty direct contact.

When his shoulder jammed into my jaw I heard a sickening pop (also heard by everyone on the field) and instantaneously thoughts were running through my head that I must have broken my jaw or destroyed some teeth. As I hit the ground, my ears were ringing and my head was more than a little rattled, but I could move my jaw fine. I tasted a little bit of a gravelly texture in my mouth so I probably chipped off some enamel on my teeth, but I felt around and no major tooth destruction occurred thankfully.

So for the third time this year I've managed to sustain a decently painful injury, although this time there will be no effects to my disc game because of it. It leads me to wonder if the game is starting to get more physical or if I simply have bad luck this year or if I'm just putting myself in more dangerous positions on the field or if it's something else. I do know that I have held back on diving for discs this year to avoid injury, but I've found myself trying to jump over people more, which is how I sustained two of my injuries.

Regardless, getting knocked around a little every now and again simply keeps me on my toes and lets me know that I'm at least getting myself into good, competitive positions on the field. If anything, it makes me feel a little bit younger as opposed to old and broken. Go figure.