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For six years, I resisted. Ultimate (aka Ultimate Frisbee) was my wife’s thing. I played basketball, a real sport.

Then something happened in the summer of 2013. I went to see Heidi play outdoors, on the grassy grounds of the Douglas Hospital, hallowed terrain for Ultimate in Montreal. It was a sunny afternoon — blame it on the heat.

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As I watched Heidi and her teammates run up and down the field, chasing discs — the word Frisbee is frowned upon, officially due to copyright, though one detects a certain disdain for the term in Ultimate circles — I had the fateful thought: “This looks like fun.”

They don’t call it “cultimate” for nothing. Here I was being lured in, considering taking up a new sport at the ripe old age of 42.

I had scarcely mentioned my passing interest to Heidi when she promptly mapped out the next year of my life. That fall, I would enrol in “development” sessions, given by the Association Ultimate de Montréal (AUM), to learn the basics. In the winter, I would cut my teeth with a mixed-level draft team, and by summer I would be ready to join her Monday night crew of grizzled veterans, Sticky Fingers, as an honorary novice.

“He’s six-foot-four,” she would tell her teammates, in an introductory email, leading to the enthusiastic reply: “Great! We’ll send him long,” meaning into the end zone, where I could use my height to maximum advantage.