Origin of the name...

In June of 2001, I boarded a plane in Greensboro, NC. I had a 4 month working visa to the land down under. In my backpack was a book that a friend of mine, "Slug", had let me borrow for my reading enjoyment. The book was the "Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia," an autobiography about Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. La Cosa Nostra....a term used multiple times in the book to define what the US police referred to as the mafia, or the NY-based Italian mob families....would eventually hold much more meaning to me and the Ultimate community.

Upon returning from Sydney, in early October, I was settling back into my American lifestyle...the rat race. I hadn't been involved with Ultimate Frisbee, not seriously anyway, since my college days in the Port City...Wilmington, NC. I attended a college practice in my hometown of Greensboro one day in late October. What a disaster. Slug later offered to help teach the basics...single stack O verses force middle and f*ck tha trap (ftt) vs force line, and man D. After one of several nights of torture (practice), Slug and I were having a beer at Wild Magnolias, a local bar at the corner of Walker and Elam streets. We decided it was almost a waste of time to try and coach this rookie team. As we were drinking our pints of John Courage, we discussed the thought of having our own team. "What would be our name?" Slug asked me if I noticed the term "La Cosa Nostra" in the Underboss. He told me the term, in Italian, meant "this thing of ours".

Almost one calendar year later, Slug and I were playing at Club Regionals in Wilmington, NC. Mid-Atlantic Regionals is always held in Fredericksburg, VA, but this year the heartless "Sniper" was still loose in the D.C. and northern Virginia area, and the tournament was moved south to the beautiful campus of UNCW. Slug and I were playing with a club team out of Winston-Salem, NC. The style of Ultimate that we played was different from what was taught in Winston. We played "east of 95" (Interstate 95) Ultimate. You see, Slug, myself, and Holtzman (another first year Winston member, distanced from the Winston-Salem spirited, horizontal-middle-of-the-stack cuttin', non-east-of-95 Ultimate), were all former Seamen (at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington). We were taught the eastern NC way of Ultimate that had been passed down from the founder of the Seamen, Toad Leber, and the likes of Troy Buggle, Tully Beatty, Mike Gerics, Brian Linkfield, Chris Boring, and Bucky Corban...just to name a few. East of 95 Ultimate didn't mix well with the Winston crowd...we tried to run as many of those Winston guys off that year as we could. At the end of Regionals 2002, Slug and Holtzman passed out the first official La Cosa Nostra Ultimate ("Coming Next Fall...") shirts to all invited members.

Sunday, January 19th, 2003...the first ever La Cosa Nostra practice was held on the football field at the High Point Athletic Complex in High Point, NC. It was cold, and it was windy. We did those same drills taught to us by our Ultimate fore-fathers in Wilmington...30-30's, flow-drill, etc., and we played a quick 3-on-3 game. Tupac often speaks of being a soldier in his lyrics. That's what those guys were at the first practice and that's who we are now...we are the La Cosa Nostra Soldiers. To true Ultimate fans all over the country, now La Cosa Nostra no longer has anything to do with the NY mob families...it is now a name that has more affiliation with those single-stackin, southern talkin, disk-spikin Soldiers from High Point, NC.

--proud Soldier