Ultimate frisbee team shakes up Philly sports scene

AS A PEDIATRIC ER doctor, Trey Katzenbach works the overnight shift. And with two children and a third one on the way, his home life isn't too restful either.

Still, in what free time he has, Katzenbach, 44, serves as a captain of the Philadelphia Spinners, the city's premier professional Ultimate Frisbee team.

"People think I'm nuts," he said of the schedule he keeps. But "I wouldn't be as good a doctor if I didn't have my free time."

That "free time" consists of Ultimate games and 12 hours of team practice each week.

"We love the sport," said fellow Spinners captain Nick Hirannet, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer and former Daily News Sexy Single. "Otherwise, we wouldn't put in this kind of time."

Katzenbach and Hirannet are part of a wave of athletes who have adopted Ultimate as their sport of choice, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, which found that 5.1 million people are playing Ultimate - a 5 percent increase since 2007.

Today, at 4 p.m., their team takes on the Washington DC Current at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Montgomery County.

"Frisbee has been around for quite some time," said Major League Ultimate Commissioner Jeff Snader. "Under the radar, it grew fast."

Ultimate has its roots in the 1960s, when college students played an informal version with pie tins. While the sport had been decentralized for years, the nonprofit USA Ultimate, based in Colorado Springs, Co., now governs most amateur leagues. However, the Philadelphia Spinners play by the rules of Major League Ultimate, one of two professional Ultimate leagues where there are seven players per team and games consist of four 10-minute quarters.

Like in football, players advance by moving across the field to score goals in their opponent's end zone. They can toss or tip the disc to another player, but upon catching the disc, players must remain stationary though they can pivot like in basketball.

Possession of the disc is turned over on an interception, or when the offense throws the disc out of bounds.

The sport appeals to parents, who may be wary of football players' propensity for concussions or baseball players more stationary roles, Snader said.

"You can play in a myriad of different ways and don't need to be worried about different injuries for [your] child," he said.

From an athlete's perspective, the sport lets you be "a quarterback and a receiver" at the same time.

"When you catch the disc, you now have to throw it and make all these decisions," Snader added.

"There's a lot of sprinting, jumping and laying out. The ladies enjoy the bodies."

As the Spinners' former owner and head coach, Snader founded the team in 2012 after being introduced to Ultimate in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he played rugby while stationed in Hawaii.

"I grew up wrestling and doing tough guy things. Now, Frisbee is my life," he said.

Snader later coached Southpaw Ultimate, a successful club team in Philadelphia, where he met Katzenbach, a New Jersey resident and doctor at Kennedy-Washington Township Hospital, near Cherry Hill, N.J., and Hirannet, of Philly, a mechanical engineer for the U.S Army Corps of Engineers in Center City. Snader marshaled them and other Southpaw members over to the Spinners, where the rookie team won the American Ultimate Disc League championship in their first year.

Soon after their victory, Snader helped found the MLU, based here in Philadelphia, citing concerns about the AUDL, the other much larger Ultimate league, with four divisions and 25 teams.

The AUDL "wasn't run all that well," Katzenbach said. Teams were responsible for funding their own travel, salaries and playing fees, which left newly founded clubs playing in smaller markets and West Coast teams that had expensive air travel bills at a disadvantage, he said.

The MLU is made up of eight teams that are divided geographically into two conferences, which keeps teams from traveling long distances.

The Spinners play teams in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Other MLU teams play in San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. Then, at the end of the season, which runs from April to August, the winners of the East and West conferences play each other for the league championship.

The MLU pays for the costs of travel.

With the Spinners at the core, the MLU has grown in name recognition and prestige. Some teams, like the 2013 champion Boston Whitecaps, have sponsorships with Coca-Cola, while other teams have TV deals.

The Spinners have their tape-delayed games aired on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights on Comast SportsNet, and more than a few Spinners plays have been featured on ESPN SportsCenter's Top 10 Plays.

Despite the league's rise, players, who average about 26, still are largely unable to live off of their team salaries, which they were unwilling to disclose.

"No one is living off of the work with the league," said Hirannet, adding, "We're working out like we're getting paid millions."

However, the league's financial support is key for Ultimate players, who generally have to pay for uniforms and other fees.

"Club players are paying thousands of dollars to play," Hirannet said.

But Spinners players praise their decision to join the team.

Bill Maroon, the Spinners' head coach and a social worker for Resources for Human Development in Center City, said he spends nearly 50 hours working for the the team, which often practices at Saint Joseph's University or Phoenixville High School.

"If I'm not at one [job], I'm usually at the other," said Maroon, 43, of Philadelphia. "We definitely have a very comfortable, family type atmosphere."

Katzenbach agreed.

Ultimate "is where most of my good friendships have developed and my teammates have become extensions of my family, he said.

"The sport has taken me all over the world, and it is at the tipping point of becoming a mainstream sport with all of the legitimacy that that brings."