Surly History

Surly ultimate's history according to Miguel

In the beginning, there was:

• UffDa - Minnesota's first Masters team at 1993 WFDF Club Worlds in Madison. Qualifying age was 30, 12 teams in the first Worlds Masters division, all from the US and Canada. On the other continents there were not enough players who had yet reached their 30's. The roster drawn primarily from the Flying Terrapins [soon to be Buddha Boys, then Sub-Zero in the late 90's - the top tier Minnesota Club team] and Trash [a club team outgrowth of U-MN ultimate, founded by Marty F Bakko and Greg Boom! Williams as Tasmanian Devils, which begat Lutedisc after Marty and Greg moved on to the Terrapins, then became Trash in 1991. Trash later split into The Open Club Formerly Known as Trash (I can draw the glyph for you...) and Dirty Bingo which begat Swank, but I digress]. UffDa had a tough tight loss in our opening game v Miami Refugees, a big win v the 3rd seed Texas Tornado and eventually finished out with a win for 7th place. Our official finish bumped up to 6th when Miami was disqualified for playing youngsters in their 20's....

• Big Wood - The 90's were otherwise thin for masters while aging open division club players continued to provide wisdom and leadership to mentor the young college graduates, who eventually took all their playing time and/or cut them. [ TMI, but in 2000 on my 40th birthday, I was cut from an ultimate team for the first time when Marty assured me that Swank had "plenty of old slow handlers..."]. Players were also drawn to the young "Co-Ed" division where old slow handlers were valued for their disc skills. Big Wood was another Greggae led effort with occasional cross-over from the Brian Corradi led open team MoneyShot.

• Grey Expectations - which became Grey-X (c.2001-2005) At last there were enough quality players (Rydel, Enge, Corradi, Bakko, Alden, Mott etc [Russ was still learning a forehand but played good D] that we began the long line of annual trips to Sarasota for October Club Nationals (the annoying July Masters split had not yet happened). With one exception, we emerged from pool play into quarters, never quite getting over the hump into Semi's. Ask Jimmy about the Banana in the Tailpipe to vault past Chicago for our first Nationals appearance.

• Alas, in the early 2000's a young Mac graduate who had played with Blue Monkey (Mac), Trash, Sub-Zero and Grey-X began sharing some of his home-brew efforts after practice, and dreamed about a larger scale effort to be set up at the site of his father's Brooklyn Center industrial metals and abrasives business. In a legend endorsed by Omar, Grey-X players were a few primordial Furious beverages into the evening, throwing ideas around in support of Omar's dream of a Brewery. We wanted to be as supportive as possible, knew that as we fanned out across the Cities over time, we would always ask for it, helping to create the necessary demand. We were willing to move on beyond "Grey-X" if it would mean helping Omar get his little venture off the ground. Hmmm, what would be a good name for an old guy ultimate team, and could double as the name of a new up and coming Brewery? SURLY!!! That's it!

By the second year of Surly Ultimate, we had no concern there was no sponsorship money for shirts. Sponsorship was still a reverse process, "Hey do you have Surly on tap? Oh man you gotta get it! Is your manager in?" In Surly Ultimate's third year (2007?) there was a big turnover, bringing a core of young talent up from Sub-Zero and retaining 9 players from the prior year's roster (enter Surly Cynics...). That year Surly broke through to the finals and earned the first silver star on the uniform sleeve.