The Columbia Ultimate Frisbee Team was found by David "Buddha" Meyers in the fall of 1974, during his sophmore year at Columbia. Buddha was a graduate of Columbia High School in Oranage [confirm], New Jersey, where the gam of Ultimate origainated in 1968. Many of Buddha's high school classmates had founded or were running other college teams on the Esat Coast, including Bob Evans at Princeton, Dave Leiwant (sp?) at Yale and Jon (JC) Cohn at Cornell. The team's first year was untarnished by victory.
Buddha spent his junior year at the London School of Economics and Larry Horlick and Dave Birnbaum (sp?) captained the 1975-1976 squad that kept its unvictorious streak alive. Ken Gary, a future legend joined the team during this season.
Buddha returned to Columbia in the fall of 1976 and the team achieved its first victory agisnt Yale in September 1976, in Steve Kane's (and Chris Schmidt's(?)) first game. A coincidence - I think not. Ken Gary, Jerry McManus, Bob Jarrett (?), Larry Horlick also played in this game.
For the spring 1977 season, Budddha got John Anthony (a Columbia graduate student), Dave Bloeme the then reigneing World Champion and a gradaute of Bronx High School of Science and Mark Dana (sp?) to join the Columbia squad. The team potenatil was discovered in its game against ___ at Baker field when Buddah taught the team how to paly a zone on the subway ride up to baker Field & the team narrowly lost to a well-respected __ team. That season's team consisted of seevral 'athelates" (certainly atheletes by Ultimate's then standard of "athletic"), including refugees from Columabi's sposrts progarms, including Jerry McManus (baseball) and Bob jarrett (lightweight football), Steve Kane, a goal hanger and tenaciaous point, [others __]. while Buddha, Bloeme, John Anthaony & Ken gary handled. A typical paly would have Bloeme have a throw-offs that pinned the otehr team in the corner by their gaol line (this was before the ___ rule); Columbia would then apply its zone & upon a turnover Columabi would score, often with Buddha throwing an air-baounce wrist flip (that is not a typo) to soemone in the end zone.
The team qualifaied for the 1976 East Coast Championship at (Amherst __) and was seeded ___. In its first single elimaination game Columbia lost ___ to Penn State [confirm], the eventaul East Coast champion.
