David "Buddha" Meyer

The Columbia University Ultimate Frisbee Team was founded by David "Buddha" Meyers in the fall of 1974 [confirm], during his sophmore year at Columbia. Buddha was a graduate of Columbia High School in Orange [confirm], New Jersey, where the game of Ultimate originated in 1968 [confirm]. 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 shirt was a copy of the Columbia High School shirt stating Columbia Ultimate Frisbee in Columbia blue above concentric cirlces (supposed to be a frisbee). In contrast, the Columbia High School shirt had black lettering and said C.H.S. Ultimate frisbee [confirm]. The sport used a Master Frisbee (165s and 175s had not yet been invented). The Columbia University's Ultimate Frisbee 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 against 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.

Buddha went on to Georgetown Law where in his second year he suffered a brain aneurym and remained in a coma until his death in _____. As an early apostle of Ultimate, Buddha's bio and film (in the book's DVD) of him playing in a high school game for Columbia High School is in Ultimate, the First Four Decades. In the film/DVD Buddha is the player whose body type matches his name & he is wearing one black glove, years before Michael Jackson did.