Good Morning POU!
This week’s topic will feature people of color that are stars in their respective sport, but probably that’s the only place they’re a star. Some of the featurees may even play in a sport you never knew existed on a professional level. Enjoy!
Isaiah “Izzy” Bryant – Ultimate Frisbee
Isaiah “Izzy” Bryant isn’t unlike many up-and-coming professional-league sports stars. On the field, he wows fans with his speed and the height of his jumps. His team plays matches on ESPN. And he is asked to autograph everything from sports equipment to body parts.
While the sport of Ultimate Frisbee may not be on the radar of most Americans just yet, there is quite the growing interest. Games are shown the largest 24 hour sports network, and there are major sponsors such as Puma contributing to the leagues. So far, a player can’t quit their day job – as Isaiah quickly points out. The Columbia University grad works a day job as an ad salesman. However, Frisbee is his first love.
Interest has grown across the country in ultimate Frisbee, the laid-back sport long popular in college intramural leagues, which involves two teams trying to advance the disc down a field to a goal zone. For two seasons, New York has had not one, but two, teams playing in rival pro leagues.
Mr. Bryant’s team, the New York Empire, plays weekly at Randall’s Island or Coney Island from April to July. Some of its games are broadcast on the online-streaming service ESPN 3, along with arena football, cricket and fast-pitch softball.
The Empire, currently in the playoffs for this season’s championship title, plays in the nearly three-year-old American Ultimate Disc League, whose 17 teams in the U.S. and Canada have names like the Minnesota Wind Chill and the Indianapolis AlleyCats.
A second league, Major League Ultimate, broke off from American Ultimate after the 2012 season and currently has eight squads. Both are funded by private backers—league operating expenses range from $400,000 to $1.5 million—who hope the sport will be the next big thing.
Although not universally recognized just yet, there is a rabid fan following for the sport. Mr. Bryant said he was once asked to sign a woman’s back.
Mr. Bryant said that, while he doesn’t get recognized on the streets of New York just yet, there are some perks to being under the radar: They are still free to throw back some cold ones with fans at those after-game parties with little fear of press scrutiny.
Still, he said, “there’s no way I can say this has helped me with dates. I dated a girl who called me an athlete once, and that was enough for me—just being called an athlete.”
Watch Izzy get up big for the block against the Montreal Royal