Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 17, 1992 TAG: 9201170104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FRISBEE TOURNAMENT WILL BE A FLING
As sporting events go, only the Iditarod - the annual dog-sled race between Anchorage and Nome, Alaska - inflicts worse weather or makes such savage demands on its participants.Suits me fine.
Ice Bowl III is Sunday.
"It's going to be the coldest one yet," says Jim Holliday. "It's definitely going to be nasty."
Keep those words in mind. They are the preamble to Holliday's concession speech.
He is the reigning Ice Bowl champion, by title the finest frisbee golfer in all the Roanoke Valley. He has the trophy.
Holliday - who grew up in Buena Vista, schooled at Radford and settled in Roanoke - has Frisbee golfed since 1983, always at Fishburn Park.
I, on the other hand, have never played Frisbee golf.
Yet rain, sleet, gloom of night, snow or wind shear would make me the odds-on favorite in the IIIrd Ice Bowl.
I'm a mudder. My Yankee zeal for foul weather spurs me to pinnacles of athletic and literary performance.
Frisbee golf is as easy a sport to master as there is; take it from a guy who has never played.
It's exactly like golf, except there are no clubs, no balls, no holes and no course, to speak of.
There's just a Frisbee (Ice Bowl III is a BYOF event - Bring Your Own Frisbee) and 18 objects designated as "holes." You fling your Frisbee until you hit the sycamore tree for the first hole, the picnic table for the second, and so on for 27 holes. Lowest number of flings wins it all.
Ice Bowl III registration begins at noon Sunday at Fishburn Park on Brambleton Avenue in Southwest Roanoke.
It's an open tourney - you can be a reigning champion with the public appearances and the endorsements that go with it, like Jim Holliday; or you can, like me, be nothing more than an oaf with a bum arm and a dream of a blinding snowstorm.
If you've got the $5 registration fee and a Frisbee, you're in.
Mike Overacker, a city firefighter by trade and a Frisbee zealot by choice, organizes Ice Bowl. He dreams of a permanent Frisbee golf course at Fishburn Park, and will someday be considered the father of Frisbee golf in the Roanoke Valley.
For now, trees and garbage cans are the holes.
Overacker says the demands of organizing the Ice Bowl sap his concentration and he is not a serious contender for the crown, though he is an accomplished Frisbee golfer.
He says handicappers on this year's Ice Bowl favor perennial contenders such as champ Holliday and his brother, Dave. Mark Overacker (brothers seem to dominate the Frisbee golf scene locally). The Hoeppner brothers, Mitch and Brian from Salem, always tough. And Chris Eggleston, who would probably be a real serious threat - if his brother were playing.
My brother will not be here, either, but I will take Overacker's advice on dress and decorum.
What to wear? "Thermal underwear," says Overacker. "And several layers of loose-fitting clothing over top. With gloves that are easy to take off and put on."
Decorum? "None."
Sounds good to me. C'mon out. Bring your brother. If it snows, I'll whup everybody.