The Callahan Rule

Overall I had a pretty good tournament. I made some nice catches, scored a bunch of points, and had zero throwing turnovers (I also dropped three frisbees...which has been haunting me since).

That said, the memory I'll take away form this tournament has to do with the Callahan Rule.

You're probably saying to yourself, "What's the Callahan Rule?" Well, that's what I said when I received an email a few days before the tournament with official rules. In the rules, which I glanced over, it said something about "Playing with the Callahan Rule." I didn't think twice about it until the night before the tournament. At the tournament registration party a few of us got to talking and one of my teammates, Long, said, "Did you look at the rules? It said something about the Callahan. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says if you intercept the frisbee in your endzone you get a point." I said, "Cool." The subject quickly changed...

For the record, here's the Wikipedia definition:

Scoring

A point is scored when a player catches a pass in the endzone his team is attacking. In older versions of the rules, only offensive players could score. However, current UPA and WFDF rules allow a defensive team to score by intercepting a pass in the endzone they are defending. This play is referred to as a Callahan goal or simply a Callahan. It is named after well-known ultimate player Henry Callahan.

CUT TO:

It's the second game of the day on Saturday. We're playing Bangkok and are currently leading 2-0. Bangkok intercepted a pass from our team and quickly turned around and marched towards our endzone. I read the Bangkok play, turned on my jets and dove to intercept a Bangkok pass in our endzone.

If I can gloat for a second, it was an awesome defensive play. I stood up from the ground and declared, "CALLAHAN!! That's a point." I then slammed the frisbee down. Well, nobody was sharing my excitement. Not from my team or Bangkok. In fact, a couple people were laughing. I think the only person who was on board with me was Long who may have given me a fist pump from the sideline. Well, the team captain of Bangkok walked up, laughed and said, "Dude, Callahans are when you intercept it in that endzone." He pointed to the far end of the field. Turns out it's only the endzone you are attacking. What I did turned out to be a turnover on me since I threw the frisbee down. Bangkok got the frisbee on the goal line and promptly scored.

I walked over to our sidelong and approached Long: "I thought..." Before I could finish my sentence, Long said, "I guess Wikipedia isn't always right." FU Wikipedia.