Ultimate peacemaker: Local couple take ultimate disc game to Middle East

[ Originally published on: Friday, March 20, 2009 ]

Shuttle diplomacy may be one way to try to work toward Mideast peace, but a Buckland couple is pitting their faith -- and their efforts -- on a flying disc.

The ''Ultimate Peace'' initiative, which will take Linda and Robert Sidorsky to Israel and Palestine next week, is their attempt to put the Frisbee to work as a way to connect children from the embattled nations.

For Linda Sidorsky, one of three co-directors of the international effort bringing hundreds of Frisbee players, new and old, to Tel Aviv in the first days of April, it's the culmination of years organizing ultimate events.

''It isn't about politics,'' she said. ''This is about kids learning to get along, and have fun.''

Sidorsky -- whose son, Misha, began playing ultimate at Greenfield Center School, went on to play at Northfield Mount Hermon School and is now team captain at Dartmouth College -- started trying to put the game's values to work in the Mideast as she organized the 2006 World Ultimate Junior Championship games in Devens.

Through that, she met California ultimate coach David Barkan, whose ''Matza Balls'' team had traveled to Israel the previous year to set up that country's first international ultimate disc tournament. He helped recruit high-school-age players for the 2006 games here and has helped organize Ultimate Peace, along with Israeli coach Dori Yaniv.

''Ultimate'' -- a game formerly known as ultimate Frisbee until trademark issues got in the way -- has its roots in the late 1960s at a summer camp at NMH.

Unlike football, the game has no referee. What it does have is a ''spirit of the game,'' which calls for mutual respect of opponents and an agreement to avoid gamesmanship as a way to get around the rules and foul your opponent.

''You can't purposely block a guy, or purposely interfere with someone else's movement,'' said Robert Sidorsky, a local veterinarian who's coached the NMH team and will join his wife, plus a documentary filmmaker, and an intercultural liaison in traveling to eight Israeli and Palestinian villages next week in preparation for the Ultimate Peace event.

Ms. Sidorsky adds that ''spirit of the game'' ''prioritizes personal responsibility, mutual respect and fair play over winning,'' and teaches conflict resolution, since it's up to the individual affected players to work out any differences in case of any intentional or unintentional foul play.

''That's huge to teach kids,'' she said. ''With Ultimate Peace, we're trying to give them tools they can learn and understand through a sport. The whole idea of bringing Israeli and Palestinian kids together is working around this whole concept of the 'spirit of the game.'''

Playing side by side on combined teams, the 150 to 200 Palestinian and Israeli players ages 11 to 14 should also gain a sense of camaraderie to help in their broader lives, she added.

The Ultimate Peace effort is being organized in conjunction with the Tel Aviv-based Peres Peace Center, which already coordinates ongoing soccer and basketball programs for 1,600 disadvantaged youth and is helping with transportation, translation, visa and parental arrangements for the April 1-5 event and visits to the villages.

None of the boys and girls from Israel and Palestine have played the game before, said the Sidorskys, so they should have comparable skills as they're presented with a pictorially-based set of rules.

Working with a dozen ''Ulti-Mate'' teams from around the United States and 20 American coaches for the Israeli event, including Lisa Kanner from Amherst College, the Ultimate Peace organizers have raised about $70,000 to cover expenses.

The Sidorskys, who will shlep some 450 Ultimate Peace discs, as well as plastic cones and jerseys, along on the trip, said the five-day event ''in the biggest, most central park in the middle of Tel Aviv'' will kick off with workshops and 'ultimate' tournaments for local youth and adult players, as a way of getting more public exposure for the game.

The second day will be devoted to showing the 150 to 200 Peres Center participants how to play and then letting them enjoy themselves, while the following two days will provide an international tournament for up to 150 players from around the world to raise money for the youth games to keep going and show world support for the effort.

''We're using this to help children create a better life for themselves and let the next generation have better tools for conflict resolution than what they have now,'' Linda Sidorsky said. ''We want the 'ultimate' community to understand this is a really important way to use the sport, and to give back support to this effort.''

Already, Ultimate Peace organizers are looking ahead to similar events in India and Colombia.

''It's for everyplace, where there's any kind of conflict,'' she said.

The dozen Ulti-Mate teams are donating flying discs and jerseys with their logos and with messages to the novice Israeli and Palestinian players, along with e-mail addresses to stay in contact, said Ms. Sidorsky said. In many cases, those teams have western Massachusetts connections, because there's a concentration of 'ultimate' players in this area with ties to NMH and Amherst.

Sidorsky, who like his wife spent time on an Israeli kibbutz 40 years ago and traveled there again last year as part of a tour with Greenfield's Temple Israel, said relations between Israelis and Palestinians have shriveled dramatically over the past couple of generations since the 1967 war.

''It gets harder and harder to have contact,'' he said, pointing to the 40-foot concrete wall separating the two societies as epitomizing the ''institutionalized distance'' between them, with almost no opportunity for dialogue or common understanding.

''The only way that conflict resolution is going to happen is to have multiple programs,'' he said, pointing to a host of efforts at getting adults to talk together and for children to play together to get beyond simply seeing the other group as the enemy.

In a country where ''peace'' has become a loaded word, they know that traveling to Palestinian villages like Jericho, Tul Karen and Beit Sahour will be a hassle and parts of the event may have to be scrapped if tensions in the region intensify in the last minutes.

Looking ahead to what he called '''ultimate' we haven't seen before,'' including Palestinian girls playing in head scarves, in robes with arms covered, Sidorsky said, ''The bottom line for the Peres Center is they want the kids to have fun. We want it to be sustainable.''

That means helping the game continue with children from Be'er Tuvya, Ein Rafah and Sderot to include those from other villages -- with the Peres Center acting as an intermediary, so the popularity of 'ultimate' can spread, along with the ''spirit of the game.''

''We're not going to solve the Middle East conflict,'' acknowledges Ms. Sidorsky. ''These are kids who live with conflict and stress, and this is an opportunity for kids to come together and have fun together as pals and play. It's a huge tool to get these kids to play this sport actively with this mentality of how to interact. They now become the models for how people can be with each other. … I think the future lies with these children.''

On the Web: www.ultimatepeace.org

You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 269

 

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