User:Eitch/Claremont Braineaters

The Claremont Braineaters, the Claremont Colleges Consortium's men's ultimate frisbee team, is one of the older surviving college ultimate teams. Jeff Landesman, now a club ultimate player in southern California, founded the team as a student at Pitzer College in 1979. Known for years as a fun-loving team occasionally blessed with good players and —here and there— a serious athlete, the early 2000s saw a major shift in the Braineaters' attitude. By 2006 they were 26th of 470 teams in the national Ultimate Players Association rankings and 4th in their Southwest region, missing entrance to the national tournament by one win.

History


Landesman and his founding teammates took their name from 1950's B-movie Braineaters (movie). None of the players had seen the film, and by tradition no Braineater has seen it to this day.

Early games were played against the intramural teams of neighboring Pomona College and the nearby University of Redlands and Occidental College. In 1980 the Pitzer and Pomona intramural teams combined (as have the Pomona and Pitzer college sports teams). A few years later the team had expanded to include students at Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna Colleges. By the late 1990s the team was co-ed for most tournaments but in 2003, in response to a growing desire among players to compete more seriously, it split into the Braineaters and the Greenshirts. (Though college ultimate teams in the U.S. are officially either women's or co-ed ("open"), they are by and large single-sex.) At the same time, the team split into A and B teams which competed separately at tournaments.

Outside of gameplay
The Braineaters have had their share of creative minds. The "mockumentary" I Bleed Orange has been seen by hundreds of ultimate players, but the team's biggest contribution to the ultimate community is likely The Box, a tradition that has been picked up by at least a few teams around the world.

The Brain


The Brain is thought to be an involuntary donation from a Claremont Colleges neuroscience course, circa 1990. It is passed on from one Keeper of the Brain to the next from generation to generation.

Grovelling to the Brain is the Braineaters' beginning-of-tournament ritual. The Brain's jar is placed on the playing field, and the team members run around it in a tightening circle, groaning and yelling improvised expressions on the subject of brains. Eventually the Braineaters lay-out in a pile with their hands on the jar.

The Box
Officially, a game of ultimate starts by flipping two discs. Similar to a coin toss, a representative of one team calls "even" (the discs land both heads or tails up) or "odd." The winner of the toss decides either which team starts on offense, or which direction they will start in. The Box, a tradition introduced at the 2003 Presidents' Day Qualifier tournament, is an alternative to this.

The Braineaters present the opposing team with a closed cardboard box. The opponents can either have both pre-game decisions, or the contents of the box. If they choose to make both decisions they never get to see what was in the box, while if they choose to keep the contents of the box they forfeit both decisions. Box contents assembled by Braineaters have included mince pies, relish, alcohol, a naked Braineater, and various toys and articles of clothing donated by members of the team.

Teams from around the world have now been exposed to The Box tradition.

Ebo Lay-Lay Cheer
Ebo Lay-Lay is occasionally heard in the huddles of ultimate teams besides the Braineaters.

"Ebo lay-lay, Meto lay, Bon soir, Za, Za" (repeated in call-and-response, louder with each repetition)

I Bleed Orange
In the early 2000s, The University of California, Santa Barbara Black Tide released a trailer for I Bleed Black, a documentary film about the repeat national champion team. Members of the Braineaters responsed with a trailer for a "mockumentary" film I Bleed Orange. Never more than a trailer, IBO was published on the internet (see External Links). The film caught on quickly and spread to the world-wide ultimate community.