Chris “Spoon” Nelson

b. May 1991

I've been in the ultimate scene for 20 years now. I started practicing to throw in 2004 winter, and then tried out for the 2005 spring team. Ultimate has brought a lot to me throughout the years for many different things. I found a sport that I love that has an unlimited ceiling. I’ve found my community in many genders. I found spaces to be myself, spaces to connect, and spaces to regularly have check-ins with people.

I think ultimate is one of the most special and amazing games ever created. The fact that, in frisbee, we have self officiating, where you can dictate and discuss how you think the game should be played, and to what level, and have that conversation and enforce it on your own, creates an entire level of agency that most players don’t realize that they do have over their games. I think it offers such a wonderful model of conflict resolution.

On the ultimate field is one of the places I feel most comfortable with my gender and the most at home with my body. Outside, I’m fucking scared. I’m early into puberty. It’s hard to be a person when your body is going through changes… and know all these different things you were expected to know, as a 34 year old woman, of how to present and how to be, when you have not had your reps. And then I wonder, are those things even necessary? What’s the point of learning something to send an expression to the world if it’s not authentic to who you want to be in the first place?

I attribute a lot of my throwing prowess to having an environment to learn and throw wacky shit up with Shade. It was the most unfiltered joy and fun you can have playing frisbee. 

I remember it being an incredibly emotional moment when I told Shade. It was very vague in that: I’ve just discovered that I want to use she/her pronouns from now on. I don’t know what that means for me on Shade going forward. I wrote the message, pressed send, and then turned off my computer and walked away. But when I came back to it, I had so many hearts and so much outreach of like, we love you Spoon.

Open, women’s, and mixed all play significantly different. I’ve played all three. Women’s is, controversially, I think the toughest division to play in. I’m finding it the hardest to play in because everything needs to be so incredibly precise. The margins are so tiny. Whereas before in Open, I would choose a shot and I could just throw it as hard as possible. Now I have to think about so much more, the timing of the player, the timing of the receiver, the window that’s created, the wind that’s available, the touch on the disc to arrive it into a space at the proper moment.

Mixed, you discover a lot of these imbalances, and a lot of sexual bias of patriarchy, of women not getting thrown to. I’ve been incredibly blessed to play on so many good mixed teams that have had amazing women players and great mixed players that know how to play with women, and so what you see there is a merging of the styles: slowing down the tempo, throwing to space, trying to find equal rhythm.

MUD used to be the only frisbee you could do in Manhattan, in a league sense. It’s gotten a lot more recreational, so it’s a lot more welcoming to new players, and I think that’s exactly what was needed. [Riverside pickup] used to be a lot more just show up and whoever's there for the day is saying the rules. Now, David Chen runs it and does a great job with the RSVPs. It’s a great learning environment where you get to play with so many people of different abilities, and different interest level. 

I’ve seen all of these spaces also be so poor towards their DoC and DoW players, so it’s been a really nice glow up for the city to treat their women players a lot better. In those communities before, it might have been really difficult for a novice woman to play in those spaces without already having a rep. Now, I’m hopeful that it’s becoming more and more like you assume proficiency of everyone on the field.

When I was a kid, the easiest label was race. My mom’s from Hong Kong. My dad’s from America. So I exist in this middle ground, this space where neither group will claim you, and both groups know you don’t belong. And so, having belonging or inclusion that’s based on a label, I found very difficult for a very long time. How I view labels now, for myself, is different ways of finding community, of a set of shared experiences or perspectives or alignment and values that help you navigate life. I’m polyamorous, I'm queer, I’m kinky, I’m a trans woman… every single one has led to such substantial growth or a different way of viewing the world.

Every trans woman is aware that they were assigned male at birth; we’re aware of the stereotypes of the trans women being so completely dominant against cis women and stealing women’s spaces and participation. It’s so difficult to be yourself as a competitor and as an athlete, while also worrying about not feeding into a stereotype that you’re worried is going to restrict your access, make the lives of those around you, cis and trans worse, and put a target on your back.