At 70, Eugene ultimate frisbee player is still flying high

Setting up his American flag-patterned camping chair and sliding on his cleats, Joe Millon greets the ultimate frisbee players walking by. He asks how their loved ones have been, and whether they want to warm up. The conversations are short but lively.

Many ultimate players across the Pacific Northwest know Millon.

“I don’t know, it seems like everybody knows me,” Millon said. “Because the other guys are always saying, ‘Hey, you know you’re going to be guarding that old guy. Watch out for him.’”

At 70, Millon is back on the field after cancer kept him off it for a year and a half. He’s still running hard, making precise throws and batting away the frisbee on defense against players decades younger.

Weekly ultimate pickup games

Rain poured onto the already damp Century Fields behind the Eugene Family YMCA on Sunday, Oct. 25, where pickup games happen weekly. The camping chair Millon brought now holds a puddle.

“I think it’ll be perfect,” he said of the rain. “The fields will get a bit softer.”

Discs whip through the air. Millon snags many of them one-handed and, in one fluid motion, hucks them back to his teammates.

After about 15 minutes of warmups, his team huddles and chants the team’s name: “Wicked Sick Peppers!” 

The pickup squad’s roster ranges from South Eugene High School players to parents new to the sport to veterans like Millon, who’ve played for half a century.

The Peppers and their opponent do the disc flip, ultimate’s version of a coin toss.

Millon’s team wins and chooses to receive. Both sides raise a hand to signal they’re ready, the disc sails across the field and the teams sprint toward each other. Millon stayed in much of the 120-minute game.

A game without a name

Millon’s introduction to Ultimate came in the mid-1970s at the University of Oregon, before he or his buddies knew the rules or the sport’s name. 

Ultimate Frisbee is a non-contact sport where two teams of seven are in constant motion. Teams pass the disc down the field, trying to catch it in the end zone for a point. Players can’t run while holding it, and a drop, an out-of-bounds throw or a defensive deflection flips possession on the spot.

“We were freshmen at the university, and most of us were all in just one dorm,” Millon said. “We would just get together and throw all the time.”

Then UO hosted alternative games, including an event that challenged teams to keep a frisbee in the air for 24 hours.

“So we signed up for a couple of hours of that, and we’re out there just throwing discs. After you’re throwing discs for a couple of hours, you’re making things up,” Millon said. “So we were making up games, frisbee-football sort of games, and someone came along and said, ‘Well, there’s actually a game called Ultimate.’”

He’s said he’s played ever since, under the Washington Jefferson Park overpass and at the UO baseball field “back when it was called Howe Field,” usually barefoot, a stark contrast to the cleats most players wear now. For much of his life he played three or four times a week.

Pat Harris, 63, played against Millon on various fields in the 1980s, when Harris would travel from Calgary, Canada, to play in tournaments in Eugene and Corvallis. Harris later moved to Eugene and the two became friends and teammates. He describes Millon as a player who was reliable, but never too flashy. 

“He’s just a guy who is always making the right cut to get the disc and playing a good, solid offensive role,” Harris said.

Millon also helped the local tournament, called Summer Solstice, for years before handing it off to other organizers about five years ago. 

A break during treatment

Millon’s longest break from the game came when he was battling a rare form of aggressive bladder cancer. 

“Three years ago, when I got cancer, the chemo, and everything knocked me out, and I had to stop playing,” Millon said. “And it’s been really difficult to get back from that because physically, I lost some muscle mass. Rebuilding muscle mass is super hard, and that’s what my last year’s been all about.”

Harris watched the comeback. 

He saw Millon go from “gingerly walking around the disc golf course, throwing a few and throwing a few more” to slowly getting himself back on the ultimate field. 

“At no point did I ever feel like he wasn’t going to make it back,” Harris said. “Failure is not in Joe’s makeup.”

Millon played at the sport’s top levels in his younger years, he said, and many players quit because they refused to play at any level below their best.

That’s not him. Instead, he asks himself: Where else can I still play? Where can I still contribute? Where can I still have fun?

During chemo, he bought a pair of $140 Tokay ultimate cleats.

“I just had them on my dresser,” Millon said. “And I go, ‘I’m going to survive this. I’m going to be putting those on.’”

Now, Millon is jumping through the air to swat the disc out of the air on defense, and throwing cross-field backhands that set his team up for the point.

Traveling for ultimate

This summer, he wore them in a tournament in San Diego and in the scorching heat of a tournament in Colorado, where it reached the mid-90s.

Kyle Cristoph, 52, said players around them were pulling hamstrings and suffering from heat exhaustion. The only thing that held Millon back were his allergies.

In the first point of the San Diego tournament, Cristoph said, Millon threw a break-side pass into the wind against a strong team, and his team scored in three throws.

“You can trust him with any throw possible,” Cristoph said. “Probably because he practices throws more than the rest of us combined.”

Millon plays against teammates and opponents decades younger. 

“Joe’s not imparting wisdom. He’s just going out there and playing and running hard,” Cristoph said. “Most people his age are not playing at all, and he’s not (only) playing; he’s contributing.”

Harris said that Millon practices throws for disc golf as well. Harris got Millon into disc golf during the pandemic and the two spend most Sunday mornings in fields throwing each disc to learn how it flies. Recently, the two paired up against two players half their age and won the game with three straight birdies to close out the course.

This week, Millon flies to Sarasota, Florida, for the Sarasota Sunset ultimate tournament, where he will play with a northwest regional squad.

He looks to keep competing at the sport he holds so dearly, but likes to keep his expectations at a reasonable level.

“I’m old,” Millon said. “I can’t expect to do all of that or at that high of a level. But I want to see what I can do, and that’s what keeps me going.”

Do you know Lane County athletes age 65 or older who take their sports seriously? Send an email to Leo Heffron.