Big Green Bus
2005 Innovation Grant Project
Goal This summer 15 Dartmouth College Ultimate players (9 guys and 6 girls) will be driving across the country in a school bus converted to run on vegetable oil. We call ourselves The Big Green Bus. Our mission is simple: to interact with as many people as possible on our cross-country journey and share with them our passion for Ultimate and our knowledge about alternative fuels.
On our trek across the country we will meet up with local Ultimate communities, play pickup, play in tournaments, and, importantly, hold Ultimate clinics for school-age children. To conclude all of our visits, we will give each community an entertaining, interactive, and highly informative presentation/show about the viability of alternative fuels.
The Big Green Bus believes that students can make a difference in our country and the world we live in.
One bus, fifteen empassioned kids, and Ultimate; we, The Big Green Bus, are very excited about the possibilities the future holds.
Progress Update At the end of 8-weeks the Big Green Bus traveled over 10,000 miles; showed about 500 kids how to throw a disc; played in four major tournaments (and won one of them); been hosted in the homes of over thirty kind ultimate players, friends, alums, family members and strangers; and spoke with or presented to well over 1,000 people about alternative fuels and lifestyles. We made new friends, and solidified old friendships; we drove through beautiful landscapes, and watched the sun rise and set against all sorts of pink skies.
At tournaments and pickup giving tours of the bus and tabling was our most common modus operandi. We’d park the bus somewhere public, set up our table with t-shirts, our route, our booklets and ourselves for people to talk to both outside the bus and on board for “tours”. At tournaments, we would were also able to give our presentation to small collections of ultimate players. The response from the ultimate community was quite encouraging. Players from all over the country were receptive to our message, intrigued by our mission (and our vehicle), and just generally very supportive. The hospitality shown along the way from various ultimate players, from playing the guitar with us for a few hours to hosting us for a few nights in their homes, was amazing.
Though tournaments and pickup were fun, the bussers’ main mission in the journey wasn’t to play competitive ultimate, but to spread the sport of ultimate to others. This was carried out successfully as The Big Green Bus stopped at children’s summer camps across the country. At these camps, we would generally give a shortened, kid-friendly version of our presentation and then bring the kids on the bus to look around. As the tours started finishing up, six-seven Bussers would begin to take small groups of kids and grab a few discs. In these small groups, children were taught the basic rules of ultimate and shown how to throw a forehand and a backhand. After about 20-30 minutes of these small sessions the groups were usually brought together to play one or two big games of ultimate. Usually, there were so many kids interested in playing, and too little space, so a true 7 vs. 7 game of ultimate was impossible. Though the games were big, the kids picked up ultimate pretty quickly; after a few minutes of playing they would have stopped traveling, double-teaming, and were using strategies like dumping the disc to reliable handlers, and sending their best receivers deep, we even had a few kids layout! All in all, our trips to summer camps was very rewarding and exciting; we were sure to leave a few discs behind at every camp to ensure that the future ultimate stars would have something to practice with!
In the end, back in Hanover, as the experience only begins to sink in, we can’t quite measure the impact of this trip. We touched thousands of people’s lives; we know the trip will carry meaning for all of us well into the future. Above all else, we all feel fortunate, and grateful to the thousands of people out there who listened to us, funded us, hosted us, and encouraged us; it is you who made this trip possible, and who will carry our message on, even now that the journey is over.
Aekta Shah
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