The first time Daniel ever played ultimate was in Cub Scouts and he wound up getting a bloody nose. It took another 8 years and a church youth director’s idea to play ultimate at youth group on a frigid winter day in 2001 to get Daniel to play the game again and from that moment on, he was hooked and ultimate became an integral part of his life.

After playing at Oklahoma State - Ultimato from 2003-2009, and playing for Black Angus over the summer months from 2007-2009 (captaining the team in ’08 and ’09), Daniel moved to Houston in 2009 to begin life in the real world. 8 months later, Space City Ultimate was created and Daniel couldn’t wait to be a part of the “Great Experiment.”

Daniel graduated from Oklahoma State with a Bachelors degree in Geology and a Masters in Geology and currently works for Devon Energy Corporation as a Geophysicist. Daniel will be taking on the role as Space City’s Finance Officer for 2011.

Daniel has been involved with leadership of organizations dating back to his Boy Scout days, and in the organizational side of ultimate teams dating back to 2006. Such positions include Secretary of Ultimato in 2006 and 2007, President of Ultimato in 2008, and the founder and current administrator of OSU Ultimate Alumni (2009-present). He also was a member of the jersey design team for Ultimato from 2006-2009. Daniel has been involved with organizing several tournaments while at OSU and the Houston Indoor tournament in 2011. This past year, Daniel was a member of Space City’s Jersey Design Committee. In addition, he was the Head of the Sponsorship Committee, during which he helped to secure VitaminWater as a sponsor for Space City in 2011.

Melvin was first introduced to ultimate at a summer camp during the 7th grade. In high school, he rediscovered the sport playing pickup during the summer. Through the Houston Ultimate Community's High School programs, he stumbled upon Houston's annual Winter League and began participating in many of HUC's community events.

In his last year of high school, Melvin was fortunate enough to experience club ultimate with Houston's open team, Black Angus. He spent the next year playing college ultimate with the University of Houston, and participated in the mixed division for the club series. In 2010, Space City Ultimate was born, and Melvin has been a member ever since. After heading up the Film Committee in 2010 and 2011, he has stepped into the role of Info lead, managing the club's website, jersey, and film committees. 

Melvin is currently pursuing a degree in accounting, and in his free time enjoys playing basketball, reading nonfiction, and following ESPN.

There is a strong recruiting pipeline of former LSU varsity swimmers to LSU Ultimate and in 1993, one year after completing his swimming career, Sean McCall finally gave in to John Malone's invitation to play on the Parade Grounds. Brian Harriford started at the same time and the two new, athletically raw players matched-up often, which would foreshadow the player Sean would come to be.

From LSU, Sean went on to play Turbodog (3 years), Houston Houndz (5 years), and Doublewide (9 years), captaining the Houndz and Doublewide for several years each and qualifying for 11 UPA Club Championships in the Open Division. Sean ended a ten-year run with Doublewide in 2010 at WUCC in Prague and, largely due to small children and the strain of playing for a team in another city, he launched The Great Experiment and started a new club in Houston. Sean was selected to the Southern team as a captain and player for the Major League Ultimate showcase in Seattle in 2006.

Sean has been active internationally and founded No Tsu Oh, an all-star beach Ultimate team which won 5 World Beach Ultimate Cup titles at Paganello in Rimini, Italy. The team is the subject of a documentary film and the tournament featured his gangly self on the promotional tournament poster in two separate years. Sean has competed in 1 Worlds WUGC, 4 World Clubs WUCC, and countless tournaments in USA, Canada, Hawaii, England, Germany, Switzerland, Scotland, Italy, Australia, etc.

Sean co-founded the Houston Ultimate Community (HUC), a 501c3 organization focused on growing the sport locally. Sean started the Houston high school league, Houston competitive league, Houston indoor league and Space City Ultimate. Sean designed and ran the LiveLogic Texas Shootout in Austin which became one of the largest prize money tournaments today. Sean has been a guest coach for many teams including Great Britain (World Games in 2009), Bliss (European Championships, Rostock 2005), Showdown, LSU, University of Texas, Texas A&M, Rice University, University of Houston, and several high school teams in Houston, including mentoring Evan Winograd who made the USA juniors team for WUGC in Vancouver. Sean contributed to Tony Leonardo's book, Ultimate, The Greatest Sport Ever Invented By Man, with a quick how-to for marking and was interviewed by SkyD magazine in 2011.

Professionally, Sean is a Software Solution Architect and Principal Consultant for Pariveda Solutions where he leads a large team of developers in the construction of analytics, dashboards, scorecards, portals, and custom software. Sean has also greatly improved the chances of his children being exceptionally athletic by marrying British Ultimate superstar Katey Forth, and the family of four enjoys traveling the world.

Chris “Honna” Jew’s ultimate career started off his freshman year at the University of Texas when two of his taller friends were invited out to TUFF’s pickup which he tagged along for. Honna enjoyed his pickup experience enough that he tried out for Texas (the two taller friends became fratbros) and played Graze (B-team) his first year. He captained Graze his sophomore year to a regionals appearance, and played with TUFF his last 2, reaching quarterfinals at nationals in both 2005 and 2006.

After college, Honna spent a year living in Hong Kong. He played with Hong Kong Junk and traveled the asian ultimate circuit, playing in locales like Malaysia and the Philippines. After returning to Houston, Honna has played mixed (Flash Flood) and open (Seuss) before playing with SCU Ignite in its inaugural year.

Honna has also been actively coaching in the Houston community. He spent two years as a head coach for the University of Houston ultimate team Skyline, as well as contributing to Rice and SCU teams. Honna is a level I certified USAU coach.

Lyle began playing ultimate in 2000 in the Greater Rochester Area Disc Association's juniors league. He went on to play 4 years at Vanderbilt University and was a team captain his sophomore, junior, and senior seasons. During his time at Vanderbilt the team grew from a punching bag that had never gone to Sectionals to cracking the top 25 of the UPA's (now USA Ultimate) college rankings before graduating in 2004.

After college Lyle began work as an engineer for Shell Oil Company in New Orleans. In 2005 and 2006 Lyle filled his disc fix by playing for Turbodog, an open club team out of Baton Rouge. In 2007 he wanted to get back the comraderie of playing for an in town team and captained Cat 5, a coed team in New Orleans. 2007 would prove to be one of the most significant year's of Lyle's career as his play that season was thrilling enough to impress a cetain coed on the team whom he would later marry in 2010.

In 2008 Shell transfered Lyle to Houston where he played 2 years for the Austin/San Marcos/Houston combo team named Dr. Seuss, captaining in 2009. A late night conversation with Sean Mccall in the driveway of Scotland house was all it took to convince Lyle to become part of Space City Ultimate and captain SCU Ignite in 2010.

Lyle works as a Project Manager for Shell, developing and executing multi million dollar projects. Through his work life he has developed ogranizational, communication, and management skills. Lyle is excited to bring these skills along with his ultimate background to support SCU as the Competition Manager in 2011.

Jason Best was introduced to serious Ultimate 8 years ago in 2004 with an upstart college team, the Texas State ‘Buckets’. Jason was used to dominating his high school league back in his hometown of Spring, Texas and, when he realized he was terrible at the real sport of Ultimate, he promptly quit. Thanks to some effort on the part of captains Nick ‘Espy’ Espinosa and Christopher ‘State’ Rickner, Jason decided to come back to the team and was hooked after his first tournament, Mardi Gras in Louisiana. Although nobody would have guessed that this former high school golfer would be any good at sport involving real athleticism, just three years into college Jason started captaining the Buckets and eventually won an All-Region recognition for his college play.

In 2009, after being forced to retire from college Ultimate, Jason tried out for and made the club team, Doublewide, located in Austin, Tx and went on to attend the Nationals tournament with that team coming in fifth and tearing an ACL in the process. That same year, Jason moved to Houston to pursue a PhD in Economics at the University of Houston and the following season, after some rehab, decided to play with the local boys, Space City Ultimate. Playing for Ignite has been a great experience and he has been extremely lucky to come at such a momentous point in Houston Ultimate history. With Space City he has found as good a group of friends as any, and his play hasn’t wavered as he was named the team MVP in 2010 and was elected to captain-ship in 2012.

On the professional side of things, Jason has his Masters in Economics and is working on a PhD in Economics at the University of Houston – slated to graduate in 2014. Currently his research focus is in the field of Education and, in addition to research, Jason teaches Principles of Macroeconomics to University of Houston college students.

Darren started playing ultimate in 2002 after many games of disc golf with his friends. He went to Rice in 2004 and quickly became a standout player due to his previous high school experience. He captained the team his senior year to a regionals appearance. Darren played sparingly following college but roared back into the ultimate scene with the formation of SCU. Last year, he was fortunate enough to be one of the Eclipse captains and helped lead the team to its first Regionals berth. Darren is excited to lead the team back to Regionals this year.

Professionally, Darren is a Senior Consultant at Sungard Energy and Commodities where he is frequently a technical lead to implement energy trading and risk management systems at various energy companies throughout the world. In his free time, he likes to play Diablo 3.

LIVE. Dave was teased and tormented by his roommate into trying ultimate back in 1991, and since then has found his own special niche in this great sport and in life. He graduated with honors in biochemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1992. He managed a research lab in cardiovascular medicine at UAB from 1992 to 2002. In 1999, he met his beautifully wonderful wife, Lynn playing ultimate, got hitched in 2002, and was liberated to Texas later that same year. Dave switched research tracks when he began his position at Baylor College of Medicine studying breast cancer. In 2007, Lynn and Dave had their only son, Luke, which is the highlight of his life!

PLAY. His first real taste of ultimate was in Birmingham’s splendid summer league, and he has played competitively ever since. Dave has missed the USA Ultimate Fall Series only once in these two decades. While playing for BUDA teams between 1991 and 2002, he played in many of the finest tournaments the nation has to offer and won a few along the way. In 1999, he played with Bootyquake at Nationals in San Diego. In 2002, he moved to Houston and began the second half of his career. He has played for Spin (mixed), Black Angus, and now Space City! It can be argued that Dave has been lucky enough to play some of his most competitive ultimate after 40 years of age.

ORGANIZE. Dave volunteered at UPA Nationals in 1995 in Birmingham, and soon was chosen to be president of BUDA which he served from 1997 to 2002. He helped run countless leagues, tournaments, and other events in Birmingham. He was the tournament director for the 2000 UPA South Regional in Birmingham. But his crowning achievement with BUDA was acting as tournament director for Mud Bowl for 6 years, and in that time transformed the tournament into one of the high-level tournaments in the South, and the biggest charity tournament in the world. Between 1997 and 2002, Mud Bowl raised over $200,000 for Bread & Roses (a local charity geared to assist women and their children in times of crisis and abuse). In 2004, Dave began organizing ultimate in Houston with HUC. He was president from 2005-07 and has served as one of the three Board of Directors for HUC from 2005 to present. He has maintained his love for the philanthropic side of ultimate by running Huckin’ For Laura in 2006, 2009, 2010, and 2011. In 2010, he helped usher in a new chapter in ultimate as the finance officer for Space City Ultimate, and in 2011, he helmed the human resources section. In 2011, Dave captained the Eclipse squad to its first Regional berth (finishing 9th), and is ready to raise the bar for success again here in 2012, as Texas enters a new Regional alignment!