Every summer, several times a week ESPN will feature a clip of an “incredible diving catch” by a baseball player. Nearly every clip follows the same pattern: A player gets a slightly slow start while trying to judge where the baseball will land, then they kind of fall forward to catch the ball.
They’re still impressive catches, of course. A baseball is a small object that moves quickly through the air. But of all these “amazing diving catches,” I think I’ve only seen 1 or 2 instances where a player truly goes all out from start to finish, truly laying out to catch the ball right before it hits the ground.
There are plenty of examples of this type of catch in American football, so I thought I’d highlight what I mean in a sport rarely covered by ESPN: ultimate frisbee. I used to play quite a bit of ultimate, and some of my most memorable catches were all-out sprints where catching the disc seemed impossible until a perfectly timed sprawling dive. I missed plenty of them, but I try to forget about those. 🙂
I searched on YouTube for some examples of professional-level diving catches in ultimate. There’s lots of recent footage, but the best catch–really, one of the best catches I’ve seen in any sport–shows what an amazing diving catch really looks like:
Let me know in the comments if you know of any footage of amazing diving catches in any sport!
I remember seeing that clip, it’s a great catch for sure, but I feel like ‘ve seen a lot of even better catches in ultimate. I’ll see if I can find any clips.
There’s always that one “Beau jumps over a guy” 🙂
Beau has some ups! Let me know if you find any other great clips. Ultimate is perfect for true, all-out diving catches.
Found some, tried to make a reply, but I think I encountered an error (apologies if you’re moderating and get it like 3 times)
Beau jumps over a guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kst2yrNJolY
(Not a dive, but an impressive catch nonetheless)
Here’s another similar to the one you posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFfOkHbxPI8
Here’s a jackpot… there are several catches in the first few seconds that are as good or better than those diving catches above, and then it just keeps going for 4 and a half more minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htr2jmGb4S0
Oh, hey, this one started autoplaying while I was pasting the previous link – another top ten layouts video:
Sorry, it needed post approval. This is great! Such spectacular catches.
I tried to post this as a reply directly, but it didn’t seem to work- maybe it doesn’t like links to youtube?
Here are some links to a few Ultimate Frisbee highlight videos that are pretty fun to watch:
https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/p/ultimate-highlight-videos.html
One difference is the relative slow speed of the disc, the moment of anticipation, will-they-won’t-they, is so drawn out compared to the quick reactions in baseball or cricket, for example. You can see it coming, but still don’t know if the catch will be made.
I loved playing ultimate, especially with an Aerobie skylighter at night, or super disc. Ive sustained a lot of injuries playing all sports but especially ultimate, I wonder if they would ever consider light padding like in lacrosse.
This is a video about the decision making for catching things, and as I was playing Age of Galaxies last night I recall not really calculating all the math involved, but trying to stay with the decisions and turns to catch what I wanted to do, pretty fascinating! https://youtu.be/-J1qryj6kdg