Henry Callahan

Who was Henry Callahan?

Henry Callahan was a player and ambassador of Ultimate and helped bring the sport to the University of Oregon, formally establishing a team in 1978. In 1982 he was murdered during a robbery while working in Boulder, Colorado. Both The Callahan Award, given each year to the best male and female college Ultimate players, and the Callahan Rules of Ultimate are named after him. Both the idea and the award were founded by Charles Kerr.

There is also a move named after Callahan in Ultimate called a Callahan. A Callahan is when a defensive player intercepts the disc in the opponent's end zone for a point. It is a rare occurrence, because it requires a defender to intercept, rather than simply block, a pass in the offense's own end zone. Under normal circumstances, the offense does not start a possession within their own end zone, so opportunities for a Callahan are limited to situations where the offense has been forced into their own end zone or backward passes near the end zone. The move is so called because it was first legalized as a goal in the Callahan version of the rules, which differed from the Ultimate Player Association's current rules at the time.