9/5/06 Bozeman Daily Chronicle                               | HOME |

Disc Duo

Photography | Deirdre Eitel

Craig Sward left, and Doug Quam demonstrate some freestyle moves with a disc in Bogart Park Sunday morning.  The two have produced a disc-throwing instructional dvd and perform at school assemblies around the country to promote disc sports.

   Men tour to show kids the possibilities of a Frisbee

 Craig Sward and Doug Quam have been playing the same game of catch for 30 years.
  The Bozeman duo are ravenously excited about the game of Frisbee, so excited they have taken their act on the road to schools across the country demonstrating the benefits of the game to thousands of kids.
   "I think it's just a lot of fun," Quam, 50, said while going through a practice run of their routine at Bogert Park on Sunday.
   "The Frisbee is something that anybody can do," Sward, 46, said with an ear-to-ear smile as the two friends traded passes with their discs.
   Anybody can throw a Frisbee, but not everyone can do what these two can.
   Throwing overhand, underhand behind the back and under the legs are just warm-ups. Spinning a Frisbee on a fingernail (it
doesn't
work on a fingertip they said) and then bouncing it off a foot while the other catches it behind his back is just a small routine for their traveling disc show.
   They call themselves Motodom, a mixture of "dom" for house and "moto" a term for foundation, used in martial arts instruction.
   Over the last few years, they have been marketing themselves and their cherished sport to school children as an alternative form of exercise.
   The proof of their passion is in their jeans, the waistlines of which have shrunken considerably for both men through playing nothing but disc sports, they say.
   Quam said he has lost 25 pounds of flab tossing the Frisbee, Sward has dropped more than 30 since they began seriously pursuing Frisbee sports and going on the road.
   Sward is doing the business end of the of their endeavor full time, 
while Quam works as salesman at a spa dealership in town.
   They say getting kids involved in disc sports is a great way to stay in shape and develop friendships.
   As for friendship, these two said they are having as much fun now as they did the first time one of them pulled out a Frisbee and started playing in 1976.
   Aside from losing a good amount of weight, Quam had hip-replacement surgery less than a year ago.
   "Two months later, and I was up," he said.
   So far, the pair of disc lovers have played for more than 50 different schools in Montana, California and even Pennsylvania.
   They are hoping to continue demonstrating their love for Frisbee to kids for some time.
   "As long as we're alive," Sward said. "Maybe we'll do it until we're 100. We'd be pretty well-known by then."

 Story by BROOK GRIFFIN  Photography by DEIDRE EITEL of the Chronicle


See More Photos (from the photo shoot that day) By DEIDRE EITEL