About the author of
Ultimate: The Greatest Sport Ever Invented By Man
 
Pasquale Anthony Leonardo IV began his ultimate career in 1988 in South Bend, Indiana at St. Joseph's High School where he co-founded the ultimate team C.H.U.D (Catholic High Ultimate Dwellers). In 1992 he founded the University of Notre Dame team (now called Papal Rage). In 1993 he finally stopped playing in blue jeans (outdoors) and pajama bottoms (indoors). In 1997 he played with New York's club team Blood and just missed Nationals. From 1997-1999 he covered the UPA College Championships for the UPA Newsletter. In 1998 World Ultimate Magazine made him rich and famous, mostly rich. 1998 was also when he started working at Nickelodeon buying and selling SpongeBob SquarePants stickers.

From 1996 to 1999 he wrote extensively both online and for the Newsletter for the UPA Club Championships and the UPA College Championships (then called Nationals) in both college divisions and all four club divisions, variously: women's, men's, masters and mixed. In 1998 he was the first to cover the inaugural UPA High School National invitational in Maplewood, NJ. At Club Nationals in San Diego in 1999, he met and fell in love with wave-braiding and is now known as one of the top wavebraiders on the Eastern seaboard.

From 2001 to 2005 Tony (an inglorious and shabby nickname that, nonetheless, he is most commonly known by) captained a team at the Paganello World Beach Ultimate tournament in Rimini, Italy. At Paganello Tony was also in charge of the daily newsletter, content for the magazine, website and English game coverage for the Paganello DVDs. In April of 2009 he will return to do it again with Steve and Tom of Blockstack TV.

From 2004 to 2006, Tony co-wrote and co-edited the definitive history of ultimate frisbee, the colorful and complete 196-page coffee table book Ultimate: The First Four Decades. With the wealth of information gathered for the book Tony unwittingly collected the seeds and strains for the very fitting Ultimate: The Greatest Sport Ever Invented By Man, which you see here, published in 2008 and written with enormous input from Jane Carlen and Katie Derickson.

Tony has also written print and online coverage for the 2000, 2002 and 2004 World Ultimate Championships, wrote and produced the DVD for Sandblast 2005 and was the Media Director for the 2006 Junior World Ultimate Championships outside Boston, among various other roles in and out of ultimate. He would also like to make special mention of winning the 2008 Malaysia Ultimate Open with the Bangkok Soidwagz because that's when all the world was small and he was large.

He lives at home in Sugar Hill (a neighborhood in Manhattan) with his 42-pound cat Shepherd and works in the television and film business on off weekends of months ending in -y. In his spare time he is directing a narrative film about a female bike messenger. Also, he might have been high when he wrote this.
 
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