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, now called the USA Ultimate Championships) 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. In 2010 he covered and played in the Masters division at the USAU Championships and covered and played in the 2010 WFDF Club Worlds that summer.
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. He rolled Paga again in 2009 with the Boracay Beach Dragons. Tony's beach tour continues in 2011 representing Team USA at the World Championships of Beach Ultimate 2011.
From 2004 to 2006, Tony co-wrote and co-edited the history of ultimate frisbee, the colorful and complete 196-page coffee table book Ultimate: The First Four Decades (which is out of print, but you can pony up $63 for a used copy apparently). 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, 2004 and 2010 World Ultimate Championships, wrote and produced the DVD for Sandblast 2005, did the play-by-play and color commentary for Worlds 2010 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 in
Brooklyn, New York with his 103-pound cat Shepherd and works in the television
and film business on off weekends of months ending in -y. In his spare time
his short narrative film about a female bike messenger, Kaya,
hopes to make a few more festivals. Also, he might have been high when he
wrote this. Also, he forgot to mention that he is working on a feature-length
mockumentary about ultimate for a Toronto-based film producer that might
be shot in summer 2011 with bonafide Canadian-Hollywood talent.
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