Frisbee ambassador Tom McRann shares the fun

At a recent disc golf class, Tom McRann coached a handful of women on how to “drive” with an Aerobie ring, then “putt” into the disc golf basket with a solid sport disc.

“Get aggressive. Get those frustrations out. Let me help you with the grip,” he advised.

“Here’s where you have to get a little mean,” he coached another student at Santa Rosa’s Finley Community Center. “Nice and tight. Just look at that basket … it’s all in the wrist.”

McRann, one of the first professional players of Frisbee and holder of a 1979 Guinness World Record, now spends his time helping others appreciate the endless array of games people have devised for the flying disc over the years.

Now 65, the Santa Rosa resident is devoting his retirement years to sharing his passion for the flying disc through classes geared for everyone from kids to seniors.

Back in the 1960s and ’70s, he was among the first wave of Frisbee fanatics who moved beyond the simple game of catch and throw, helping to invent high-tech “freestyle” tricks, a “disc” golf game that targeted trees instead of tees, and the team sport known as Ultimate Frisbee, loosely based on soccer and football.

“Freestyle players would run out for a pass, and that was the start of Ultimate Frisbee,” McRann said. “People invented games that are still being played today.”

Over the years, the 6-foot-1 McRann has rubbed shoulders with many of the top names in the Frisbee world while teaching, promoting and performing the sport at professional events such as the World Frisbee and World Flying Disc Championships.

Although he was responsible for the growth of Frisbee as a sport in the Western U.S., he remains relatively anonymous. “I’ve always tried to get people involved with the enjoyment and the exhilaration of making something fly,” McRann said. “I’ve used myself to promote Frisbee, not used Frisbee to promote myself.”

When asked to demonstrate his own form, he picks up a circular Aerobie ring, takes a forceful step forward and flings the ring over a long stretch of lawn, hitting a disc golf basket with deadly accuracy.

“I’ve always ranked really high,” McRann acknowledged, ticking off his rankings (8th, 4th and 3rd overall) in the World Flying Disc Championships held in 1974, 1975 and 1979, respectively. “My strengths are accuracy with a variety of different techniques … forehand and overhand, thumb throw and hooked thumb.”

Distance has also been one of his strong points. Using an early prototype of the Aerobie ring known as the Skyro, McRann set a Guinness Book of World Records on Dec. 28. 1979 for “the longest throw of any object in the history of man.”

At 247.5 yards, his Skyro throw in Golden Gate Park was nearly two and a half football fields in length. He held that record for 10 years, breaking it two more times with the flying Skyro ring that he helped develop.

“My name and record got on the package, but just for a short time,” he said. “Frisbee hasn’t made people rich or famous, except for the manufacturers.”

The Skyro record did earn him a mention in 1980 in Sports Illustrated, however, which named the disc “the Concorde of flying toys.”

Jim Sutherland of Santa Rosa, a personal injury attorney and long-time recreational Frisbee player, first watched McRann throw a Frisbee in 1976 during the Northern California Frisbee Championships that McRann organized at Sonoma State College (now known as Sonoma State University) in Rohnert Park. Sutherland had just graduated from high school and fallen in love with the beauty of freestyle Frisbee.

“Tom’s never given any credit, yet he was instrumental for the development of the sport out West,” Sutherland said. “He’s one of the godfathers.”

McRann does take credit for inventing the “nail delay” in 1974. The trick of spinning a Frisbee on your fingernail helped launch the freestyle sport because it delayed the catch and allowed the receivers to add tricks, like rolling the Frisbee across their chest.

“It was an accident,” McRann recalled. “I was doing a two-handed throw and spinning it, and then I started putting my finger up there. You can delay it, throw it back up and catch it behind your back.”

Born in 1950, McRann grew up in Wellesley, Mass., about 12 miles outside of Boston, and picked up his first flying disc when he was just 6. It was a Pluto Platter invented by Fred Morrison in 1955, bought by Wham-O in 1957, then renamed Frisbee in 1958.

“I picked it up and started throwing skip shots off the street,” he said. “It quickly became a sport, and we were playing an aggressive game of catch.”

The flying disc dates so far back, McRann said, that its origins are obscured by the haze of history.

“People have been throwing flying circular objects like lids and rings as far back as you can imagine,” he said. “In the 15th century, they were used as weapons.”

In the 1920s and ’30s, college students in New England starting flying pie tins from Frisbie’s Pies, a bakery located in Bridgeport, Conn.

“The students at Ivy League Schools picked it up,” he said. “But metal was rough for catching.”

In the 1940s, after plastic had been developed, the Pipco Li’L Abner Flying Saucer was produced in Glendale, and used for promotional purposes. In the 1950s, the Pluto Platter became popular, riding high on that era’s fascination with outer space.

“The Pluto Platter has all the planets on it,” McRann said. “It was a Space Age sport of the future, and the flying saucer craze was going on.”

In high school, McRann served as captain of the soccer team, ran track and played basketball. In the late ’60s, he played basketball at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. Those years brought a wave of political unrest to college campuses, and McRann decided to take a break from academics.

“It was stylish to drop out back then,” he said. “That’s when I started playing Frisbee as much as I could.”

Looking to play with the best players, McRann jumped into his light-blue Volkswagen Beetle and headed West in 1971, arriving three and a half days later in Palo Alto, where a friend was taking classes at Stanford. He quickly connected with the campus Frisbee teams and approached the university about making it an accredited course.

“This was the liberal ’70s,” he said. “They recommended I start a class with the extended education department, so I came up with ‘Frisbee for All.’”

Through the 1970s, McRann was able to leverage his passion for Frisbee into a full-time career. From 1973 to ’74, he taught Ultimate Frisbee and Frisbee golf at Stanford University, among the first to offer credit for a PE elective.

In 1973, he was accepted as an “equally dynamic player” by the Berkeley Frisbee Group, which performed on the UC Berkeley campus. At that time, Berkeley was hailed as “the mecca of Frisbee” by Wham-O executive Goldy Norton.

“They were the best players on the West Coast,” McRann said. “They were dazzling. People would stop and watch as they did up-side throws, skip shots and roller shots on the surface.”

Through the Berkeley Frisbee Group, McRann came to the attention of Ed Headrick, product manager for Wham-O and the modern-day “Father of Frisbee.” Headrick added the rings on the top of the Frisbee to enhance its stability and later started his own Disc Golf Association Company.

“Ed Headrick really interacted well with the Frisbee stars,” McRann said. “He got them under his wing and got them out to promote the sport.”

In 1975, McRann landed a plum position as the regional director of the International Frisbee Association, the promotional arm of Wham-O, and started traveling throughout the Northwest to set up clubs and perform at high-profile sports events, including 49ers, Giants and Warriors games.

But when Wham-O was purchased in 1980, its promotional budget was cut, and McRann faced a crossroads. Luckily, he had already started fundraising for Stanford’s varsity sports, so he was able to jump from the fringes of Frisbee into the mainstream of football, practically overnight.

“I was recruited by San Jose State as an associate athletic director,” he said. “I did it through ingenuity and hard work, but it could only have happened at that time.”

In the early ’90s, McRann took time off to be a full-time, stay-at-home dad for daughters Teresa, born in 1983, and Tara, born in 1987. He and his wife Terry moved the family back East for a while so he could take care of his mother.

He didn’t play Frisbee again until they moved back to Santa Rosa in 1995. He took a job in sales and marketing and played Frisbee again for the fun of it, enjoying the aerodynamic thrills he had first experienced as a kid.

“You’re not just throwing something, you’re flying something,” he explained. “Frisbee is a combination of a gyroscope, with the spin that creates stability, and a wing, which is rounded on top and flat on the bottom to create the lift. The throw is the thrust.”

His goal is now teaching a new generation of kids how to fling the disc while keeping seniors like himself active, riding the wave of the Frisbee into the future.

While several professional disc golf courses have opened in Sonoma County in the past five years, McRann said there are few places where beginners can develop their aerodynamic artistry.

“I’d like to see more courses at parks and schools for families, kids and seniors,” he said. “And I want to bring back playing catch with a Frisbee with your family.

“It’s not an expensive sport. All you need is a good Frisbee and a good coach.”

McRann’s next class, for seniors, will be held June 2-25 at the Finley Community Center, 2060 West College Ave., 543-3745. For historic photos and videos of McRann, go to facebook.com/tom.mcrann.3.

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.