The Ellipse in 2009. (Photo by Jim Malone)

A group of ultimate Frisbee players are turning to Michelle Obama to solve what they say is a grave crisis for amateur sports in the nation’s capital: a sudden increase in the number of trees planted on the Ellipse, where, for years, they have congregated for Wednesday night pickup games.

The Ellipse, located just south of the White House, is a popular destination for Frisbee leagues, along with people playing recreational soccer, touch football, and even kickball. But in the past few months, the aggrieved disc tossers say the National Park Service is planting so many trees, the 52-acre park is becoming too crowded to handle all the mid-week athletics.

So, members of a league called Wednesday Ultimate on the Ellipse are writing to the first lady, pleading with her interests in health, wellness, and exercise to put an end to the tree planting. And because softball dominates the Ellipse and nearby National Mall during the summer months, the Frisbee players say they need all the White House muscle they can find.

“These trees will stop hundreds of people from playing sports on those fields,” they write in their letter to Obama. “The growth of softball and kickball leagues over the last several years has made field space harder and harder to find. Once the summer season starts, league softball games fill the central Ellipse field, leaving only the outer ring of green space for groups like us.”

One of the letter’s signers, Armand Lione, says he suspects NPS is actively pushing groups like his off the Ellipse. “I think some of them have been strategically planted,” Lione says in a phone interview. “We don’t have room for a real field anymore. They put up a lot of trees.”

Lione says Wednesday Ultimate on the Ellipse can’t fall back to the National Mall, because that park, while far more spacious, is even more competitive when finding a place for a recreational sports league. He also wants people to rally around a famous scene in film history—an alien spacecraft landing on the Ellipse and interrupting a baseball game in the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.

In satellite images of the Ellipse attached to their letter, the Frisbee players point to 14 trees planted recently along the park’s outer fringes, where they played many of their games. The letter reads that the last of those plantings, during the winter, placed a tree smack dab in the middle of a formerly open space in front of the Flaming Sword Memorial on the park’s southwestern corner and robbed them of their last remaining playing field.

As for where Obama fits into all of this? They see the first lady promote her “Let’s Move!” youth fitness initiative and see common cause in their grown-up teams. “Our players range in age from their 20s to their 60s,” they write. “Taking away this opportunity for a mid-week game will probably cut back their chance to play and exercise by half.”

Lione repeats this in the interview, but questions if the first lady knows what’s going on in the green space right behind her house. “Michelle Obama is trying to promote sports and exercise,” he says. “As a local issue in her backyard, this is particularly relevant. I wonder what Mrs. Obama knows about what’s going on in President’s Park.”

The National Park Service did not respond to requests for comment, bemusement, or if they’d be up for a quick Frisbee toss.

Frisbee-blocking trees! (Courtesy Wednesday Ultimate on the Ellipse)