The only way to advance the Frisbee is through the air, so players go gonzo trying to get open. Play changes hands when a pass is incomplete, intercepted, knocked down or goes out-of-bounds. The result? “You’re sprinting the entire time,” explains Nicole Crncich, a four-year Ultimate Frisbee veteran and a member of Home Brood, a team from San Francisco that finished fourth at the ’98 national championships.

Players have loosely assigned roles. Handlers, typically more experienced players who are talented throwers, stay close to the Frisbee and make long passes to middles and deeps, who usually catch better than they throw. Still, as Chris Browning, Home Brood co-captain, says, “Everyone has to run, throw and catch. It’s not like we have a quarterback or center-forward. That makes Ultimate a true team sport.”

Ultimate’s creators, a group of New Jersey high school students in the 1960s, wanted to keep rules to a minimum and the responsibility for fair play in the hands of the players, so there are no referees. Any player who recognizes a foul has the responsibility to call it. “I like not having refs,” says Crncich. “It fits in with the good-sportsmanship philosophy of the game.”

Practices for competitive teams usually last three to four hours, three days a week, during a season that runs from spring to late fall. Some teams, like Seattle’s Women on the Verge, two-time world champions, also throw in a weekly sprint workout at a track. A session typically starts with about 100 warmup tosses. “Throwing is about finesse, not power. People could be bodybuilders and not be able to throw a Frisbee very well,” says Sara Gersten-Rothenberg, who plays for Women on the Verge. “Throwing improves so much with practice.” The focus then switches to running, strategy and, finally, scrimmaging.

Needless to say, the commitment necessary to become a threat in competitive Ultimate can dominate your life. “It’s like a family — it becomes your whole world,” says Crncich. To wit: One of the main reasons Gersten-Rothenberg chose to settle in Seattle, after becoming an Ultimate addict at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., was because of the city’s rich Ultimate scene. Other hotbeds include Boston; Boulder, Colo.; Chicago; and the San Francisco Bay Area. In these regions there are tiers of teams (coed and single sex) for various levels of skill and intensity. “The women I play with are tough,” says Gersten-Rothenberg. “I definitely get fired up from playing with them.”

Teams travel frequently to tournaments across the country and even abroad. (This year’s World Club Championships are in Scotland.) Many
high-level players say they can’t remember the last time they took a vacation that didn’t involve Ultimate.

Given its devoted following, maybe they should rename the sport. Our
suggestion: Cultimate.

Ultimate frisbee is fast-paced, but some want to turn it up a notch.
On a blazing hot field in this tropical city-state, two ultimate frisbee players, one from Taipei and one from Singapore, race after the flying frisbee.
As it descends into the end zone, the two rivals both dive, but the man from Singapore, playing defense, tips the frisbee out of bounds, preventing a score.

Almost immediately, the Taipei player calls a foul on the Singapore defender. “Foul? No way! Are you kidding?” screams the Singapore bench, which is intently focused on this game, the final of the tournament. The two players appear headed for a fight, but after minutes of arguing, they grudgingly accept that there was no foul. Spectators mutter that the Taipei player is
too aggressive.

Here, thousands of miles from the New Jersey high school where ultimate frisbee was invented, this fast-paced, non-contact sport has gained a growing number of adherents.

Yet even in Singapore, ultimate faces a schism between people who want the game to remain true to its relatively noncompetitive, iconoclastic roots and those who want to make it more intense.

Since the sport was created at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., in 1968 by a group of anti-authoritarian students (big-shot Hollywood producer Joel Silver, then a student at Columbia University, was one of the founders), it has expanded rapidly.

Today, the Ultimate Players Association (UPA), the governing body, estimates that there are at least 100,000 men and women playing ultimate in America.

Ultimate aficionados play in informal games, organized city leagues, and more competitive “club” tournaments. The game is now played in more than 40 countries, with tournaments not only in Singapore, but also in Britain and Portugal.

“In Asia, the growth potential of ultimate is huge,” says Ken Lambert, a member of Singapore’s Angmo Freakshow team. Unusual among American sports, ultimate has no officials. In accordance with an honor system created by its founders, players call their own fouls and are supposed to maintain a “spirit of the game” that emphasizes fun over a win-at-all-costs mentality.

Historically, the “culture of the game says ‘play by the rules’ rather than ‘do whatever you won’t get called for,’ ” says James Parinella, a player for Death or Glory, the US national club champion team.

But as ultimate has grown, it has spawned a dilemma. Invented by some of the more athletically challenged students in Maplewood, the game has begun to draw top-tier athletes and more-intensely competitive players. Some of these players are making the game, at its highest levels, quicker, more goal-oriented, and more physical, says David Lawler of the Arizona ultimate team Red Dye #5.

Ultimate will be a medal sport in the 2001 World Games in Japan, and some of the game’s proponents say it is on its way to the Olympics.

Some club players already act as if they are in the Olympics. At club tournaments, games now sometimes include litanies of foul calls, intentional fouls, lengthy arguments, fights, and other ugly occurrences.

“The sport is certainly evolving from its hippie roots, but it’s a young sport, and one would expect it to be different from the way it started out,” says Joshua Meyer, who played for Washington, D.C., ultimate team Control Board.

In one now-famous incident, a player from the North Carolina men’s club team Port City Slickers spat on an opponent from the Seattle team Sockeye after the Sockeye player scored a point.

At the tournament in Singapore, long arguments and physically reckless play marred not only the Taipei-Singapore game but also several other contests. Some players say the intensity of competition has gotten out of hand.

“There is a growing divide, and I think it’s encouraged by closed-mindedness on both sides of the fence,” Mr. Parinella says.

In response to the fouling and arguments in club tournaments, some members of the UPA have proposed that the sport should utilize referees, who would be called “observers” and would step in to prevent disputes and reckless behavior. The UPA has already tried using observers at a few high-level club games.

But purists charge that using observers only contributes to the destruction of the spirit of ultimate and pushes frisbee one step closer toward resembling all other competitive sports.

“What makes ultimate unique over most team sports is that it is run solely by the people who play the game,” Mr. Lawler says.

Proponents of using “observers” counter that employing referees in ultimate is nothing new and that the game’s competitive fire has always been simmering below the surface. “While many bemoan the spitting incident, very few are aware that there was a punching incident at the very first UPA National Championships in 1979,” says Eric Simon, who played in the original Maplewood High games.

“And even before that, I competed in a game where both sides requested and agreed to a referee, in 1974. Not only that, but one of [ultimate's] founders, Irv Kalb, was the referee himself.”

At first glance, the Sunday morning practice seems to confirm all the clichés you’ve ever heard about ultimate frisbee.

There’s plenty of long facial hair and dreadlocks, team members drift one by one for a full 15 minutes after the scheduled start, and it’s initially a little unclear who is actually in charge. As the squad warms up, casually tossing discs back and forth, there’s plenty evidence of the speed, physics-defying tricks, and aerial artistry that one connects with the sport, but there’s also the lack of discipline one would guess.

Someone calls for a warm-up run. The team moves quickly into stretching and then into two solid hours of hard drilling. Third-year Dan Silverstein, one of the team’s co-captains, walks around each practice observing each team member and offering instruction. At one point, he shouts that a “cuts” drill will not end until the team successfully completes it 10 times, in near-perfect imitation of a frustrated football coach. In the third hour, the team splits in half for a scrimmage. Even on a cool day, squad members frequently need water breaks.

At the U of C, frisbee is connected first, last, and always with partying hard and police cars headed for the Pepperland. Members of the school’s club team aren’t necessarily thrilled with this reputation. More than two decades into its history, Chicago ultimate frisbee is demanding to be taken seriously.

As a whole, the sport is connected with a particular brand of counterculture. This seems to be especially true on this campus, where the team is termed laid back at best and more often falls victim to characterization as glassy-eyed slackers. Players will admit that this isn’t totally removed from the truth, but they also argue that the squad demonstrates a level of intensity perfectly familiar to most Chicago students.

“[Our reputation] sort of gets misinterpreted or misconstrued,” Silverstein said. “A lot of people see ultimate frisbee as just stoner hippies, doing drugs, drinking alcohol. It’s hard for us, because we like to think of ourselves as a real team, putting a lot of effort into it, and a lot of people just dismiss us right off the bat.”

The team, dubbed Chicago Junk, is split up into two main squads. Silverstein and fellow co-captain third-year Vehro Titcomb manage both the more competition-focused A team and the lower-commitment B team. Though the two groups practice together until sanctioned tournament play begins in late winter, they are substantially different. The “varsity” group is largely self-selective, as those who are willing to put in the necessary effort climb the ladder.

“People who are willing to commit time to the team make the A team, regardless of skill level,” Silverstein said.

“There are definitely some people out here who have the attitude of ‘Let’s go smoke some weed and play Ultimate Frisbee.’ That’s why we have a B team,” Titcomb said. “They’re out there to have fun. They really dig into the culture of it and not so much the Frisbee. But I don’t think anyone on the A Team has a problem with working hard.”

The team practices at least twice a week for two to two-and-a-half hours a day, with pickup games on the intervening days and a long Sunday practice on non-tournament weekends. While the team scrimmages at the end of each session, there is a substantial amount of time spent on drills. During the winter months, the club fights for indoor practice space in Henry Crown and the Lab School gymnasium. They try to keep in shape with flyometric workouts to help with jumping ability and what can be as many as four days a week of weight work to maintain fitness. Practices are organized and run by the team captains, who functionally serve as player-coaches. The team has not had a professional coach in program history, a fact not atypical to College Series Ultimate Frisbee.

“It could certainly help us, but it would take away some of the intimacy of the team,” Silverstein said.

“The two of us know a great deal more about the sport than the team as a whole…People respect us, people listen to us, people ask us questions. It works for us,” Titcomb said.

The team competes throughout the winter, but puts more focus into the spring tournaments. Whereas in the fall, games tend to be casual and focused on getting team members into the flow of the game, later tourneys are dominated by the looming specter of the Ultimate Player’s Association tourneys. The governing body of the sport, the UPA runs three events from March to May, culminating in the national tournament, in which the 16 best squads in the country vie for the national face off for the Ultimate championship.

Chicago plays some legitimate programs to prepare for the championship, facing off against a number of Big Ten, Pac-10 and Ivy League schools throughout the past few years. The team’s recent big wins include a victory last year over a Top-30 Indiana team.

As the sport has developed and grown in popularity, making nationals has become increasingly difficult. Last year, only one Division III team qualified.

“It’s hard for us to compete with teams like Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, who can get wide receivers off their football team. What can we do?” Silverstein said. “We can’t match up with 6-foot-6 behemoths from state schools. We’ve beaten some decent teams, but we’ve never made it to nationals, and we’re probably never going to go. There’s a very real glass ceiling.”

Similar sentiments among smaller schools across the UPA have prompted discussions of a separate Division III national tournament, which may take place for the first time ever in the spring. If so, Chicago will likely be a serious contender for a historic championship title. The team has had significant successes against clubs from schools with similar demographics, such as Wheaton, Oberlin, Ohio Northern, and Knox College.

“If it happens, and if we choose to participate, we will almost definitely qualify, and we’d have a good chance of winning,” Titcomb said.

However, both captains were quick to acknowledge that the squad had a way to go before it reached that level. Over the next several months, they hope to work on increased mental discipline and will be looking to limit turnovers going into the spring. The team, currently dominated by first and second-years, has historically had problems with giving up the Frisbee too easily and trying to make low-percentage deep throws. Silverstein, Titcomb, third-year Georgie Betts, and second-year defensive ace Dave Wiegand should lead the team on the field. The team will be try to utilize a new defense Silverstein and Titcomb learned from Chicago’s professional Ultimate Frisbee franchise.

“It’s defense that’s probably never been seen at this level,” Titcomb said.

However, winning isn’t the team’s only priority. Silverstein and Titcomb emphasized that while they do work hard, a certain element of relaxedness is part of the culture of the sport. The team holds weekly rounds of disc golf and beer die to build team unity, and there is a Little League-like emphasis on making sure that everyone gets into the games.

“I think [the hard-partying image] is necessary,” Titcomb said. “Part of Ultimate Frisbee is going to tournaments and partying afterwards.”

“It’s an intrinsic part of the sport’s culture,” Silverstein said.

Permanent URL: http://maroon.uchicago.edu/sports/articles/2005/11/04/more_than_just_slack.php

As even the briefest exposure to the game demonstrates, running, throwing, and catching are the key physical skills that make a good Ultimate player. An understanding of strategy and positioning are the most important mental aspects of the game.

Both sides of the game can be learned easily with practice. The best way to gain those skills is through exposure to the game. Taking the opportunity to join pick-up games often means getting to play with some experienced players. Some cities will even offer skills clinics which is an invaluable way to receive top-notch coaching.

Running

A disc is like a pair of scissors. You’re not supposed to run with either. There’s still a lot of running in Ultimate however. So, don’t blame anyone if you start feeling fitter and your clothes are getting baggy.

Offensive players are constantly on the look out for open areas to provide the thrower, known as the “handler”, with targets. This means sudden changes in direction, speed and angle – “cuts” – to break away from their check (i.e. the defensive player covering them). Defensive players are reacting to those cuts and anticipating the next move. When on offense try and think ahead and plan your cuts. If you find one that works against a particular check, don’t be afraid to exploit it a few times until they catch on. When on defense try to anticipate where your check might go so you can prevent, intercept, or block the throw.

Unlike other sports, particularly basketball, you cannot use any other player on the field to impede the progress of your check. This is called a “pick”. This rule is designed to prevent injuries. Even an unintentional pick can result in high-speed collisions between players. It’s of the utmost importance to make sure that everyone on your team knows how to spot and avoid picks.

One of the reasons there’s a lot of running in Ultimate is that “turnovers” occur. This means that during the course of uninterupted play you may switch from being on offense to defense a number of times. When a turnover occurs, yell “Turnover” or “TO” nice and loud so that the rest of your team can change from offense to defense quickly. If you are on offense when the turnover occurs and you are unsure where to go – just stick with whoever is checking you. Also make sure that there are at least as many players from your team as your opponents’ between you and your end zone. If not, fall back and check the unguarded player closest to the endzone. A simple way to remember this is with the following phrase: “always take the runner” (unguarded player).

Throwing

There are more ways to throw a disc than you ever imagined. A general rule of thumb is: the sillier the name of the throw – the stranger the technique required. Most of the time, however, you will rely on three kinds: the forehand of “flick”, the backhand, and hammer. The backhand is the throw everybody used since day one to chuck a disc around on the beach. The hammer is an upside-down forehand. The forehand is the most improbably combination of physics and goofy body language ever invented. After about a million throws you’ll start to feel like you don’t look somewhat silly when you throw a forehand. Don’t get your hopes up.

However, long before then you’ll have developed a forehand throw that actually works. Remember that spin is the most important factor in a disc’s flight and try a lot of different, subtle variations. Everybody’s got their favourite tip or technique which they will be more than happy to share. Ask around and find out what works for you.

Catching

For most catches below your shoulder and above your knees the “pancake” catch is your best bet. Simply trap the disc between your palms when it approaches. For more extreme situations two or one-handed rim catches are required. Try to practice one-handed and wrong-handed catches when warming up or doing drills so that you are always improving your hand/eye coordination.

Remember to watch the disc all the way into your hands and make sure you have caught it before turning and looking for the next receiver. Another important pointer is to never give up on a disc. Catches that seem improbably are often quite catchable if they start to hand in the air due to wind or flight angle.

However, do not crash into other players in an attempt to perform a leaping catch. A rule called the “principle of verticality” stipulated that each player is entitled to the space above his body. Nor can you hipcheck another player or hold them down to prevent them from jumping up to catch the disc. Anything beyond the most incedental contact between players is a foul in Ultimate (unless there’s tickling involved).

What Happens During a Game?

Captains from each team flip a disc simultaneously. A captain or third player calls “Same” or “Different” before the discs hit the ground. If the player’s call is correct then his/her team has the choice to throw or receive the first “pull”, or to choose which end zone they would like to defend for the first point. Generally speaking, choosing to receive the pull is the most logical choice. The team which loses the flip takes the remaining option.

Each team lines up seven players on their respective goal line. The pulling team must stay on or behind their goal line until the pull occurs. The receiving team must stand on the goal line and maintain their positions relative to each other until the pull is thrown – to make it easier for each member of the pulling team to figure out who they will check. If you hear the call “Hold your line” it means that a receiving team is shifting positions on the line prior to the pull.

When the pulling team is ready to begin play, the puller holds the disc above his/her head. When a member of the receiving team holds their hand above their head to signal readiness, the pull can be thrown.

So, everyboday is in position, smiling, and ready to go. The pull is thrown, the disc sails gracefully towards the other end zone – a shining miracle of aerodynamics – and the pulling team runs down the field to pick up their checks and another game of Ultimate is underway. Now the fun really begins.

On the pull, the receiving team does not have to catch the disc to take possession. It can simply be allowed to land. However, whoever touches the disc first ( either by catching it or picking it up from the ground) must be the first handler. Usually a receiving team will designate a player to be the handler before the pull, to minimize confusion. If the disc hits the ground and begins rolling, any player on the receiving team can stop its progress without having to become the handler.

Because you can’t run with the disc once caught, players must establish a pivot foot when they are in possession of the disc. Usually, if you are right-handed it will be your left foot, and vice versa for lefties. You can’t drag or lift your foot until you have thrown the disc. If you do so, it’s a “travelling” violating.

Unless you are very confident that you’re going to catch it, let the disc hit the ground. This is very, very important! If you try and catch the disc, and fail, bobbling the disc and dropping it, then a turnover occurs (usually just a few meters from your end zone). Which wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that every person who saw the event will probably mock you mercilessly, your team will be a tad disappointed, and you’ll have to think up a lame excuse on short notice. You have been warned!

In the event that the disc flies out of bounds and is caught before touching the ground, the receiving team must begin on the sideline at the point where the disc went out of bounds.

If the disc flies out of bounds and last the most common choice is invoke the “Middle” rule. This means that before the disc hits the ground someone from the receiving team raises his arm and calls “Middle”. This allows the receiving team to begin play in the middle of the field at the point where the disc crossed the sideline.

If the disc lands in the end zone, then the receiving team can begin play immediately from within the endzone, or walk the disc to the goal line, touch it to the ground, and begin play from that point. You cannot decide to begin play from the goal line, and then change your mind and throw the disc prior to reaching the goal line.

If the disc remains airborne and flies out the back of the endzone, it is considered a “Brick” and play is initiated in the middle of the field, three meters forward of the goal line.

After the initial pull the receiving team becomes the offense. The offense will usually try to form “stack”. When you first begin playing, a stack will seem far too pre-meditated and the best option will seem like running willy-nilly around the field. The sooner your team can shake themselves of this misapprehension the better. Scrambly play may seem to work at the beginner level, but it will quickly prove ineffective against more experienced teams.

When forming a stack the offensive players should get to the stack as quickly as possible, form a straight line between the thrower and the opponents’ end zone, and take their rest in the stack rather than jogging to the stack. This reduces “clogging”. Clogging is a situation where potential receivers are stationary and occupying the “flat” (an open area where the thrower could complete a pass to them).

Generally, one side of the field will be open to receivers because the person checking the thrower, the “marker” is “forcing” (favouring one side of the thrower to force them to throw to one area of the field) as he/she calls out the “stall count”. As a rule, try to decide which side your team will force to (usually designated as “home” or “away”) for the duration of the point so that your players can anticipate where to mark if their player catches the disc, and what area to guard when their check is cutting for a pass.

The marker counts (at one second intervals) “Stall one, Stall two, … up to “Stall Ten”. If the marker reached Stall Ten (as soon as he/she begins to speak the word) before the thrower initiates the pass then a turnover occurs.

A fast count is not only against the rules, it’s very tacky. And who wants to be tacky? In the event of a fast count by the thrower, two seconds are deducted from the count and play is continued without interruption. A second fast count call results in a foul. The disc is checked and the count is reset to zero.

The key points for marking are: the marker must be closer than three meters (before initiating the stall count) but no less than one disc width from the thrower, they cannot straddle the thrower’s pivot foot, and they cannot prevent the thrower from pivoting. Only one person can mark the handler at any one time.

In a perfect world, the handler completes his pass, runs to take his position in the stack, and the process repeats as many times as necessary to get to the end zone and score. Usually, however, there will be a turnover before a point is scored and it’s time to switch from offense to defense, or vice versa. Once a point is scored, the teams swap ends and the scoring team pulls to restart play.

How to Score

To gain points in an Ultimate game you have to have a member of your team catch the disc in the “end zone”. If you’re close to the end zone and you catch the disc… Stop! If your team-mates are yelling at you to “Check Feet!” you’re probably in the end-zone. The reason for their insistence if that if you pass the disc inside the end zone, and the receiver fails to catch the disc, no points are scored and a turnover occurs.

If you decide that you are outisde the end zone, continue play. If your are in the end zone, stop play and prepare to smile graciously as everyone compliments you on your skill, luck, timing, good looks, or combination thereof. If you catch the disc, and your momentum carries you into the end zone, go back to the place where you caught the disc and resume play. You cannot intentially tip or deflect the disc forward into the end zone (or any part of the field for that matter) and then catch it, although unintentional bobbling to control and catchthe disc is allowed.

When a point is scored, it is the only time during the regular play that substitutions can occur, unless the substitution is to replace an injured player. You can’t change the line on the fly as in hockey or when a time-out is called.

So that’s Ultimate in a nutshell. It’s about fun, friends, and chasing a piece of flying molded plastic around the sky until your tongue is dragging on the field — just so that you can make up a song about the whole experience.

References (and big thanks to):

The Vancouver Ultimate League : http://www.vul.bc.ca

Seattle is home to the world champion men’s, women’s, and coed ultimate Frisbee teams which is probably news to you. Sockeye, Riot, and Shazam dominated last year’s Ultimate Players Association (UPA) tournament in Sarasota, Florida. They’re the best teams in North America and the best teams in the world. All three qualified for this year’s UPA tournament and will return to defend their titles this weekend.

While legions of stoners still fumble around college quads playing recreational ultimate, the club-level teams have sprinted miles beyond the beer-and-weed crowd. “Once the season starts, it’s a 30-hour-per-week commitment,” said Ben Wiggins, a captain for Sockeye. The UPA has increased its budget from $200,000 in 1995 to over $1 million in 2005, corporate interests like Patagonia and Jose Cuervo have courted the sport, and Seattle has knocked down hallowed teams from Boston, New York, and San Francisco to become the brightest star in the ultimate Frisbee universe.

Ultimate is becoming so popular in part because it’s intuitive. “Tell a group of people to form two teams, hand them a Frisbee, and they’ll naturally start playing ultimate,” said Tony Leonardo, ultimate historian and coauthor (with Adam Zagoria) of Ultimate: The First Four Decades. Two teams of seven pass the Frisbee around the field, trying to score by catching the disc in an end zone. Ultimate is a no-contact sport, but players hurl themselves across the field to make spectacular, and dangerous, catches. Sitting over a beer after a pre-nationals scrimmage between members of Riot, Sockeye, and Shazam, players detailed their injuries: torn arches, dislocated hips, broken wrists, concussions, snapped fibula, ripped cartilage.

Miranda Roth of Riot has had reconstructive surgery on both knees, separated one shoulder, and has dislocated both. (Roth, by the way, is famous, according to players as far away as New York. She became a national star after leading two different teams to nationals two years in a row. Roth and four other Seattle athletes played on the U.S. national team that won the gold medal at the World Games in Duisberg, Germany, last summer.)

Ultimate emerged in the 1960s, when an Amherst student named Jared Kass taught a game he called “social dorm Frisbee” to high school kids at summer camp. One of those kids was Joel Silver, a student from Maplewood, New Jersey. Silver returned from Amherst and started two high school teams. As they graduated, the players took the sport to Rutgers, Princeton, and Tufts. Ultimate had its first intercollegiate game on November 6, 1972ó103 years to the day, and on the same site (Princeton at Rutgers), as the world’s first intercollegiate football game. (Joel Silver abandoned ultimate shortly after high school and became the legendary Hollywood tyrant/producer as famous for his hits including the Matrix, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon franchises as his volcanic personality.)

Since the historic Princeton-Rutgers game, the ultimate gospel spread on college campuses across the country, attracting serious, dedicated athletes who aren’t quite pro baseball, basketball, or football material. Excellent ultimate players have a different combination of abilities (agility, speed, and smarts) and are as intense on the field as they are in discussions about whether ultimate should embrace corporate sponsorship, paid referees, and the other trappings of professionalism. If ultimate blew up, “I would get to be a professional athlete,” said Seth Crockford of Sockeye, “a dream I had to give up at about 14 when I realized I was just never going to pitch in the bigs.”

But going big time would require significant changes to the ultimate aesthetic and erode the uniqueness that many players say is essential to the Spirit of the Game.

Yes, “Spirit of the Game” is a trademarked slogan and players hold Talmudic discussions on what it means. According to the UPA website, “Spirit of the Game sets ultimate apart from other team sports… Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of the bond of mutual respect between players, adherence to the agreed-upon rules of the game, or the basic joy of play.” Self-officiating is key: Ultimate has fouls (traveling, contact, etc.) but no referees. Imagine you’re trying to throw the disc, I’m trying to block your pass, and I hit your arm. You call a foul. I dispute it. We debate for 20 seconds. If we cannot agree, we settle on a do-over or defer to someone else on the field at the highest levels, a proto-referee called an “observer” who can resolve disputes but cannot make official calls. To some, self-officiating, and the long harangues it requires, is the biggest obstacle between amateur and professional ultimate. To others it is the essence of “Spirit.”

“The reason for referees [in other sports] has always been gambling,” Wiggins said. “Less moneyed interest means more sportsmanship. There’s a movement to introduce professional officials, but self-officiating keeps it a player’s game.”

Other players say they already gamble never on their own teams, of course and that ultimate’s culture of fair play and mutual respect has already withered. “Every team has cheat-to-win assholes,” Sockeye’s Jaime “Idaho” Arambula said. “And I didn’t pay four hundred bucks to go to Florida and hand my ass to anyone. You’re either out of my way or under my cleats.”

Players enjoy competitive smack-talk, but also take pride in ultimate’s quirky community spirit. They learn the sport on college campuses (though ultimate is making inroads in public schools, particularly in Seattle), and tend to be well-educated white liberals. Many, like Roth and Wiggins, are graduate students. Ultimate players not only train and argue hard, they also pay for the privilege tournament fees, plane tickets, and time off work are out-of-pocket expenses. Consequently, corporate sponsorship is attractive, though many ultimate players worry it will compromise their friendly, consensus-based culture.

Witness the Jose Cuervo debacle. The tequila company sponsored beach volleyball in the 1980s, gunning for television exposure (since liquor companies cannot run TV ads). According to Leonardo, Cuervo began a similar ultimate sponsorship in the early 1990sóbut wanted to change the rules and introduce referees to make the game more television friendly. Some players balked, and the sponsorship fell apart. “It’s an identity thing,” said Melina Coogan, captain of Element, the University of Washington’s women’s team. “Ultimate players are, however grudgingly, very proud of being obsessed with a sport that does not pay.” A healthy ambivalence toward business, taking their lumps with pride, fiercely competitive but community oriented ultimate is not just a sport full of liberals, but a good example of liberalism’s ideals put into practice.

Whatever ultimate’s future, it deserves more respect, especially in Seattle, where Sockeye, Riot, and Shazam are our hometown champions in a city full of disappointing pro sports teams. Roth says she’s not bitter, but wishes more people had noticed “just because we worked really hard and won.” Seattle’s domination at nationals last year should have grabbed the city’s attention the way the Seattle Storm did after winning the WNBA championship. Let’s see if Seattle notices the second time around.

By Rick Collins

The sport had it’s humble start in New Jersey during the hippie heyday, but the sport known as Ultimate has caught on. More than 10,000 Canadians – some of them world champs – are going gaga over Frisbee.

Mitchell Scott is one of Canada’s best athletes. But you won’t see this 28-year-old Vancouverite,
or his world champion teammates on any sports network. Their game stats are not included in any newspaper. And at first glance it’s easy to see why. After all, any sport played with a Frisbee, calling itself Ultimate, will likely always be the Rodney Dangerfield of team sports.

It’s Halloween weekend on a sloppy field near the University of Victoria, where a muscular man wearing pink cotton socks, a matching mid-thigh skirt and chiffon top is looking for respect. Scott isn’t giving him much. Looking decent in drag, Lou Buress takes off on a 50-metre sprint into an open area calling for a pass, he fakes left and cuts hard across the field hoping to shake Scott, his pesky defender. Just as the pass arrives, his man-on-man shadow, dressed in a more conservative white cotton T-shirt and shorts, launches himself like some sort of surface-to-air missile just in time for the block.

If this was football, the gloating would begin right here,right now. The standing around. The muddy high-fives walking back to the line and into the huddle. The beer commercial soundtrack. The resting. However, Scott gets to his feet in quick transition from defence to offence, and throws a perfect 50-metre pass to the end zone for a score.

“Usually we dress like soccer players, with numbers and jerseys,”says the tall, lanky Scott, in defence of his challenging sport. “We’re just having some fun here after a long season.”

But right now the Buress team, known as the Seattle-based Beauty Queens, are not having much fun on this All Saints’ Day. The Loggers from Western Canada are poor hosts, beating the Queens in the semifinal game of a casual tournament known as the Pumpkin Pull.

More than 30 mixed teams from as far away as California and Manitoba have squared off since Saturday.
There are more hugs, big hair and flying plastic here than at any Tupperware partyin the suburbs.
And despite the cloak of buffoonery, with teams here dressed in a myriad of clever costumes,
Ultimate is slowly shedding its reputation as the rogue, hippie version of traditionalAmerican football.
For the uninitiated spectator who wanders past this cirque sans solei, Ultimate is easy to, uh, catch onto.
The high school boys in Maplewood, N.J., who invented the game in 1968 were looking for a simple,
non-conformist game to play using the coolest toy of the period – a disc (Frisbee is a trademark name).
To them, a non-contact passing game played by two, seven-person teams seemed to be the perfect sport,thus the name – Ultimate.

But over time the laid-back toy-tossing exploded into the team sport of the future, combining the running of soccer with the stamina of hockey and the cutting, jumping and passing of basketball, Ultimate is now one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

It is also a marketing whiz’s dream unrealized. Healthy men and women dressed in high-tech fabric, chasing each other and the friendly little politically-correct plastic disc across a grassy field. Can you say beer commercial? Although most people haven’t even heard of Ultimate (the sportcrept onto university campuses around 1975), there are now 10,000 active players in Canada.

Most are recreational evening and weekenders who play throughoutthe summer and indoors in winter, including a nine-team corporate league at IBM in Toronto, a 200-team league in Ottawa, and 300 men and women who competed at this year’s university championshipsin Edmonton.

As well, an elite group of Canadian men’s and women’s teamstravel to tournaments all over the world, competing with other such fanatics mostly on weekends at their own cost.

In the U.S., there are paid collegiate coaches as teams prepare for the NCAA national championships held every spring. Last year the University of British Columbia women’s team out of Vancouver shocked the Americans by getting to the finals against Stanford. They lost, but Canada has quickly become an Ultimate powerhouse, despite the country’s reputation of perpetual frozen tundra.

Played with a high-tech plastic disc, on a field similar to football, the object is to score by catching a pass in the opponent’s end zone. A player must stop running while in possession of the disc, but can pivot and pass to any of the other six receivers on the field.

Just like basketball, Ultimate is a transition game in which players move quickly from offence to defence on turnovers that occur with a dropped pass, an interception, a pass out-of-bounds,or when a player is caught holding the disc for longer than nine seconds.

At the Pumpkin Pull, they claim play is casual, but the running seems endless. Mitchell Scott and the Loggers continue their domination over the Queens. After two quick give-and-go passes near their own end zone, Toby Marcoux unloads an 80-yard bomb with enough arm to make Doug Flutie proud. Scott and his man pursue the disc in a one-on-one showdown better than any penalty shot drama hockey can offer. The disc hovers and spins, curving just past the outstretched arms of the flying defender as Scott makes an acrobatic one-handed catch and crash lands for the goal.

Don Cherry, he of highlight video fame, would have gone gaga.The teams have 20-player rosters, and substitutions are allowed only when a point is scored. Games are played to 15 or 17points (one point for each goal) and there is no time clock. And perhaps most significantly – similar to self-refereed,three-on-three basketball – Ultimate’s rules are enforced entirely by the players on the field. Even at this past summer’s world championships, where Canada’s men’s, co-ed and masters division teams won gold medals, there were no referees.

“It’s the one great thing that separates Ultimate from all other sports,” says Scott. “We rely solely on a clause in the rules called ‘the spirit of the game,’ which essentially means we will avoid a win-at-all costs attitude.”

This benevolent vision of sport sounds like something conjured out of a haze in the 1960s, but seeing is believing. There are relatively few arguments as players seem to take responsibility for themselves – something more established sports could do well to emulate.

Back on the field, Lou Buress, who learned to play Ultimate at college in New York, throws his hat to the ground as the game ends. “Damn, I hate losing to you Canadians,” he drawls tongue-in-cheek, as opposing players laugh, hug and compare game notes. “Your first mistake was teaching us how to play,”is the quick response from the Logger’s sideline.