It's played on almost every college campus. It brings together people from all walks of life. It is easy to pick up, but it takes time to master. What is this alluring activity, you ask? It goes by many names: ultimate frisbee, frisbee, ultimate, flatball, etc. I will use them synonymously in this article.
Let me tell you a little bit of its background first.
This sport is relatively young, dating back to 1968. Its conception is attributed to Joel Silver of Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. He and two other friends, Buzzy Hellring and Jonny Hines, created the first team at their high school in 1970. The first collegiate game of ultimate frisbee took place in 1972 between Rutgers and Princeton, two New Jersey universities, drawing a crowd of 1,000 spectators!
The rules of the game have remained pretty similar to those created by Joel Silver 45 years ago. By 1979, ultimate frisbee had spread so much that the Ultimate Players Association (UPA) was formed to govern the sport across the United States. In 2010, the UPA became USA Ultimate, which had 35,000 members in 2012 and continues to grow.
The basic rules for ultimate frisbee are to get the frisbee to your end zone by passing it down the field. There is no running with the frisbee or contact.
If you haven't played this sport before or never really got into it, you may wonder what is so ultimate about frisbee. I want to offer some of my personal ideas about why it is so enticing to me.
It is really easy to pick up.
I first encountered ultimate frisbee in elementary school when I played it during a Cub Scouts meeting one time. After that, I always took a liking to frisbee over other sports. I played a little in middle school and high school. I did not practice too much, so I wasn't ever really that good at it. But I could still play a pickup game every once in a while because it didn't take that much skill to play with my friends. Once I got to college, I began to take frisbee more seriously. I started practicing more, so naturally I became more skilled. Like anything, practice makes perfect. However, if you just want to play a pickup game, you can gather anyone from every skill level because you don't need to have an amazing team to still have fun.
The rules are simple.
One thing that is nice about ultimate is that it is very simple to understand. As mentioned earlier, you just have to get the frisbee to the end zone by passing it down the field. There are fowl technicalities and certain plays that are common among more serious teams (e.g. horizontal stack and vertical stack). But you don't have to worry about these if you just want to play a game of pickup.
Starting a game off the fly (no pun intended) is easy.
I never go anywhere without a frisbee. The convenient thing is that frisbees are really easy to carry along. Unlike a basketball, soccer ball, etc., you can slip it into your bag without it taking up too much space. The only other sport that can really do that is chess. Also if you don't have enough people or space, you can modify the game to fit the circumstances. All you need is people who like to run and who like the sport.
It is fast-paced.
Speaking of running, you do a lot of that in ultimate frisbee. For example, if the disc changes possession because of a dropped disc or an interception, you may have to run all the way down the field from an offensive position to a defensive position. But by the time you get all the way down there, the disc may have already changed possession again to your team.
Exercise made fun.
You never realize how much work ultimate frisbee is until you get out on the field. To play well, you definitely need to be conditioned. Even pickup games are a good workout. You can move the gym outside by playing this cardiovascular-intensive sport.
Learning different throw techniques.
As with any sport, there are fancy tricks you can do with frisbees. There is the chicken wing, the hammer, and many others. You can have fun mastering a few of these and then showing off to your friends during a game.
The ultimate culture on college campuses.
The main reason behind my ultimate frisbee obsession is the community found while playing frisbee, or any sport actually. As creatures needing community, frisbee is a place that brings together people to have fun. On college campuses, ultimate frisbee is everywhere. So one can never be short of community if he or she plays frisbee!
