Universität Bayreuth
Spracheninstitut

Ultimate Frisbee
History - Present - Future

Landeskundeseminar 
SS 2000

written by: 

Jörg Bahl

Contents

List of Abbreviations ... 2

1 Introduction ... 3

2 Ultimate Frisbee ... 3
2.1 The Game of Ultimate ... 3
2.2 Spirit of the Game ... 4

3 History ... 5
3.1 Invention of the Flying Disc ... 5
3.2 Invention of Disc Sports ... 7
3.3 Invention of Ultimate Frisbee ... 9

4 Present ... 11
4.1 Associations ... 11
4.2 The typical Ultimate Player ... 12

5 Future ... 13

6 Conclusion ... 14

Bibliography ... 16

1 Introduction

The most common disc sport¹, Ultimate, spreads all over the world. About 1,400 sportsmen from 23 nations took part in the 10^th World Ultimate & Guts Championships held in Heilbronn, Germany, in August 2000. These were the biggest World Championships that ever took place in the history of disc sports. And it was also a big step forward for the game of Ultimate. The top six nations are qualified to take part at the World Games 2001 in Akita, Japan. Ultimate and Disc Golf will be official part of these Games of non-Olympic sports for the first time ever.

As a matter of fact, not everybody in the Ultimate community is happy about how things developed. Many of the "old-school"-players are afraid of the growth of their beloved sport. They fear that the "Spirit of the Game" will be destroyed if the sport becomes more and more popular. But there are also a lot of players and officials that welcome the future and hope that Ultimate will lose its shadowy existence.

This paper will pick up the discussion and show how the future of Ultimate may look like. Therefore the game of Ultimate will be presented to the reader shortly. In the second part the history of Ultimate and Frisbee in general will be told. Afterwards there will be a look at the present situation of Ultimate in the World, the United States and Europe. Therefore the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) and the Ultimate Players Association (UPA) will be presented. There will also be a short look at a survey of the typical Ultimate player. At the last step there will be a look at the future. What may happen to the sport and why may these things happen.

2 Ultimate Frisbee

2.1 The Game of Ultimate

Ultimate is a team sport played by two teams of seven players on nearly American-Football-sized field with two zones on the opposite ends of the field. The game starts with a throw-off which is similar to a kick-off in American Football. The offense attempts to advance the disc by throwing and catching it, while the pulling team (the team that had the throw-off) covers the offense in either man-to-man or zone defense. A player who catches the disc is allowed up to three steps and must then establish a pivot foot before throwing. There is no running with the disc.

A turnover occurs anytime the disc is dropped by an offense player, hits the ground, goes out of bounds, is intercepted or is knocked down away by the defense. A touchdown is scored when the offensive team catches the disc in the opponent endzone. This is worth one point. The defensive team then returns to the opposite side of the field to receive the throw-off.

Regulation games are up to 21 points or a certain time limit.

2.2 Spirit of the Game

“Spirit of the Game ... is the underlying philosophy of Ultimate.”² It is the most important rule in every kind of disc sport. The reason for this is, that the sport is played on a selfofficiated basis so there are no referees. All line violation, possession and foul calls are made by the players on the playing field. The background of Spirit of the Game was the problem of the “inventors” of Ultimate to define a foul. The first definition of a foul said, “that a foul constituted ‘any action sufficient to arouse the ire of your opponent’.”³ Nowadays Spirit of the Game is the first part of the official WFDF Ultimate rules.⁴

[...]

1 The name Frisbee is a Trademark of the Wham-O toy Company from San Francisco, CA., so the correct terms are disc sports and sport disc.

2 www.ultimatehandbook.com, “Ultimate for beginners”, p. 4

3 Zagoria, A., “Ultimate Spreads from Maplewood to the World”, http://www.upa.org/upa/30anniv/30.html

4 WFDF Rule 401 Spirit of the Game: “Ultimate has traditionally relied upon a spirit of sportsmanship which places the responsibility for fair play on the individual player himself. Highly competitive play is encouraged but never at the expense of mutual respect between players, adherence to the agreed-upon rules of the game or the basic joy of play. The purpose of the rules of Ultimate is to provide a guideline which describes the way the game is played. It is assumed that no Ultimate player will intentionally violate the rules; there are no harsh penalties for inadvertent infractions but, rather, a method for resuming play in a manner which simulates what would most likely have occurred had there been no infraction.” WFDF, “WFDF Rulebook Article IV – Ultimate”, http://www.wfdf.org/art4.htm.