Logo of the Pittsburgh Ultimate organization.
Background[]
- Also known as Ultimate Frisbee.
- wikipedia:Ultimate (sport)
Insights[]
Ultimate, originally known as ultimate frisbee, is a non-contact team sport played with a flying disc. Points are scored by passing the disc to a teammate in the opposing end zone. Other basic rules are that players must not take steps while holding the disc, and interceptions, incomplete passes, and passes out of bounds are turnovers. Rain, wind, or occasionally other adversities can make for a testing match with rapid turnovers, heightening the pressure of play.
From its beginnings in the American counterculture of the late 1960s, ultimate has resisted empowering any referee with rule enforcement, instead relying on the sportsmanship of players and invoking the "spirit of the game" to maintain fair play. Players call their own fouls and dispute a foul only when they genuinely believe it did not occur. Playing without referees is the norm for league play, but has been supplanted in club competition by the use of "observers"/"advisers" to help in disputes, and the nascent professional leagues even employ empowered referees.
In 2012 there were 5.1 million ultimate players in the United States.[2] Ultimate is played across the world in pickup games and by recreational, school, club, professional, and national teams at various age levels and with open, women's, and mixed divisions. The most recent World Ultimate Club Championship was in Lecco, Italy in July 2014 where US teams took Gold in all three divisions. In 2016, the World Ultimate & Guts Championships will be held in London where teams will be composed of their nations best players.
"I just remember one time running for a pass and leaping up in the air and just feeling the Frisbee making it into my hand and feeling the perfect synchrony and the joy of the moment, and as I landed I said to myself, 'This is the ultimate game. This is the ultimate game.'" (Jared Kass, one of the inventors of ultimate, interviewed in 2003, speaking of the summer of 1968).[3]
Videos[]
LiveUltimate