History

Ultimate Long Weekend

In 2005, an event was hosted by the Toronto Ultimate Club at Camp Olympia called 'The Ultimate Long Weekend'. The event saw 16 teams come to compete in an early season tourney. Much fun was had by all. 2006 saw a reduction in the number of teams to tweleve. 2007 saw it further reduced to just 6 teams, though that year a team from St. John's made the journey in and delighted everyone with their spirit.

Sadly, the event was not able to continue in its current format due to the decreasing interest, and in 2008 the Toronto Ultimate Club ended their ownership of the event.

The Ultimate Experience optioned the event and has changed the format to be a pre-season 'boot camp' for the touring community. The change in focus allows us to capitalize on a growing need within the ultimate community for a forum in which to share and exchange information, share success stories and develop new leadership.

Ultimate

Basics of the game

Ultimate is a fabulous, high-energy sport that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and disc-skills who don't mind a little running and a lot of fun. The description below applies to the outdoor version of the game. The indoor version, being on a smaller field, is somewhat modified (a slightly smaller field and fewer players) but mostly similar.

Picture, if you will, a playing field (usually grass, but desperate teams will play on almost any surface) as follows:

On this playing field are two teams of seven players each. The object of the game is for a team to pass the disc from player to player, all the way up the field, and catch the disc in their end-zone, which scores a point. Players cannot run with the disc, but must plant a pivot foot (as in basketball) and throw the disc to a teammate. When holding the disc, a player gets ten seconds to throw it to a teammate (five or seven seconds indoors), which is counted off by the defender guarding the offensive player (known as "marking" the thrower.) If the disc isn't thrown in time, it's called a "stall" and the defense takes over.

If the offensive team drops the disc, catches it out of bounds, or failes to complete a pass because a defender somehow blocks the pass, the other team picks up the disc where it lands and works to score in the other direction. Defenders gnerally play either a man-to-man or zone defense in their attempt to block a throw.

The game is non-contact - it's a foul to hit the other player, or to hit the disc while it's being held. (Blocking the disc right after it's thrown, known as a "point-block", is a very hot play!) Nor can a defender be "picked" off the player being guarded. Any play carried out with the main intent to prevent another player from having a fair chance at catching the disc or making a defense is considered a foul; in other words, you have to "play the disc, not the person!"

Probably the most important part of Ultimate is known as "The Spirit of the Game". This catch-phrase is used to describe the respect that every player in the game has for his fellow players. No referees are used in the game. Instead, each player does his best to make an honest call if necessary, and trust the calls of his fellow players, with the implicit assumption that nobody in Ultimate would try to cheat.

This principle is what makes Ultimate special to so many people, and all Ultimate players try to keep the Spirit alive by maintaining this high level of trust, no matter how competitive the game gets. If people cannot resolve their differences, people usually say "back to the thrower", which allows play to continue on without forcing the issue one way or another.

The best way to see how Ultimate is played is to go watch a local tournament. Ultimate players share a great camraderie, and LOVE to introduce new players to the sport. So come on out and watch!

(borrowed from the rec.sport.disc FAQ)

Origins

The early days (late 1960s)

Joel Silver proposed a school Frisbee team on a whim in the fall of 1968. The following spring, a group of students got together to play what Silver claimed to be the "ultimate game experience," adapting the game from a form of Frisbee football, likely learned from Jared Kass while attending a summer camp at Northfield Mount Hermon, Massachusetts where Kass was teaching. The students who played and codified the rules at Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ were an eclectic group of students including leaders in academics, student politics, the student newspaper, and school dramatic productions. One member of the original team was Walter Sabo, who went on to be a major figure in the American radio business. The game became identified as a counter culture activity. The first definitive history of the game was published in December 2005, ULTIMATE: The First Four Decades.

While the rules governing movement and scoring of the disc have not changed, the early Columbia High games had sidelines that were defined by the parking lot of the school and team sizes based on the number of players that showed up. Gentlemanly behavior and gracefulness were held high. (A foul was defined as contact "sufficient to arouse the ire of the player fouled.") No referees were present, which remarkably still holds true today as all ultimate matches (even at high level events) are self-officiated. At higher levels of play 'observers' are often present. Observers only make calls when appealed to by one of the teams, at which point the result is binding.

Ultimate goes to college (1970)

The first collegiate ultimate club was formed by Silver when he arrived at Lafayette College in 1970

The first intercollegiate competition was held at Rutgers' New Brunswick campus between Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1972, the 103rd anniversary of the first intercollegiate game of American football featuring the same schools competing in the same location.

By 1975, dozens of colleges had teams, and in April of that year players organized the first ever ultimate tournament, an eight-team invitational called the "Intercollegiate Ultimate Frisbee Championships," to be played at Yale. Rutgers beat Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), 26-23, in the finals.

By 1976, teams were popping up in areas outside the Northeast. A 16-team single elimination tournament was set up, at Amherst, Massachusetts, to include 13 East Coast teams and 3 Midwest teams. Rutgers again took the title, beating Hampshire College in the finals. Penn State and Princeton were the other semi-finalists. While it was called the "National Ultimate Frisbee Championships", ultimate was starting to appear in the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara area.

Penn State hosted the first five-region National Ultimate Championships in May of 1979. There were five regional representatives, three college and two club teams. They were as follows: Cornell University-(Northeast), Glassboro State-(Middle Atlantic), Michigan State-(Central), Orlando Fling-(South), Santa Barbara Condors-(West). Each team played the other in a round robin format to produce a Glassboro-Condors final. The Condors had gone undefeated up to this point, however Glassboro prevailed 19-18 to become the 1979 National Champions. They repeated as champions in 1980 as well.

Ultimate spreads to clubs and internationally (1976)

In California clubs were sprouting in the LA - Santa Barbara area, while in the east, where the game developed at the high school and college level, the first college graduates were beginning to found club teams, such as the Philadelphia Frisbee Club, the Washington Area Frisbee Club, the Knights of Nee in NJ, the Hostages in Boston and so forth.

In the same year, ultimate arrived in the UK, with the UK's first clubs forming at the University of Warwick and the University of Cambridge, and Purley high school, by the late 1970's and early 1980's there were also clubs at the: University of Southampton, University of Leicester, and University of Bradford.

Ultimate gets organized – the UPA (1979–80)

In 1979 and 1980 the Ultimate Players Association (UPA) was formed. The UPA organized regional tournaments and has crowned a national champion every year since 1979.

The popularity of the game quickly spread, taking hold as a free-spirited alternative to traditional organized games. In recent years college ultimate has attracted a greater number of traditional athletes, raising the level of competition and athleticism, and providing a challenge to its laid back, free-spirited roots.

In 1981 the European flying disc federation is formed.

In 1984 the World Flying Disc Federation was formed by the European Flying Disc Federation to be the international governing body for disc sports.

In 2006 ultimate became a BUSA accredited sport at UK universities for both indoor and outdoor open division events.

The Ultimate Experience

Touring based organization