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An Ultimate Description

To the casual observer, ultimate is a mish-mash of various sports, combining the speed, endurance and agility seen in soccer, rugby and basketball. The game swirls like an up tempo basketball game. Cuts and dives. Head fakes, hand fakes. You avoid contact every way possible, but it's hard not to get sideswiped or flattened in a game this fast. With a flick of a wrist, players can send a scorching pass a few inches off the ground, or loft a 40-yard strike to the end zone that pushes a teammate to lay out, hands extended, to make the grab. You can make the disc stop and float, or curve around clusters of player to the spot where your teammate is or will be and that is a dimension balls just do not possess.

Ultimate is hard on the lungs, the legs and the brain, and fun to watch. Sweat flows, mud cakes to the skin, and even though most players are in shape, some heavy breathing can be heard from the sidelines.

Two teams of seven go at it on a field 70 yards long, 30 yards wide. Everyone is free to move, except the thrower. You catch, you stop, and you've got 10 seconds to pass to someone in front of you, the side of you, or behind you, or it's a turnover. Drop the disc, it's a turnover; so is an interception.

A point is scored when a player catches the disc in an end zone 25 yards deep. According to UPA rules, the first team to reach or exceed 15 points (with a two-point margin) wins, but even that's negotiable with adjustments for points or caps on time. Most games last an hour and a half.

The game may seem a willy-nilly free-for-all to the novice, but don't be fooled. There are definite strategies, both offensive and defensive. On defense, most teams use man-to-man or a variation of a zone similar to basketball. On offense, most teams run a variation of a stack.

Play begins much the way it does in football: One team drives the disc down field. Play builds up from the back, with handlers working like point guards feeding either short, quick, mid-range passes, or taking risks by flicking it to tall, fast, deep threats.

But the most fascinating feature of Ultimate is that there are no referees. Even at the biggest events - tournament finals, national championships - the closest thing to a judge is an observer, who is used as a final arbiter only after the teams can't come to an agreement in an on-field altercation or close calls in the end zone or on boundary lines.

"The spirit of the game" is the philosophy that somehow, someway, competitors ought to be able to be good sports by policing themselves.

"Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among players, adherence to the agreed upon rules of the game, or the basic joy of the play," according to the Ultimate Players Association. Win-at-all costs behavior damages the game's rep, and will not be tolerated.

There's some trash talk that goes on, but at the end of the game you shake hands, give 'em a hug, and move on to the next game. The camaraderie between teams doesn’t stop on the field. Most teams will find some creative rhyme or joke after the game to show appreciation to the other team.

There is no greater thrill than to make the tenacious layout D or the jaw dropping throw or the body-sacrificing layout.