So you've been playing disc golf for a while now, and you've probably heard
of ultimate. Maybe you noticed a game taking place as you drove by in
your car, heading home from your personal best DG round, no doubt. Well I'd like to
give you the "insider's look" at this sport, and give you the basic facts on how the sport is played. But more
importantly, you should know about the dynamics and the spirit, which
is helping this sport's popularity to grow at an uncanny rate.
Ultimate is amazing! It's addictive, it's fun, it's competitive, it's coed,
and it's unlike any other sport you've ever played. It's a sport that brings
out both the quieter geeky-types and the crazy outlandish athletic types, and puts
them all together in harmony on the same team. It takes the slightly
overweight pudgy guy and has him playing with a female iron-bodied teammate
who's training for an adventure race. It's about friends and fun. The fact
that it's compared to a cult is no coincidence. Whenever an ultimate player
meets someone who "doesn't" play, our enthusiastic solicitation, with
promises of the great times and great sport, borders on harassment.
Resistance is futile, and most everyone is assimilated eventually.
Here's what happens in a typical day-in-the-life of an ultimate player. You
come home from work, and you grab your sport drink, your team t-shirt, your
disc and your cleats and you're out the door. You drive to the field where
you meet your coed teammates. Normally this is a team of about 15 players,
and almost all of them are your direct friends, or spouses, girl/boyfriends
or co-workers of your fellow teammates.
Everyone says hi, and cleats up. They toss the disc around, keep the beer in
the cooler, talk about what's new in life, talk about the team they're about
to play, and probably take a second to slag (humorous insult) each other for
the hell of it. We fast-forward through the game (more on that later), and
the game is over, your team won 15-11. Now you're on the
sidelines of some school field, or local city park, and you're about to open
the cooler to enjoy a cool refreshing beverage. But you're not done yet; it's
time to work on a cheer for the other team! A cheer you say? Yup. And
that's what makes ultimate the ultimate sport! It's not cricket that
deserves the title as the "gentlemen's sport," but rather it's ultimate. We
have an inherent rule and attitude in our sport -- known as the Spirit Of The
Game -- which operates on the level that no ultimate player would
deliberately cheat to win. Consequently, there are no referees in our
sport; or more accurately, the players are the refs... and that means
everyone is expected and encouraged to play fairly and competitively.
