TEACHING ULTIMATE FRISBEE

BASICS OF THE GAME

  1. Introduction and Short History

  2. Pivots, Stall Counts, and Other Fundamentals

  3. A Non-Contact Sport

  4. Spirit of the Game

  5. Variations Across Levels and Leagues

Part One. Introduction and Short History

Ultimate Frisbee is a fast-paced, action-filled sport predicated on fair play and teamwork, with constant movement and multiple scoring opportunities. The game is also known as “ultimate disc” or simply “ultimate.”

Ultimate has a long tradition of men’s, women’s, and mixed competitions, including at the youth level. Ultimate is played around the world at all competitive levels. In the United States, there are more than 800 college teams with 18,000 student athletes playing each year.

The Chicago Union is one of 24 teams in the Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA) professional league which spans the US and Canada. The Western Ultimate League (WUL) and Professional Ultimate League (PUL) are leagues for women and non-binary athletes. USA Ultimate is the sport’s national governing body at the youth/club/college level.

The game of ultimate seems to have started with a pie pan. The first known contemporary tossing of a disc was by Yale undergrads in the early 1900s,who used metal pie pans from the nearby Frisbie Pie Company of Connecticut.

The sport progressed with the invention by Fred Morrison in 1948 of a plastic flying disc, and the first mass-production of the "Pluto Platter," by the Wham-O toy company in 1951.

In 1967, Joel Silver and other students at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, proposed that the school host an Ultimate Frisbee game. The first known game was played in 1968 between Columbia’s student council and school newspaper. The newspaper won.

The game continued its ascent in popularity. Yale hosted the first college-level ultimate tournament in 1975 with a total of eight schools. Rutgers won. Ultimate made its debut later that year at the World Frisbee Championships, which covered a variety of Frisbee-focused sports.

The professional-level American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL) was formed in 2012. In 2024, the league and Wham-O entered into a licensing arrangement, resulting in the league changing its name to the Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA).

Part Two: Pivots, Stall Counts, and Other Fundamentals

Ultimate’s simplicity of equipment makes it an exceptionally low-cost sport: all you really need is a disc, some cones, and a place to play. As a non-contact sport, safety is paramount.

The game starts with a “pull’; the defending team throws the Frisbee from their end zone to the opposing team’s end zone.

Ultimate is an invasion game: a team scores in the end zone by working as a group to move the Frisbee up the field, passing it back and forth until they score or lose possession.

After each goal, the scoring team “pulls” to the other team.

Players cannot run while holding the Frisbee, which means they must pass to score – this is a rule that reinforces teamwork, especially at youth levels. The official rule is that the receiver must come to a natural stop as soon as possible after catching the disc. The player must then establish a pivot foot, and that foot must remain in the same spot until the Frisbee is passed again. If a player runs farther than their momentum takes them, or moves their pivot foot while throwing, it is a travel violation. At the club/college level, travelling calls for a redo. In the UFA, it is a 10-yard penalty.

Once a player has possession of the Frisbee, the player has ten seconds to pass it (seven seconds in the UFA); otherwise, possession goes to the opposing team. The defender has “marking” the thrower counts the ten seconds down out loud; this is called the “stall count.” The reliance on the defender, instead of a stop clock, to stall count is an embodiment of the principle of fair play in Spirit of the Game.

Videos to help your students get a sense of the game:

Part Three: A Non-Contact Sport

Ultimate is a non-contact sport.  A Defender can block a Frisbee out of the air or upon release of a throw but cannot touch it while the opposing team has possession.

“Possession” is defined as stopping the rotation of the Frisbee. Possession can happen even before the Frisbee has left the thrower’s hand, or as it enters a receiver’s hand. That said, safety is paramount; no player should attempt to take possession of a Frisbee in a way that could result in their injury or hurt another player, and to do so is a foul.

Fouls in ultimate are similar to fouls in basketball. A player cannot make contact with another, aside from basic, non-aggressive body positioning. A player may make contact with the Frisbee in the air, but not with their opponent’s body as they try to make a catch

Part Four: Spirit of the Game

To be a great ultimate player, you must be athletic, but you must also have integrity. Competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of respect among players, fair play, and teamwork. Collectively, this concept is known as “Spirit of the Game.”

At the youth and amateur level, Spirit of the Game is best represented by the absence of referees. Self-officiation -- players resolving rule disputes on their own -- reinforces mutual respect and trust among opponents, promotes conflict resolution and self-advocacy, and builds self-confidence on and off the field. Even at the professional level, players have a level of agency not typical for other sports, including through the UFA’s Integrity Rule. The Integrity Rule states that any player or head coach can overturn any call made by an official if the official’s call favored the player’s or coach’s own team. This allows teams to display sportsmanship and remedy an incorrect call against their opponent.

Another embodiment of Spirit of the Game is that it is impossible to score on your own. Because players cannot run while holding the Frisbee, they must pass it to a teammate to score; ball-hogging (or rather disc-hogging) is not possible.

Spirit Circles are a common practice after games. Players and coaches from both teams come together and form a circle to talk about the positives and negatives of their experiences and to do shout-outs for demonstrations of good play and character exhibited by both teammates and opponents.

Here are some ways Ultimate Frisbee can help students build critical life skills.

  • Respecting Rules. By the rules of ultimate, players are expected only to make calls that they think impact the game, and the only people allowed to have the conversation are those involved, unless the players ask for a different perspective. Everyone stops moving when discussing a call; a dispute should not give one team an advantage.

  • Reflection and Resolution. While intentionally breaking the rules or using them to your advantage is cheating, inadvertent infractions are considered part of the game. Spirit of the Game is a way to respectfully discuss these moments and to settle disputes.

  • Mutual Respect. When having conversations about rule violations, players are expected to bring respect to their opponent.  Ultimate players are encouraged to see their opponents as people first, before players.

  • Self-Awareness. Discussing a call in the heat of the moment is difficult and requires players to take into account both their opinion and their opponent’s opinion, as well as their own feelings about the game. Sports are emotional, and sometimes it does not feel good not to have all the information.  Listening to those around with different points of view is a learned skill.

  • Accountability. Learning how to say confidently “yes, I fouled you, my bad” is a valuable skill, especially in a place as public as a sports field.  Ultimate builds a culture that supports admitting when you fouled.

  • Developing Relationship Skills. Practices and games are opportunities to practice socializing. A shared interest in the game can lead to valuable relationship-building. Even at the pro level, there is a culture of the home team gathering after the game with fans and the opposing team.

A 2021 Systemic Review of research found, “there is evidence that [ultimate frisbee] can promote teamwork, task cohesion, leadership, and increase friendship-approach goals.” Among the qualities the Study found to be supported were: “leadership, task cohesion and performance, intrateam communication, friendship goals, and sportsmanship associated with goal-directed self-talk and self-regulated learning.”

The Study highlighted the “communication between all players, whether they are from the same team or the opposing team” and noted that ultimate frisbee is “one of the few team sports worldwide that are self-refereed by participants.” [Amoroso JP, Rebelo-Gonçalves R, Antunes R, Coakley J, Teques P, Valente-Dos-Santos J, Furtado GE. Teamwork: A Systematic Review of Implications From Psychosocial Constructs for Research and Practice in the Performance of Ultimate Frisbee Games. Front Psychol. 2021 Aug 27.]

Part Five: Variations Across Levels and Leagues

Like many sports, there are variations in the rules and field size for amateur and professional versions of Ultimate Frisbee.

The UFA plays two teams of seven on a field measuring 80 yards long, with 20-yard end zones. Games consist of four 12-minute quarters. Each goal is worth one point, and the team that scores the most goals wins.

At the college/club level, there are a few differences that slightly change game play. Games are played to score caps as opposed to timed quarters; usually thirteen or fifteen goals. The pull happens from the endzone instead of the 30-yard line, and the field is 12.5 yards narrower.