Frisbee: From disc golf to fast-action team games and to dog competitions, flying discs have come a long way since their inventor, Fred Morrison, started selling his Flyin’ Cake Pans.
From disc golf to fast-action team games and even to dog competitions, flying discs have come a long way since their inventor, Fred Morrison, started selling his Flyin’ Cake Pans around California beaches in the late 1930s
Flying discs (Frisbee is a brand trademark by Wham-O) have long been a great source of fun on hot summer days. But the humble plastic disc has gone high-tech, and Ultimate — a team game roughly modeled on American football, but with no player contact — is played competitively by millions around the world.
If you think a disc is a piece of simple molded plastic, then think again. Pad Timmons is general manager of Discraft, whose UltraStar is the official disc of the national governing body USA Ultimate and the leading disc used by players around the world. Speaking from the company headquarters in Wixom, Michigan, he says the company has a “secret recipe” for making the UltraStar, similar to the secret recipe Coca-Cola uses to make its beverage. “It’s a fine-tuned piece of sporting equipment,” he explains.
The key is in the design and manufacture, which ensure the discs have a consistent flight pattern; Discraft now supplies its cutting-edge discs to 70 countries. Timmons says he has played disc sports for more than 40 years, designed 40 disc golf courses and won top disc competitions. He concludes, “Flying discs have been my life.”
Team game
While Ultimate is a team game played on a pitch, disc golf replicates the “royal and ancient game”, except that players swap their clubs and balls for specially designed flying discs that they try to land in a metal basket fixed to a pole.
Timmons explains that players carry up to 20 discs in their disc golf bags. This includes long-range “drivers”, midrange discs that are easier to control but don’t go as far, and “putters” — discs with a pronounced edge that can catch the chains in the basket. Like traditional golf, disc courses have nine or 18 holes.
Other competitions include freestyle, where players do tricks like spinning the discs on their fingers; disc dog, where dogs catch discs thrown by their human teammates; and Beach Ultimate. The discs themselves can come with special features — some glow in the dark, while UV discs turn purple in sunlight. There’s even the Disc Jock-e, produced by Tucker Toys, which connects via Bluetooth to iPhones and other devices, and plays streaming music as it flies. There’s also a market for collectible, limited edition discs with rare designs.
It’s all a far cry from the humble origins of the flying disc game, when 17-year-old Fred Morrison and his girlfriend, Lucile Nay, playfully threw a popcorn bucket lid back and forth at a family picnic in California in 1937. They decided that Fred’s mother’s pie tins were easier to use, and were playing on a beach one day when a passer-by offered to buy one for 25 cents. The tin cost five cents, and, seeing a business opportunity, Fred launched his Flyin’ Cake Pan business.
After honing his knowledge of aerodynamics while serving in the US Air Force during the World War II, he developed the business and marketed his Pluto Platter in the 1950s. Toy company Wham-O took over in 1957 and changed the product’s name to Frisbee. “I thought the name was a horror,” recalled Morrison many years later, though he admitted warming to it as millions of dollars in royalties flowed in.
The sport is developing rapidly in Hong Kong, where around 150 enthusiasts play regularly in matches organized by the Hong Kong Ultimate Players Association. The association was created by expatriates 20 years ago, but now membership is equally divided between expatriates and Hongkongers, says association president Kevin Ho. Around 300 to 400 secondary school students are also playing Ultimate today, thanks to the association’s outreach program.
Explosive and agile
What makes a great Ultimate player? “Being explosive and agile are the two most important things, because the nature of the game is predicated on being able to get free of your defender,” says Ho. “You need to be able to accelerate and run around in short bursts, and be able to jump high and far so that you can catch discs that are high up in the air.”
Many of the best players come from other sports such as football, basketball and volleyball, and apply their specific skills to Ultimate. The game matches two teams of seven players, and each squad has up to 20 members who are frequently substituted because of the amount of running involved.
In Hong Kong, the game is played on football or rugby pitches, and points are scored by catching the disc in the opposing team’s “end zone”. The first team to score 15 points wins, and if neither team has won within 90 minutes, then the side with the highest score wins. Unusually, there is no referee, so players are solely responsible for following and enforcing the rules, even at the World Championship level.
Ho says that the nature of the discs makes the game unique. “When you’re playing with a ball, you can only really throw it one direction, but with a disc you can make it bend and curl around defenders. That’s what makes the strategy completely different.”
Where does Ultimate go from here? Discraft’s Timmons says that the World Flying Disc Federation has just been recognized by the International Olympic Committee. “The hope is to get Ultimate into the Olympics,” he says. “It may not be too far off.” Flying discs at the Olympics? It’s enough to make your head spin.