Frisbee flies high from a social game to competitive Olympics
Frisbees are not just a toy to be flung around a park, in the pool or on the beach. They have spawned a fitness phenomenon — a competitive sport known as Ultimate Flying Disc.
It has world championships and a governing body, the World Flying Disc Federation. In 2015, the International Olympic Committee recognised “flying disc” games as sport.
Flying Disc is an umbrella term for sports that include “disc golf”.
According to the federation’s website, disc golf is not unlike traditional golf. The object is to throw the disc from a tee pad to a hole (a target or basket) and to complete each hole in as few throws as possible.
Ultimate Flying Disc organisers can’t call it Ultimate Frisbee because US-based toy company Wham-O owns the trademark. But it’s not unusual to hear fans call it that. Diehard fans just call it “Ultimate”.
Serious players commonly use the 175g Ultrastar model by Discraft. Most will “turn their noses up at anything else”, says Katie Huston.
Huston is a former treasurer of the South African Flying Disc Association (Safda) and chairwoman of Bafazi Development Fund, a national initiative to develop women’s Ultimate. She is also a member of the Bafazi Bafazi national women’s team and Ghost Ultimate Club in Cape Town.
In 2016, Safda sent a women’s national team to the world championships for the first time.
Preparing for the championships elevated the status and skill of women’s Ultimate Flying Disc in SA, she says. “We’re still feeling the ripple effects of that.”
About 7.5-million people in more than 90 countries play flying disc sports. In SA, Ultimate Flying Disc is small, with only about 500 players attending Safda’s three national tournaments each year.
However, Huston estimates that there are probably more than 1,000 players in SA as they play the sport at a local level and informally — at schools, universities and regular pick-up games. Ultimate combines the best aspects of well-known games, she says. It has “the constant movement of soccer meets the aerial passing of basketball and American football”. It includes some spectacular rugby-style passes and dives for the disc, which players call “layouts”.
The “ultimate” moniker probably stems from a quote by one of the sport’s inventors, Dr Jared Kass, made way back in the late 1960s in the US.
Kass is a professor of counselling and psychology at the private Lesley University Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also a senior faculty member of the university’s holistic studies specialisation. There, he trains mental health clinicians to practice “trauma-informed, culturally-responsive, mindbody behavioural health”, the university website says.
At play with a frisbee one day, Kass is quoted as saying he remembers “running for a pass and leaping up in the air, feeling the frisbee making it into my hand and feeling the perfect synchrony and joy of the moment”. As he landed, he said: “This is the ultimate game.”
But just how realistic are claims of this sport as “ultimate” or even “unique”?
Probably very realistic, considering the philosophy and spirit of the game. Zen and the Art of Ultimate Flying Disc Maintenance springs immediately to mind.
Ultimate Flying Disc can be considered unique as it is self-refereed, Huston says.
However, North America uses an observer system at the highest levels of competition.
There is debate over whether this fundamentally conflicts with the game’s spirit.
There is a complex rule book built around this spirit. It falls to each player to know and adhere to the rules and ensure a “steadfast embrace of sportsmanlike conduct”, says Huston. In this way, Ultimate teaches respect, integrity and honesty, she says.
Ultimate Flying Disc is also often played as a mixed-gender sport. This encourages men and women to respect one another as equals and promote gender equity, she says.
And recognition as an Olympic sport doesn’t get more ultimate than that. Huston says that the International Olympic Committee was drawn to the sport’s spirit, gender equity, youth appeal, entertainment value and global growth.
Given doping revelations that have mired Olympic sports in the past, Ultimate’s spirit is long overdue.
The sport’s age range is vast. Huston knows of seven- and 60-year-olds who play it. Several members of SA’s 2016 squad were 45 and older.
“The older you are, the smarter you get with the disc and your energy,” Huston says.
It helps too that Ultimate Frisbee is not an expensive sport to play. All that is really needed is a field and a disc, Huston says. That makes it well-suited to schools and outreach programmes.
There are no shoes specially designed for Ultimate Flying Disc. In SA, players wear football boots with plastic studs. No metal is allowed.
Benefits appear to be legion, for body and mind. Ultimate is an effective aerobic and cardio workout, says Huston.
Thus, it requires and supports a high level of fitness, physical strength and stamina. As with any sport, there’s the risk of injury. These are mostly related to ankles and knees, or complications that arise from poor layout form (dives).