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The Ultimate Experience by Dana Thompson

During one of the showcase games of the 2009 Emerald City Classic (ECC) ultimate tournament in Burlington, Wash., Seattle Riot, a premier elite women’s ultimate team, was down late in the game against their long-time nemesis, San Francisco’s Fury. Thanks to a long pass to the end zone by then rookie Gwen Ambler into the dexterous hands of Jenn Willson, Riot surged ahead to beat Fury for the first time since 2007.

For Ambler, a Bay Area native and eight-year veteran of Fury who had recently joined Riot after moving to Seattle for graduate school, the thrill of her team members storming the field served as a turning point in her personal investment in Riot. It also exemplified the camaraderie and commitment that is inherent in the sport of elite women’s ultimate.

Originally called ultimate Frisbee™ and now known simply as ultimate, this increasingly popular and competitive sport is aptly named, combining the best in athleticism — the quick lateral movement and passing of basketball, the conditioning and field awareness of soccer, and the long bombs and great catching reminiscent of football — with a fundamental code of honor that puts good sportsmanship and community ahead of a win-at-all-costs mentality.

In fact, good sportsmanship is an official tenet of ultimate. Unlike other competitive sports, ultimate does not use referees, relying instead on a sacred honor system called Spirit of the Game, which trusts each player to call her own fouls and mediate any conflicts on the field.
Since ultimate is, by and large, a nonprofit sport — Riot funds itself through annual $200 dues (which cover tournament fees and practice fields), fundraising activities, teaching clinics and a minor sponsorship from Patagonia for uniforms — pure joy of the game and mutual respect between players is valued above all else.

This tenet remains true at all levels, although in elite play “observers” are added to help mediate if players can’t reach a peaceful decision. The absence of refs still prevents ultimate from becoming an official Olympic sport.

“It’s pretty amazing how much can get resolved by players themselves when you’re expecting everybody to play fair,” says Heidi-Marie Clemens, a 29-year-old Riot rookie. “When refs aren’t there, people stop trying to get away with something without getting caught.”

That said, Riot has no qualms about winning. Formed in 2000 from remnants of Seattle’s former elite women’s ultimate team, three-time World Champions Women on the Verge, Riot has a World Championship title from 2002 and two National Championship titles from 2004 and 2005 to its name, and is consistently ranked among the nation’s top elite ultimate teams.

“Playing against Riot is the truest test of how we’re progressing in our season,” says Matty Tsang, long-time coach of San Francisco’s Fury, as both teams unfailingly are among the top three or four contenders for the national title.

After coming in third in 2009 at Nationals, Riot will compete this year July 3–10 in the World Flying Disc Federation's (WFDF) World Ultimate Club Championships in Prague, Czech Republic, with over 100 teams representing 30 countries competing in the mixed, masters, open and women’s divisions.

RULES OF PLAY

The basics of ultimate are this: Each seven-player team lines up facing each other from their respective end zone across a seventy-yard field. One team starts as defense, the other as offense. The throwing player from the defense raises her hand to signal readiness and a player from the opposing team acknowledges it by raising her hand, at which point the defense “pulls” (throws) the 175 gram, high-tech disc (which is not necessarily a Frisbee™), much like a kick-off in football.

Once the disc is moving, the game remains in continual play until someone scores a point by catching the disc in the opposing team’s 25-yard end zone. After scoring, the teams face off and start again.

Within this simple framework the game is both complex and casual. Each team consists of three handlers (similar to quarterbacks or basketball guards) and four cutters (like a receiver); however, because of the rapid pace of the game, players need to be skilled at both catching and throwing, and agility and quick hand-eye coordination are essential.

Players aren’t allowed to run with the disc — which is like traveling in basketball — so once the disc is caught, a defensive player begins a “stall” count, giving the offensive player 10 seconds to unload the disc. Passes can go upfield or downfield, but no hand-offs are allowed.

Play happens rain or shine, so strategies change depending on weather and field conditions, as well as team strengths and weaknesses. “The sky’s the limit for developing different strategies,” says Ambler, who, as one of the team’s co-captains, helps, along with a larger committee, develop different strategic approaches to each round (a game or match in ultimate parlance).

The winning team is the first one to reach a predetermined number of points, usually 13 or 15, by a margin of two points, or it is the first team to reach the “point cap,” which is a maximum score (17 points in standard play) that doesn’t require the two-point lead to end the round.
While there are no time-outs, there is a 90-second “break” between points for players to sub out. When teams are evenly matched, a round lasts anywhere from one to two hours, depending on the tournament’s time limit, with a token 5- or 10-minute rest break once one team reaches the halfway score.

Sound intense? It is, especially at the elite level. This year Riot carries an active roster of 26 players, each chosen through competitive annual tryouts. The team members, whose ages range from 21 to 34, spend approximately 20 hours a week in grueling team workouts, focusing on footwork, agility and strength training, with at least one track workout for speed and endurance.

In addition, each woman puts in personal workouts to concentrate on whatever she most needs to improve. Riot’s competitive season typically starts in May and culminates with the National Championships in October. This year, because of the World Championships in July, the team needs to peak twice.

This level of commitment is one of the things Clemens most appreciates about ultimate. “I love the team aspect,” says Clemens, who played competitive basketball, soccer and volleyball growing up. “We work really hard together to make our team successful, so when we’re out on the field playing together we get to celebrate all that effort. I’ve played a lot of sports, and ultimate combines the best of them.”

IN THE BEGINNING…

The origins of ultimate were decidedly less ambitious. Successful Hollywood producer and director Joel Silver, who most recently produced the Sherlock Holmes movie, is credited with inventing the game in 1968 as a lark after attending a summer academic program in Mount Hermon, Mass., where they played a form of football using a Frisbee™.

Returning to his New Jersey high school in the fall, Silver, along with classmates Bernard “Buzzy” Hellring and Jonathon “Jonny” Hines, suggested to their friends on the student council and the school newspaper that they form a Frisbee™ team.

By the spring of 1968, an eclectic smattering of academic-minded kids, theater types and a few sports-oriented kids would congregate at night in a lit vacant lot to play a free-form game loosely based on football rules. Gradually, the game’s rules were modified and officially established in 1970 — combining aspects of basketball, hockey, football and soccer — into the game of ultimate played today.

“It was never a serious thing when we played,” says Silver; “it was more of a counterculture thing. We just created a game and had a lot of fun with it. I used to joke that someday people all over the world would be playing this game, and my friends would say, ‘Yeah right, Joel.’”

Today, ultimate is played in over 42 countries and, according to the 2010 Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA) Sports and Fitness Participation Topline Report, ultimate is the fastest growing team sport in the U.S., with approximately 4.5 million people now playing. And women’s college ultimate programs and teams have grown by 16 percent during the 2009-10 school year, reports Dr. Tom Crawford, CEO of the Ultimate Players Association.

Despite its tremendous growth, ultimate remains true to its friendly, “counterculture” roots. Clubs and leagues are available across the country at all levels of play; mixed teams are common; and the sport is known for its welcoming atmosphere, inclusive of neophytes and experienced players alike.

The Seattle area, one of the hubs for ultimate, is home to not only Riot, but several other elite teams including a second Women’s elite club formed in 2009 called Underground. Riot’s players have played internationally, on both women’s and coed teams, and still play pick-up games and exhibition games in between official tournaments.

Like many women playing elite ultimate today, Clemens, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, was introduced to the sport as a freshman in college, as was Ambler at Stanford University.

As a recreational sport on college campuses, ultimate provides an alternative to students who can’t or opt not to play more traditional sports at the collegiate level, yet still want a competitive outlet. “As a freshman I tagged along with a friend of mine signing up for men’s ultimate,” says three-year Riot veteran and co-captain Sarah Griffith, “and I’ve loved it ever since.”

Many players, however, are getting an earlier start. Riot’s Claire Suver, Shannon O’Malley, Drew Johnson and Alyssa Weatherford all played ultimate at Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School; Lisa Niemann played at Ballard High and Caitlin Cordell at Franklin. Rohre Titcomb got her start in middle school at Seattle Country Day School. The team’s roster also includes six women (Suver, O’Malley, Johnson, Cordell, Titcomb and Miranda Roth) who have played on U.S. Junior Worlds teams.

The region’s vibrant ultimate scene centers around DiscNW, which sponsors coed and single-gender youth leagues for elementary, middle and high schools as well as adult leagues. Its website, DiscNW.org, lists over 200 teams active in the Pacific Northwest. DiscNW also sponsors camps and tournaments, and its annual Spring Reign tournament pulls teams from up and down the West Coast and beyond, and is the world’s largest youth ultimate event.

As an “alternative” sport, ultimate has long been attractive to people who have no interest in typical mainstream athletics, perhaps because having fun and playing fair is valued as much as the competitive outcome of the game. But it is now attracting more players, like the Riot women, who excel at other sports. It is even helping a few strong high school players pay for college, as several schools now offer minor scholarships to ultimate players thanks to alumni grants.

Liz Duffy, an eight-year veteran of Riot, lived in both San Francisco and Australia for a year, and ultimate provided her with a ready-made community of people. “It’s rare to have a sport that has such a strong community aspect and open accessibility and yet is still very competitive,” says Duffy. “It’s very appealing.”

In addition to their regular day jobs, at least half of Riot’s players coach youth ultimate, as well as teach various clinics. Jinny Eun, a clinical research coordinator at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and a third-year Riot player who was introduced to ultimate after getting hit in the head with a disc as a freshman her first week at Carleton College, coaches both the Lakeside High School girls' and Western Washington University women’s ultimate teams. Clemens helps coach Roosevelt High School’s team and Duffy, a marine biologist at the University of Washington, helps coach Nathan Hale High School teams in her “spare” time. Griffith is the head coach at Hamilton International Middle School.

“Ultimate is such a great vehicle for teaching kids good values,” says Griffith. “The core idea of Spirit of the Game fosters self-responsibility and trust among all players, and teaches kids to be honest.”

Part of Riot’s team mission is to provide active outreach to the community through ultimate. Since 2005, Riot has provided a scholarship, thanks to team member and family donations, to one Seattle-area high school girl every summer to attend the National Ultimate Training Camp (NUTC) in Amherst, Mass. With any remaining funds, the team tries to sponsor another girl for a local camp.

Riot members have also taken their love of teaching ultimate abroad. Duffy is one of three Riot team members traveling to Israel in mid-July with Ultimate Peace, a young nonprofit organization started in 2009, to teach ultimate and its principles to Israeli and Palestinian children. The organization’s goal is to promote conflict resolution and peace through the tenets of the sport.

“Ultimate takes good sportsmanship to a higher level,” says Duffy, “putting respect for your teammates and opponents above winning.“

It’s the perfect tool to teach conflict resolution and important life skills, notes Duffy, who, along with Griffith and five other Riot members, also spent two weeks in Colombia last year conducting ultimate teaching clinics and playing in a tournament with other North American ultimate teams. The program, called Torneo Eterna Primavera, the Tournament of Eternal Spring, was sponsored through a grant by the Colombian government, which recognizes ultimate, and its nonviolent and nonconfrontational approach, as a healthy alternative to the passionate rivalries generally inherent in more traditional Central and South American sports.
In the end, it is community and a strong social network, both on and off the field that hooks ultimate players.

“It’s not just a sport we love,” says Duffy,“ but it provides a family that helps us get through life. It’s very special.”

Dana Thompson is a Bainbridge Island-based freelance writer and mother of two, now inspired to start throwing a disc.

CORRECTION: The original publication of this story incorrectly described the positions of cutters and handlers. The correction has been made above.

EXPERIENCE ULTIMATE

For a schedule of SEATTLE RIOT’S tournament play or to learn more about the players, visit www.seattleriot.org.

The NORTHWEST ULTIMATE ASSOCIATION serves as a resource for ultimate in the Northwest, providing information regarding tournaments, pick-up games and local ultimate leagues at www.discnw.org.

For information on SEATTLE UNDERGROUND, Seattle’s new elite women’s ultimate team, see seattleunderground.wordpress.com.

The ULTIMATE PLAYERS ASSOCIATION is a national organization and governing body for ultimate in the U.S., providing stats on membership, ultimate trends and team standings for both college and elite teams. www.upa.org

The WORLD FLYING DISC FEDERATION is made up of national organizations and federations from around the world who govern their respective disc sports, including ultimate. www.wfdf.org

To connect with the nonprofit organization ULTIMATE PEACE, visit
www.ultimatepeace.org.

©Copyright 2010, Caliope Publishing Company