Why I Play Ultimate

I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years now, playing a sport that few had heard of.  Even my parents hadn’t seen an ultimate game until they came to watch me at a tournament in the mid 90’s.  Beyond the underdog attitude and the slacker social culture that surrounds ultimate, there is a crucial piece that separates it from other sports: Spirit of the Game, also known has good ol’ fashioned fair play.

In sports with referees, the aim is to do as much as you can without being caught.  The onus is on the ref, not the players, to police the game.  Soccer is a perfect example: there is one ref, two linesmen and 22 players to keep track of.  That leads to things like drastic hair pulling or outright cheating to win.

I will be honest. It was a handball," Henry said. "But I'm not the ref. I played it. The ref allowed it.

This from the man who cheated to win the World Cup qualifier between Ireland and France.  Ireland goes home and France moves on because none of the three referees saw two handball fouls that he committed.  But there are millions of dollars on the line, how can we possibly expect players to not push the envelope when there is so much at stake?

You start by writing it into the rules of the game.  There’s nothing about fair play or sportsmanship in Soccer’s Laws of the Game.  Nor American Football’s rules.  Hockey?  Nope.  Only ultimate has such a basic concept as “don’t cheat” as a core tenet.

Even soccer fans laugh at the soccer flop.  In ultimate, players call their own fouls.  In high stakes games there are Observers but they don’t have the power of the whistle – they cannot stop play and are only called upon when players cannot resolve an issue themselves.

More important than the finals at Nationals or Worlds is the local kid’s league game.  By teaching kids to be responsible for their actions and resolve conflicts reasonably, ultimate creates not only good athletes but good citizens.

That’s why I play the game.