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The Ultimate of All Sports
"I started playing Ultimate three years ago and from the first practice I totally loved it and I started coming every day of the week."
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By Sophie Simon Ortiz
What do you get when you combine football, basketball and soccer into one sport? Youth Radio’s Sophie Simon Ortiz takes you behind the game that’s gaining momentum in colleges and most recently in high schools. “Ultimate’s still mostly a college game. But just last year, seven new high school teams popped up in California.”
Does this sound like your high school PE class? Well, close. These are high schoolers but they choose to be here after school, playing Ultimate Frisbee.
But don't be fooled, this is no casual game of catch in the park. Ultimate’s a real sport, complete with teams, rules, and organized games.
MIKE (on tape)
Ultimate Frisbee is a field sport with teams of seven on the field at a time. The objective of the game is to catch the Frisbee in the end zone.
SOPHIE
That's 27-year old Mike DeSouza. He's a serious Ultimate player who’s coaches at a charter school in Alameda.
MIKE (on tape)
So it’s a lot like a mixture of soccer, basketball and football because basketball you have to pivot. You have to pivot in Ultimate you can’t run with the Frisbee. It’s like football because there’s end zones you score in and it’s like soccer because all the passing happens in big spaces as opposed to right to the person. That’s Ultimate in a nutshell.
SOPHIE
Like a lot of serious Ultimate Frisbee players, Mike’s an ex-varsity athlete who realized he wasn’t a big fan of the culture of traditional competitive sports. So halfway through college, he traded in his soccer ball for a disc, as Ultimate players call it, and never looked back.
Ultimate’s still mostly a college game. But just last year, seven new high school teams popped up in California. And Mike says it attracts people of all ages, even those who would never call themselves athletes.
MIKE (on tape)
I think that’s the difference with our sport among other sports. If you play basketball, the chances of you playing at the top level aren’t so good because you’re probably not going to make it into the NBA. But your chances of being a National Champion of Ultimate if you wanted to put your work on and go through what you needed to go through you can make it happen. And then there’s people who just want to hang out and play every Friday - so the whole realm is there for people to get involved in the sport.
SOPHIE
Mike’s players are even more enthusiastic than he his – meet Tommy Sanchez.
TOMMY (on tape)
I’m sixteen years old. I started playing Ultimate three years ago and from the first practice I totally loved it and I started coming every day of the week. And then my first year I went to the national championships, and then the next year I became captain and this year I’m the captain again.
SOPHIE
Kami Summers, a senior at Acalanes High School in Lafayette says even though she might not be captain material, she still gives it her all.
KAMI (on tape)
I've hurt myself quite a bit, so has my whole team, but at the same time it's just you’ll be running around the field you'll be sprinting with a big smile on your face and you can make an awesome play and even if it’s not so awesome everyone cheers.
One thing that separates Ultimate from other competitive sports is that there are no referees and no umpires – the game is entirely self-officiated by the players on the field.
For Acalanes High School senior Jaime Zandstra, that spirit of the game is a huge part of why he plays:
JAIME (on tape)
We have friends on other teams there’s like you have a lot more respect for people and the fact that there isn’t a referee, you have to trust your opponent. You’re all just kind of one big team, trying to get better at what you do and respect everyone while you're doing it.
SOPHIE
It’s not so easy for Ultimate teams to get respect outside of the sport. Jaime’s coach, Jo Tams, says the big challenge is competing with the more traditional and well-known sports at school:
JO (on tape)
We have had a continuous battle trying to find field space. We’ve tried to run practices behind the soccer goal, last year between a fence and a soccer goal. We were in the outfield of a baseball game, dodging baseballs. We do take a fair share of heckling and abuse and we’re trying to laugh it off and just kind of prove everyone wrong.
SOPHIE
Tommy Sanchez says he’s sure that as more people find out that Ultimate is serious sport, they’ll be addicted, just like he is.
TOMMY (on tape)
Ultimate’s cooler than your sport, so come out and play!
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