Ultimate Frisbee

A white Frisbee skittered and soared across the spring afternoon as students scrambled between rows of sugar maples that marked the sidelines of a makeshift playing field. An uninformed visitor to the Tufts University campus in Medford, Mass., last week might well have decided that the "Third Invitational Mother's Day Classic" had been taken over by platoons of demented discus throwers. What the galloping giddiness actually involved was an Ultimate Frisbee game between Tufts and Hampshire College of Amherst, one of the final events of the season for the nation's newest intercollegiate sport.

A zany mixture of razzle-dazzle football, playground basketball and soccer, Ultimate Frisbee has sprouted on campuses in the East in the past few years and is spreading westward. It could prove to be just the solution for colleges crippled by the runaway cost of athletics --as well as for students who want to play a team sport that avoids high-pressure, must-win contests.

The students who invented the game in a parking lot at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., six years ago set out to create a simple, inexpensive, low key sport "for the non-athlete." They did just that, then took their creation to college, where they spread it with evangelical enthusiasm.

The requirements for play are modest: an open space measuring 60 yds. by 45 yds., two teams of seven players, a clock to time the two 24-minute halves, and one $4.50 plastic Frisbee. Goals are scored by catching the Frisbee in the end zone, which can be as deep as the Frisbee flies--or the receiver cares to run.

Getting the Frisbee to the end zone is what stirs the bedlam. The plastic disk can be moved only in the air, and whoever catches it is allowed only three "momentum" steps before passing it on. The offense keeps moving only as long as it controls the Frisbee; when passes are blocked, intercepted, dropped or go out of bounds, the Frisbee is turned over to the other team. When a player has the Frisbee, only one opponent at a time may try to block his pass. Substitutions are allowed during breaks in play, and fouls are called on the honor system. In this "gentleman's game," called fouls are rare.

The Frisbee throw best known to run-of-the-backyard players--holding the plastic disk parallel to the ground and flipping it forward with a backhand motion--is of limited use in Ultimate Frisbee. It is too easily blocked. Ultimate stars have developed a special repertory of hard-to-stop releases. Among them:

THE THUMB THROW. The thumb is laid under the forward edge of the Frisbee with the rest of the hand curled around the rim, palm up. The disk is launched with a forehand flick of the wrist.

THE FINGER THROW. The Frisbee is held from behind, palm up, with the forefinger and middle finger against the rim. The Frisbee slides off the middle finger during a forehand snap release.

THE WRIST FLIP. The Frisbee is held behind the back, with the arm stiff, and is released while the player is leaping in the air, with much the same motion as a discus throw.

With these varied tosses, a Frisbee team can generate a crisp, coordinated offense as players weave down the field hitting each other with short, hard passes. For gamblers, the long bomb is the most spectacular weapon: it sends receivers and pursuers in a frantic dash to catch the floating disk as it descends 40 or 50 yds. ahead. On offense, everyone needs the passing skills of a pro quarterback; the job of the defense is to block a pass or pick off the Frisbee in flight. Most teams use a man-to-man defense, though some are introducing zone coverage. In a good game, the Frisbee changes hands almost as fast as in basketball, and scoring is frequent. In the Mother's Day Classic, the final score was Hampshire 22, Tufts 18.

Though it requires the stamina of soccer, Ultimate Frisbee is in many ways a spoof of big-time sports. Most of the schools with teams are far from athletic superpowers--Tufts, Hampshire, Rutgers, Holy Cross, Clark University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The players take pains to maintain their non-jock distinction. When Rutgers showed up at the first Intercollegiate Frisbee Championship held last month at Yale sporting numbered uniforms and soccer shoes, the Tufts varsity responded by wearing yellow T shirts all emblazoned with the number 3. At the Tufts-Hampshire tiff, the first Frisbee was thrown out by the grandmother of one of the Tufts players, Mildred Cunningham, a little old Planned Parenthood lady who proceeded to give away LOVE CAREFULLY buttons and tell other spectators that she was "glad the boys are doing this --there're so many worse things they could be doing."

Most Ultimate Frisbee players agree --not necessarily for the same reason. There are, in fact, few other sports that Hampshire High Scorer Steve Hannock can play with his hair spilling down his back and an ever-ready can of beer handy on the sidelines. Or that Maggie Hirsch, a Hampshire junior, can play alongside her male classmates. While the younger brother of one player talks excitedly about pro franchises some day, most players would agree with Hampshire Co-Captain Dave Dinerman when he says, "Too much competition will make this the kind of game I wouldn't want to play."

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