AN ULTIMATE sport without official referees sounds like it should be accompanied by heavy padding and double life insurance.
But for more than 50 years, Ultimate – unofficially Ultimate Frisbee – has not just existed, but grown to be the epitome of international non-contact sports, now recognised by the International Olympic Committee and an eligible sport for the 2028 Olympic Games.
For Casterton ex-pat, Tash Spratling, the sport began as a fun pastime, but recently saw her head to New Zealand, where her team took third place in the New Zealand Ultimate Championships.
“I got into Ultimate at university three years ago as my friendship group decided we should all play a sport and thought it sounded the most interesting; from there we picked up casual trainings once a week,” she said.
“We created our own team, the Discasaurs and since then I have played five seasons of CSL (city social league), being captain for the past three seasons.
“We also entered our first state league last year where I was also captain, in which we competed against worlds teams; I also competed in the 2023/24 uni nationals.”
This year, Spratling joined Zig Theory Adelaide’s women’s teams, where she was named captain of the division two side for regionals in Bendigo, the team successful in taking third place in the competition.
“Most recently I competed at the NZUC (New Zealand Ultimate Championships) division two women’s comp where we also achieved third, having only lost one game for the tournament against the overall winners,” she said.
“There were eight teams playing in the women’s division.
“I went to New Zealand with help from the club, after being awarded a scholarship for my continued commitment to the sport and abilities.”
In addition to competing, Spratling is also vice president of the Adelaide University Ultimate Club, handling a large portion of the recruiting and social media, as well as organising teams for university games running its own own hat tournament Farcical Foes every year.
Ultimate was developed in the US in 1968 by friends Joel Silver, Buzzy Hellring and Jonny Hines.
Although ultimate resembles many traditional sports in its athletic requirements, it is unlike most sports due to its focus on self-officiating, even at the highest levels of competition.
Because the term ‘frisbee’ is a registered trademark of a toy company, the sport is not formally called ‘ultimate frisbee’, though the name is still in common casual use.
The competition is played seven-per-side and points are scored by passing the disc to a teammate in the opposing end zone. Other basic rules are that players must not take steps while holding the disc and interceptions, incomplete passes and passes out of bounds are turnovers.
From its beginnings, ultimate has resisted empowering any referee with rule enforcement, relaying on the sportsmanship of players and invokes the ‘spirit of the game’ to maintain fair play.
Players call their own fouls and dispute a foul only when they genuinely believe it did not occur.
All calls are discussed and sorted out by the players on the field.
Due to this a major part of the sport is the spirit of the game, where an additional award at all tournaments is awarded to the best spirited team, determined based on rules knowledge, general behaviour, fouls, and communication
Ultimate is played across the world in pickup games and by recreational, school, club, professional, and national teams at various age levels and with open, women’s, and mixed divisions and 2012, there were 5.1 million ultimate players in the United States.
