BananaCut

Without the spirit of the game, what would the game be?
—Nevin H. Gibson,
The Encyclopedia of Golf

This time of year, cities around the country gear up for summer Ultimate Frisbee Leagues. Several thousand people play on the elite and college circuits; tens of thousands more play for fun, fitness and the "spirit of the game." At least that's what the brochure says. For those who play Ultimate, sex and their favorite sport are often entwined.

Ultimate started out as a hippie game, with people tossing around a Frisbee for fun, but it's become a hard-core sport with a cult following. The only laid-back thing left might be tardiness.

Twenty five years have passed after the first game of Ultimate Frisbee was played in South Africa, but the sport is definitely not getting old.

This was proved at the biggest tournament on the Ultimate Frisbee calendar, the South African National Championships, which was held over two days at Bergvliet High School.

Hilarious rant about Ultimate. "As I've mentioned before Ultimate Frisbee, or 'Ultimate' as its apologists refer to it as, is not a sport. It's a bastardized half-game."

Independence parks and tourism officials have found a new niche market to target: the Ultimate Frisbee demographic.

Seth Godin writes about how Spirit of the Game in Ultimate applies to success in business.

We need statistics in our sport. We need a centralized place where we can go and look up different stats from the weekend's tournaments. Statistics are entertaining.

Seven on seven, can't move when you have the disc, and the field is setup like a football field with two end zones. A simple and fun game, that can get extremely complex when skill, weather and strategy are factored in.

In baseball, the rarest two things are the triple-play and a perfect game. In Ultimate Frisbee, the rarest plays are the "Callahan" and the "Greatest."