Proclamation
Note that this article will be imported from Steem where I tried to start my sport niche, but failed. The article is more than a year old, but is totally crucial for my blog, since it’s going to explain the sport that I’m going to cover in my Scorum endeavours. I hope that my writing skill improved in such a long time, therefore I’ll edit it to make it even better. I understand how this attitude might seem inappropriate, but before you jump to fast conclusion know that the post took ten hours to create and was only seen by like 4 people where one was one of my teammates:). I didn’t want to play tricks on this awesome community in the name of the Spirit of the Game. My sports niche is now where it belongs and it shall try to grow HERE. Without further ado, let’s get to it!
Introduction
Are you sick of all the theatre-like performances in soccer? Are you sick of all the disrespect being expressed across various sports? How could a highly competitive sport without referees even exist you ask? Let me introduce to you the Ultimate Frisbee. A sport that has changed my life and the perception of sports overall.
Field size
Let’s start with the real basics. No sport can be played without its “arena. What we know as Ultimate Frisbee is played on grass. As the sport matured, other surfaces started to be utilized too, like sand or indoors. Every surface though comes with very unique adjustment of the rules. I’m going to explain the main “grass” category.
The field is 100 meters long and 37 meters wide. An endzone is located at both ends of the field. Endzones are 23 meters long. That makes the neutral zone 64 meters long. In the middle of the field 18 meters from the goal line is a brick mark (more about that later). You guessed it right. The core of the sport is A LOT OF running.
Rules
Goal
The goal is fairly simple. To score a point, any member of the team has to catch the disc in the endzone. He either has to be with at least one part of his body on the ground of the endzone while catching the disc, or he has to leap, catch the disc in the air and land into the endzone. This grants a team 1 point. Game is either to 15 points, or (if no one reaches 15 points) after 90 minutes of the game 1-2 is added to the highest score count of the game and whoever reaches that number wins the game (if its 10-11 after 90 mins, the game is to 13).
Basic Rules
Full text version of the rules has like 40 pages, so I will try to keep it simple. While it might be interesting to speak about particularly tricky situations, you don’t need to know them…yet.
The game is played in open (men, but women are allowed…strange right?), women, and mixed divisions. In mixed division either 3-4 representatives of each sex has to be on the field. One team always chooses whether they will use 4 men or women and the other team has to respect that. Next point the decision is made by the other team.
The game starts with a flip of discs. Both captains flip a disc and one of them says either “same” or “different”. Whoever guesses the outcome correctly chooses either initial side of the field, or whether the team will start on offense or defence.
The actual game starts with a pull. Every team starts every point in its endzone. From a roster (max 28 players), 7 are chosen to play the given point. Whoever starts on defence pulls the disc to the other team (similarly to a kick off in NFL). If the pull lands inbounds, enemy team has to pick up the disc from where it rolled to and play. If it lands out of bounds, one attacking player picks up the disc and takes it to the brick mark. Whichever player has the disc currently in possession is not allowed to run. The rest of the team has to run though in order to get open, while being guarded by the opposition. The pass can go forward or backwards and there is no limit to how many passes can one team make to reach the endzone. By yard gaining passes the team draws nearer to the endzone. When a team scores a point, the other team has to walk all the way back to the other endzone, thus switching the sides (because staying on one side throughout the whole game would be highly unfair due to the wind). After every single point substitutions can be made.
Turnover
The attacking team can lose a disc due to turnover. Turnover happens when the disc falls to the ground (and is picked by the opposing team from the place to where it rolls), or when the catch is completed out of bounds (unlike in NFL where players need to make an “in bounds contact” with two body parts before rolling out, in Ultimate Frisbee contact with only one body part is enough and the line counts as OUT), when the disc is seized by the opposing team, or when a marker counts to 10 (about that later).
Players’ rights
Since there is no referee in the game, everything is managed by the players on the field. Every player has a right to call out of bounds, in bounds, goal, stall count, foul, pick or some kind of violation. The most frequently used right is stall count. A defender of a player with the disc in his possession is called marker. From 3 meters up to a distance equal to a diameter of the disc a marker is allowed to (read has to) stay and count seconds. If the possessor of disc doesn’t make a throw until a 10th second is reached, the result is a stall count and that means turnover.
A player with a disc cannot run, but he can pivot line in Basketball. The pivoting foot for right handed players is always left. Also you can see the marker stall counting.
Non-contact
Ultimate Frisbee is a non-contact sport. The rules actually say something like “contact should be avoided at all cost”. In reality though, the contact of the game is often times similar to Basketball. There is no way in the game how to legally tackle someone. But you can use your body to block the paths of the guy you are defending. In games of lower level this is not often done, but the higher the level the more usage of own bodies can be seen.
https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://i.makeagif.com/media/4-03-2014/85ndBy.gif
(GIFs are not supported. Please open the link directly to understand how the body can be used to block your opponent’s path)
This is a perfect example. As you can see the defender read the path of the offensive player and stood his ground. The offender ran through him, resulting in a classic offensive foul. Usually the offender sees that his defender is in the way and manages to stop or at least slow down. This happens quite often and the foul call shouldn’t be made unless you stumble to the ground like in this gif.
Also when 2 players are jumping for a high floating disc, they almost always bump into each other, because there is no space for 2 players under the disc if they both read it well.
This ultimately comes down to whether the player hits the player first (foul), or makes the play on the disc and then hits the player (clean).
Fouls
Foul is basically any contact that has happened prior to touching the disc. I will illustrate possible situations with pictures.
A perfect example of a foul. It is clear that the defender has rolled over the attacker before he has touched the disc. This is an obvious foul.
Another example is when you try to make a play on the disc, but you miss it, while hitting the offensive player. Number 7 couldn’t have made a play on the disc because of a misread of the defensive player – foul.
What is going to happen on this picture is a special version of foul – strip. If the disc is caught – the rotation has been stopped - (even if barely) any kind of contact with the disc or the hand resulting in a loss of a possession is called a strip. Those are the trickiest to decide, because only the player catching the disc often time knows, whether he has really had stopped the rotation, therefore caught it, or not.
I will use my defensive layout as an illustration of clean D. As you can see I have avoided any contact and hit only the disc.
In games of higher level what often happens is that the contact happens right after you make a block, because everyone is really fast and willing to give it their all. Let’s pretend that the guy in the blue shirt is defensive player. Even though a slight contact with his hand has happened before the block has occurred, this shouldn’t be a foul, because the little contact hasn’t changed anything. They will hit each other afterwards, but that is not a foul, because he has made a play on a disc first.
Pick
Unlike in Basketball, every defender has a right to follow his offensive player using the closest path to him. If along the way he has to change direction, or has to stop due to ANY player getting in his way, it’s called a pick. Calling of picks should be avoided, if they do not really affect the game!
Calls and how to solve them
There are calls that stop the play and those that do not.
Those that do not stop the play are minorities that have been cause by markers. Those could be counting from more than 3 meters away, being way to close to the player with the disc while marking, intentionally blocking vision of the thrower, straddling the thrower (thus interrupting his pivoting). It could also be a double team – 2 players in the range of 3 meters around the disc are not allowed if the second player is not directly defending an opponent who is in that range. After those calls the marker has to go down by 2 seconds in the counting. If he doesn’t, violation is called and that finally stops the game.
Bigger fouls like contacts and picks always stop the game and need to be resolved between the engaged players. When a player calls a foul, the game is stopped. Involved players then have 30 seconds to state their points of view. What can happen then is a) The guy who called the foul is convinced that the foul did not happen and takes the call back. b) The guy who has caused the foul knows it and does not contest the foul. That results in a situation where the offensive player takes the disc and starts the game again from the spot where the foul has occurred. Or c) The guy who has caused the foul does not think that he has fouled and contests the call. That results in a disc going back to the thrower that has thrown the last pass.
Every player has to stop when they hear a call that stops the game. If they didn’t hear it at that moment, they have to come back and any progress that has happened is discarded. When the call is resolved and everyone is ready, the disc is checked in and the game starts again. The time does not stop!
Heart-breaking highlights
The article is over! i hope that you guys now understand (at least partly) the sport I’m going to cover on my blog:).
Let me finish this article with an awesome highlights from the Worlds Championship where we, Czech Republic, ended on 13th place from over 30 attending countries. The intensity, the good moments, the sad moments, the atmosphere…it’s all there! I highly recommend spending another 7 minutes of your lives by watching this video :). It is totally worth it...believe me... I will do the same…again...and again. Peace guys.
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