Seattle High School Ultimate Makes SCTop10

Zach Heffron's (Nathan Hale High School) full layout one-handed score catch during hit #4 of ESPN's SCTop10. Nathan Hale HS won Washington State boys ultimate championship in 2014.

@ESPNAssignDesk - check out @HaleUltimate with a ridiculous layout for the goal #SCtop10 pic.twitter.com/6NOOPBSvz5

— Fulcrum Media Group (@FulcrumPro) October 22, 2016

Ultimate Frisbee Slated To Be Added by Arlington Public Schools

Ultimate is slated to become a recognized team sport in Arlington (Virginia) Public Schools for middle schools and high schools. If approved, APS will fund ultimate uniforms and ultimate coaches, plus pay transportation to local games.

From the article: School Board members in mid-August are slated to approve its addition to the ranks of intramural sports in county middle schools, high schools and specialty programs, with competition starting in the fall.

Ultimate Frisbee already is a growing niche sport among Arlington youth, who play on club teams that, while representing individual schools or groups of schools, have no direct involvement with the school system. [See H-B Woodlawn]

That will change if the School Board OKs the program for intramural ("co-curricular" in school-speak) status.

Under the proposal, each secondary school or program will field teams for girls and boys, with practice taking place in September and competition running throughout October. The estimated $92,000 cost of managing the program and funding equipment and uniforms will be carved out of the existing school-system budget.

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[h/t Smo]

HB Woodlawn Girls Varsity Ultimate Team wins Regional Crown

Congratulations to H-B Woodlawn for winning USA Ultimate's 2016 Southern High School Regional Championship in the Girls Division. The girls varsity ultimate team from the Secondary Program based in Arlington, Virginia, goes by the name of Pandamonium.

The HB-Woodlawn girls ultimate team entered the tournament in Atlanta as the 4th seed. HBW Pandas went (3-0) on the first day of the tourney including a 10-8 victory over the 2nd-seeded Carrboro (North Carolina) High School team.

In Sunday's bracket play, HBW faced off with a familiar opponent - Arlington's Yorktown/Washington-Lee YLee Coyotes, which HBW won by 10-9 (6-7 HT). HBW took down East Chapel Hill (N.C.) High School by 4 goals (10-6) in the semifinals, and then faced the #1 seeded team Paideia School from Atlanta, Georgia.

Both teams entered the finals of High School Southern Regional undefeated at (6-0). HB-Woodlawn won the championship against the defending champions by the score of 8-6. Read USA Ultimate's more detailed recap.

This happened. pic.twitter.com/lxC8X0KGSB

— YULA Ultimate (@YULAultimate) May 15, 2016

HB-Woodlawn Girls ultimate team is coached by Leslie "Baywatch" Keller, and is captained by
its 2 seniors on the team - Maddy Boyle and Agnes Cheng. Congratulations to all Pandamonium players: Miranda Baltaxe, Katie Franz, Nicole Getter, Kaiya Gordon, Ellie Heil, Ava Jones, Ella Juengst, Bryn Kabiri, Caroline Kassir, Kirsten Knisely, Julianne Meany, Maya Nir, Maura Shapiro, Franci Swisher-Gomez, Caroline Tornquist, and Juliana Walker.


The boy's HB-Woodlawn ultimate team were also successful with 3rd place (tie) finish at Southern Regionals.

[Scores via USAU]

Joel Silver Explains His Ultimate History

Joel Silver (producer of the new film The Nice Guys)is an alum of Columbia High School where the first rules of ultimate frisbee were developed.

Quotes from the Coming Soon article [5/18/2016; Silas Lesnick]:

Joel Silver on his contribution to the sport of ultimate:
"I like to say we developed it."

Joel Silver on his inspiration:
"I went one year to Mount Hermon...prep school. One summer, there were a couple guys there from Amherst and Amherst was the location of a place called [The Frisbie Pie Company]. They made these metal pie tins, which is what they first started throwing around there in Massachusetts.... There was kind of a game that they played at Amherst since the '50s that had elements of a kind of run and catch game, which I was taught there that summer. Then I brought it back to my high school."

Joel Silver on how he started ultimate at his high school:
"As a joke one day — because it was a kind of counter culture time — I had raised my hand in my student council and I say, 'I'd like to move that we have a committee to investigate the possibility of bringing frisbee into the high school curriculum.'  I mean, it was a joke. I didn't expect to have a committee to investigate playing frisbee, so we kind of started playing this game and they just had built that parking lot, which is down the street. They decided to light it at night, because they didn't want a dark, empty parking lot there. They lit it all night, so we had a place to go and we'd come at the end of our evening and we'd all collect there and play this kind of game that we started playing."

"It was popular. People would come and hang out and play this game. We'd play in the winter. It was fun and, by the end of that school year, we played the student council."

Joel Silver on writing game rules and naming the game:
To show what the committee did, I decided to put the rules on paper and so we wrote up the rules. There was a game then they used to play that Wham-O had put out called 'Guts Frisbee.' It was the dumbest games in the world. You stand there across from each other and throw the frisbee as hard as you can at the other team. It's called 'Guts Frisbee.' Dumbest game. So when my friend who wrote the rules wrote it, he called it ‘Speed Frisbee’. I said, "You can't call it 'Speed Frisbee'! That's as dumb as Guts Frisbee! Let's call it "Ultimate Frisbee." The Ultimate Frisbee, that's what well call it!" So we typed it up, put it in, submitted it, and that was the game."


RELATED: TMZ Sports asks Joel Silver about ultimate Frisbee

Amherst Invitational 25 Years & Still Playing Ultimate

The Amherst Invitational - an annual high school ultimate tournament in Amherst, Massachusetts - completed its 25th year. Tiina Booth threw out the ceremonial first pull on May 7th, and in honor of AI's 25th year Tiina was also gifted a tribute disc with her likeness:

Thanks @joeyandheather and @vcultimate ❤️ my commemorative disc for 25th #embarrasedtoo #notforsale @AIUltimateTourn pic.twitter.com/fyBQyIjzeP

— NUTC (@NUTC_Amherst) May 7, 2016

"In Tiina We Trust" Commemorative Ultimate Disc

She was a teacher at Amherst Regional High School and used to coaching ARHS' varsity boys ultimate team.  For tourney results, visit their Facebook page.

Logos for 2016 High School Regional Championships

USA Ultimate released the event logos for High School Regional Championships.

USA Ultimate logos via

Each logo displays a consistent look with some regional flair. Northeasterns in Pennsylvania is black and yellow with a steel (?) building. Centrals in Iowa is red and yellow with wheat stalks. Westerns in Oregon is yellow and green with an evergreen. And, Southerns is yellow and blue with a flamingo.

Compare: to the 2015 regional logos which were more diverse:

Ultimate Frisbee to be Recognized by State's H.S. Athletics

This goes beyond gym class offering Ultimate Frisbee. Text from the article "VPA to Add Ultimate Frisbee for 2015" by Greg Fennell.

Ultimate Frisbee in Vermont is getting the ultimate reception: official recognition from the state's governing body for high school athletics.

The field sport that uses the trademarked disc for a ball and employs elements of football, soccer and basketball in its play will be an exhibition sport for the next two years, starting next spring, Vermont Principals Association associate executive director Bob Johnson announced during Thursday's annual media day at the VPA's Montpelier office. At least 13 schools have said they'll take part in the endeavor, which could be elevated to full state sanctioning as early as 2017 if ultimate can meet a number of mandates.

"It's absolutely amazing how many kids are involved," Johnson told the gathering of about two dozen media members. "Down here in Montpelier, they’ll tell you they have somewhere between 50 and 60 kids that play ultimate. … Some of these nontraditional sports that we've seen in the past few years have just completely grown in popularity."

Vermont is the first state in the country to support ultimate in this manner, according to Montpelier High coach Anne Watson, one of the forces behind VPA sanctioning. Watson estimated the first spring league could encompass between 16 and 20 schools.

... Johnson said a group representing ultimate made its first serious pitch to the VPA's activities standards committee in February. He called it "probably the best presentation that I've ever seen on an exhibition sport."

"They brought in about 15 students from various schools in Vermont — Montpelier, Fairfax, CVU, schools down south; they brought them in from all over," Johnson said. "They also brought in seven or eight coaches and sat there and explained to us what ultimate was. It was just an excellent presentation."

Ultimate also has carved out a niche as an antiestablishment team game. Some contests are played to a certain score rather than with timed periods. Many levels of the game are played without referees, with the competitors policing themselves.

Johnson said an ultimate committee will begin meetings this fall to plan for the sport's future. The group, made up of coaches and athletic directors from ultimate-playing schools, will be in charge of writing the sport's rules if the game is to achieve full VPA sanctioning.

"They came to us and said, 'We need to have some sort of body under which we come under, an umbrella type of body,' " Johnson said. "'We need a body that will establish formal rules and regulations because we’re growing so much. Plus, we have all these high school kids that are participating.'"

"When they come under the VPA's umbrella, with any sport, what happens is you've agreed to abide by our rules. That means you're going to have rules, number one, which a lot of people look at ultimate and say, 'Really?' "

"People play ultimate because it's relaxed. That's sort of the appeal. I'm in favor of whatever the kids want to do." Ultimate’s biggest challenge will ultimately be getting out the word.

"One of the main things is Frisbee is viewed as a laid-back sport, and it definitely is," Ruddell said. "To get to that varsity level, there will need to be more separation between Frisbee for fun and Frisbee as a competitive sport. It's so early in its establishment right now that people don't know much about it. That is a huge obstacle.'

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[SOURCE: Valley News]