Ultimate Frisbee: History - present - future

The most common disc sport1, Ultimate, spreads all over the world. About 1,400 sportsmen from 23 nations took part in the 10th World Ultimate & Guts Championships held in Heilbronn, Germany, in August 2000. These were the biggest World Championships that ever took place in the history of disc sports. And it was also a big step forward for the game of Ultimate. The top six nations are qualified to take part at the World Games 2001 in Akita, Japan. Ultimate and Disc Golf will be official part of these Games of non-Olympic sports for the first time ever.


As a matter of fact, not everybody in the Ultimate community is happy about how things developed. Many of the "old-school"-players are afraid of the growth of their beloved sport. They fear that the "Spirit of the Game" will be destroyed if the sport becomes more and more popular. But there are also a lot of players and officials that welcome the future and hope that Ultimate will lose its shadowy existence.


This paper will pick up the discussion and show how the future of Ultimate may look like. Therefore the game of Ultimate will be presented to the reader shortly. In the second part the history of Ultimate and Frisbee in general will be told. Afterwards there will be a look at the present situation of Ultimate in the World, the United States and Europe. Therefore the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) and the Ultimate Players Association (UPA) will be presented. There will also be a short look at a survey of the typical Ultimate player. At the last step there will be a look at the future. What may happen to the sport and why may these things happen.