Canberra Ultimate 101 and FAQ

This post details the basics of Ultimate in Canberra

This post is a set of information (as at June 2008) to help you find your way to the nearest frisbee game. Thanks go to JDR of the Brisbane Ultimate blog for the unrestrained scavenging of their material, http://brisbaneultimatedisc.blogspot.com/

What is Ultimate Frisbee?
Ultimate is a seven-a-side sport that uses a frisbee (or 'disc'). Its a fast, free-flowing game played world-wide, combining elements of netball, soccer, grid-iron and touch footy. The basic aim is for the team with the disc to pass it up the field to others on their team and catch it in the end zone. At the same time the defensive team is trying to intercept it or knock it to the ground. If they succeed, they get possession of the disc and attempt to score in their end zone. Distinct to Ultimate is its non-refereed rules set-up - known as Spirit of the Game - where players are responsible.

Why Play Ultimate?
Its a hard running and energetic team sport without the getting knocked around or dealing with grumpy referees, coaches or opponents of other sports. In Canberra it is an incredibly social and friendly sport, played by a range of people of differing ages and experience. It can be played single sex or mixed gender without any changes in the rules to accommodate the different body types of the players. It's cheap - all you need is some friends, some grass (or beach) and a disc.

How do I Find Out More?
General announcements, particularly regarding new seasons, upcoming events and pickup games are generally made via the Canberra Ultimate Blog and the mailing lists from past seasons of league. Keep an eye on here for the latest. You can also post a comment to this here blog to get help!

What's This Blog Then?
Mostly it exists to support the Canberra Ultimate community, and hence has a range of news, views and just plain silly stuff, depending on the whims of the posters. Yes, there's a few in jokes, and on occasion it ventures well beyond the limits of Canberra and/or Ultimate Frisbee. Don't take it too seriously.

Tell Me About Leagues
There's a few options for playing Ultimate throughout the year in Canberra. All of the leagues in Canberra are mixed gender, meaning that each team has to have a set minimum number of each gender on the field at anyone time.

The best time to start is in Spring. From mid October to late March we have two series of leagues that cover three divisions of play. Traditionally we run our leagues at Dickson Ovals, on Antill Street, on Tuesday nights. This year we are reformatting our league timing to ensure we have space for the leagues to grow, as field space has become our limiting factor in increasing the league size. You can enter these leagues as an individual player, a group of friends or a whole team. So if you are really keen to try frisbee out, get together a group of your mates and we can provide an experienced player to play with and guide your team through the league.

Just after April we start our Autumn leagues, which run on Wednesday nights and are again at Dickson Fields. These leagues run until early July.

Then we have the Winter league season. Traditionally this has only had an Indoor league but this year we are adding a different style of Outdoor league as well. Instead of playing outside in the cold every week for one night, we are going to put aside one Sunday a month to play three games during a day, where it will be notionally warmer. The indoor league this season will be played at the AIS and the Outdoor league will be over at the Downer playing fields.

Canberra Representative Clubs
The majority of elite ultimate in Australia is played by touring clubs, which periodically travel away for a weekend to play other touring clubs in tournaments. This is ultimate at its flashiest and the tournaments have evolved into very serious and exciting affairs. Australian Ultimate effectively has two different major seasons, the single sex season, from January to April and the Mixed sex season, from August to October. Both of these seasons end with their respective nationals tournaments, in late April and mid October.

In the single sex season, Canberra has Fyshwick United, the men's representative club and Factory Girls, the women's representative club. Both of these clubs improved on their past performances at Nationals this year, coming 2nd in the men's and 5th in the women's. This Wide World of Sports segment has footage of both teams, with the Factory Girls in the Royal Blue and the FU boys in the 'mango'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5A8tj7F5hc


Groups of Canberra players also routinely form for Mixed Nationals in October, and various other tournaments around Australia during the mixed season. Mixed Nationals 2008 will be held in Brisbane. The ACT will be represented by local mixed club Kaboom, which intends to build towards attending World Clubs in 2010.

Tournaments
A lot of Ultimate is built around weekend tournaments. These are usually accompanied by a big party, and are a great way to develop your on and off field game!

March sees the Eastern Regionals - the qualifier for Nationals in Open and Women's division.

April is dominated by Nationals, which rotates around the nation. Nationals 2009 is planned for Perth.

From June to September there are a selection of university and non-university mixed tournaments in the lead up to Australian University Games and Mixed Nationals. This includes one Canberra tournament, Shenanigans.

During the mid-semester holidays in September, the Australian University Games are held at a site rotated around Australia. In recent times, Ultimate has become the largest sport at the Games. In the past ANU have sent teams that typically place between 4th and 8th.

October is dominated by Mixed Nationals. Brisbane will be hosting Mixed Nationals in 2008.

The end of October marks something of the start of the social season, with the Melbourne Hat, Longest Day Beach tournament and Diskapital hat tournaments. Hat tournaments are tournaments where the teams are formed randomly from individual players but balanced for ability and gender, meaning you will be playing with people that have just started the sport to those that have represented Australia at World Championships. These social tournaments peter out as the single sex seasons starts and finishes with the Terrigal Towel, a beach hat tournament in March.