This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
The History
of Ultimate
BY ADAM zAGORIA
NEW JERSEY – David Leiwant stood in the Columbia
High School parking lot watching the younger players
throw, chase, and catch the disc under the bright
white lights and the cover of a summer night. “If you
squint your eyes, it’s almost like 25 years ago,” said
the 42-year-old Leiwant, a 1973 alumnus of Columbia,
located in Maplewood, N.J. “Just a rag-tag bunch of
guys running around with a Frisbee.”
Leiwant was a 13-year-old seventh-grader in 1968,
a tumultuous year for America and the world. Martin
Luther King, Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy were
assassinated, a war raged in Vietnam and the country
Phot
was coming to grips with the civil rights and women’s
o b
y E
d Summer
A BRAVE NEW WORLD
s
rights revolutions. But, in one corner of the country,
in Maplewood, things were changing for the better. In the fall of 1967, Silver proposed that the Student
That year, staff members of the school’s newspaper, Council form a Frisbee team. Suggested as a joke, the
The Colombian, and its Student Council developed an motion was seconded and then passed. Discussion of
CHS Varsity Frisbee Squad: (Top row from left to right)
entirely new sport as a gag and an activity for their Frisbee continued in the Council throughout the year
Captain Joel Silver, Head Coach Cono Pavone, Bob
high school nights. Led by Joel Silver — the willful, and into the spring, but it remained tongue-in-cheek.
Mittlesdorf, Jonny Hines, Buzzy Hellring, Arnold Tzoltic,
if somewhat arrogant, member of the Council and “It was not a serious thing at all, it was a lark of
Joe Staker, Paul Brenner, Tom Carr, Mark Epstein,
the newspaper — the students adapted the rules of Council,” Silver later said. Yet by the end of the school
General Manager Alexander Osinski, (Second row)
Frisbee Football and Ultimately invented the fast- year, Silver and other members of the Council began to
Tom Corwin, Frisbee (Pro Model), David Medinets,
moving team sport we know today. The sport of organize a game during their lunch period. Members
David Leiwant, (Third row) Fred Appelgate, Howard
Ultimate. of The Colombian had already been tossing a disc
Straubing, Steve German, Vincent, (Laying down) Steve
“Joel Silver said it was the ‘Ultimate sports -- a black 150-gram Wham-O, Master Tournament
Schwartz, Frisbee (Master Model).
experience,’” Leiwant said. “He said, ‘Someday people Model -- during lunch on the east lawn of the school.
all over the world will be playing this game,’ and we all That spring, members of both the newspaper and There was no specific provision made for what
said, ‘Yeah, Joel, right.’ the Council began to play Frisbee Football. The first is today called “Spirit of the Game” because it was
Thirty years after Silver’s prophetic words, Ultimate games were played on a small field that was later torn viewed by those at Columbia as a “gentleman’s sport,
is played in 42 countries, with programs in Sweden, up and replaced with the school’s B-wing. a collegial game,’’ said Hines, who went on to found
Norway, and Japan receiving government funding. It “It was a chance for The Colombian core -- the the Princeton team and is now a New York City-
is estimated that at least 100,000 people play the intelligentsia (sic) and non-athletes of the school based attorney. “Even my Princeton jock-ringers of
sport worldwide, about half in the United States. -- to play a sport,” Silver has said. Many of the the time (football recruits from Texas and Missouri)
Ultimate will be a medal sport in the 2001 World original players were in the upper ranks of the school were gentlemen, relatively speaking, on the Frisbee
Games in Japan. academically, future Ivy Leaguers who weren’t exactly field. Hines, the most athletic of the trio of founding
Silver, who is now the head of Hollywood’s Silver your Bo Jacksons and Kobe Bryants. “The core of us fathers, said the players liked the game’s athleticism.
Pictures and was unavailable for comment because he were largely among the better students,” Summers “There was very graceful running and jumping,” he
was working on the filming of Lethal Weapon 4, had said. “There were also some druggie types. We were said. Graceful by some, not so graceful by others.
played Frisbee Football at a camp in Mount Hermon, about evenly split between the better students and “There was a mix of athletes and some uncoordinated,
Massachusetts in the summer of 1967. When he the half who smoked dope.” overweight people playing,” he said. “The former
returned home to Maplewood, he continued to throw The game was freeform early on, with no limits could run and jump like gazelles; the latter evoked
with his friends, including Bernard “Buzzy” Hellring, as to how many players should be on each side. As other analogies.” Some players came in sneakers and
the editor of The Colombian, and Jonny Hines, the many as 20 to 30 players were allowed per team. sweats, others in stiff jeans and walking shoes. “If
newspaper’s sports editor. Although Frisbee was not The original game allowed running with the disc and there weren’t enough people, you’d grab somebody,
quite as big a fad as the hula hoop in the 1950s and included lines of scrimmage and a series of downs, some kid going by,” Leiwant said. “Originally we
’60s, discs were beginning to seep into the American but as they played, Silver, Hellring, and Hines began would play as long as we felt like it -- till the sun went
consciousness. to modify the rules. Conceptualizing basketball, down, till people got tired and had to leave.”
“I started throwing a Frisbee in 1961 with my two hockey, and soccer, they experimented, gradually In 1968 Hellring decided to turn The Colombian
sisters,” said Ed Summers, who graduated Columbia eliminating running with the disc and the system of from a weekly into a daily, but needed more articles
High in 1972. “It was a big fad. We threw mostly downs, and establishing rules for the defense. Unable to justify the change. When Frisbee play during
backhands. The other big throw was the overhand to satisfactorily define a foul, one player came up lunch grew, he figured it would give him something
wrist flip.” with the phrase that a foul constituted “any action to write about. When Silver was ejected from the
sufficient to arouse the ire of your opponent.” newspaper’s staff, a mock rivalry developed between
34 Ultimate Canada Magazine — www.canadianultimate.com
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42
Produced with Yudu - www.yudu.com