Exciting New Sport: Ultimate Frisbee!

by Ron Hjertstedt | Sep 5, 2022 | Community News, What’s Going On?

It was an excit­ing weekend on 3, 4 Sep­tem­ber.  Ron sir created a rela­tion­ship with UPAI (India’s excit­ing National Ulti­mate Frisbee Team), and we had impact­ful train-the-trainer ses­sions with one of their top inter­na­tional players and coaches.

VITS Uni­ver­sity did a great job of hosting the event, and we had several of our sports coaches be offi­cially trained in the sport by UPAI, which enables us to prop­erly train others in our area, and create more teams.  Soon, start­ing this week, we will imple­ment what we learned and start train­ing our students.

One of the great aspects of Ulti­mate Frisbee is the called “The Spirit of the Game”.  It is rec­og­nized inter­na­tion­ally as a key aspect to the sport, which means that every­one who plays the game is also judged on rules knowl­edge, polite­ness, exem­pli­fy­ing honesty and self-ref­er­ee­ing, and always being joyful and excited and encour­ag­ing to those on your team as well as the opponents.

In India, the sport is break­ing bar­ri­ers between all sorts of man-made divides that tend to sep­a­rate us.  There is equal­ity between the genders as India mainly plays “mixed games”, which means that a team is com­prised of either 4 females and 3 males, or 3 females and 4 males.  Each team has 7 players on the field, and more as sub­sti­tutes off the bench.

India’s national team has won bronze at the Asia/Oceana Cham­pi­onship in France in 2017, and proudly has won 5 Gold Medals in “The Spirit of the Game” cat­e­gory.  To win the “Spirit of the Game” cat­e­gory means that the oppo­nents voted India’s team to be the most honest, joyful, ener­getic, encour­ag­ing, polite, and rule-wise team in the tournament.

So, be alert.  We have offi­cially trained Level One coaches now in Satna and Nagod.  This is excit­ing.  This sport is super fun (it is a cross between Amer­i­can Foot­ball, Bas­ket­ball, and Soccer).  Plus, it is a sport that teaches us to be kind and polite, and self-governing…able to work out dis­agree­ments on the field between players in a calm manner.

It was a true honor that Coach Abhinav from UPAI came all this way to train us.  Let’s make UPAI proud and start to field players right here in our area that may even­tu­ally go on to play inter­na­tion­ally for India’s National Ulti­mate Frisbee Team.

India plays all over the world.  Coach Abhinav has played in Japan, Ireland, England, Italy, Aus­tralia, and so many other coun­tries.  It is a sport that is acces­si­ble for every­one, but it takes serious effort to get good at throw­ing the flying disc!  Let’s do it.