History of Ultimate

Major Steps in History of Ultimate

In 1968 Joel Silver introduced his idea of Ultimate Frisbee to the Columbia High School student council in Maplewood New Jersey, USA. The next year, the first game was played between two groups of students. They used a Wham-O Master disc.

In 1969 a team had been formed at the school and they played in a parking lot. The only lines that existed were the goal lines, usually marked by the telephone poles or piles of the players' coats.

The first and second set of rules were written in 1970 by Joel Silver, Buzzy Hellring and Jon Hines. On Nov 7th, CHS played the first interscholastic game. They won over Millburn High School by a score of 43 to 10.

The first college ultimate game was played between Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1972. Rutgers won the game 29-27. The two universities had played the first intercollegiate football game on the same ground exactly 103 years earlier. Rutgers also won that game by 2.

The first organised tournament, The National Collegiate Championships, was played on April 25th in 1975. Eight teams took part in a tournament in Yale. Rutgers University won the final against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with 28-24. In 1976 the Yale tournament was expanded and renamed into the National Ultimate Frisbee Championship. Rutgers won again.

An Abbreviated History of Ultimate Compiled by Michael E. Iacovella

Ultimate, as with all disc sports, would not exist without the invention of the flying disc, or "Frisbee," as it is commonly known. The first known contemporary tossing of a "disc" was by Yale University (USA) undergrads in the early 20th century. The Yale campus was in close proximity to Connecticut's Frisbie Pie Company, whose pies while being a popular treat in themselves were sold in metal tins that would hold flight when thrown over a very short distance. The now-popular pastime of "tossing the disc" remained in obscurity until the invention of a plastic flying disc by Fred Morrison in 1948, which was much more durable and flight-worthy than anything made of wood or metal. This invention led to the first mass-produced disc, called the "Pluto Platter," made by the Wham-O toy company beginning in 1951. The year 1954 saw the first recorded competition using a flying disc when Dartmouth University (USA) students organized a tournament for the disc sport known as "Guts." A year after the Frisbie Pie Company's closing in 1958, Wham-O, based in California, USA, registered the name "Frisbee" as a name for its flying disc products. This trademark was reportedly the result of the predictable nickname that students at Yale and Harvard had given to the new toys.