Grace and I stand in the middle of our apartment complex’s long, rectangular lawn. The too-green grass is

slightly mushy, and I shift my weight from foot to foot in an attempt to avoid sinking into the mud. It’s a bit chilly, late afternoon just before the sun sets, and we’re wearing sweatshirts.

She’s a few feet away from me, holding a frisbee in her right hand. Grace looks like an athlete, tall and lean

with bleach blonde hair pulled into a bun. She effortlessly tosses the frisbee into the air; it rises a few feet before falling down into her open hand. “We’ll just throw this back and forth for a bit,” she says. “Then we’ll go from there.” She tosses it up again, catches it, then gestures for me to take a few steps back.

To me, ultimate frisbee is something nostalgic. We played it in high school gym class every Friday—“Frisbee

Friday”, my teacher called it—and during the last few weeks of senior year, my friends and I would meet up at Rose Hill, a baseball field, for our own Frisbee Fridays. But in our version, we didn’t play actual games of ultimate frisbee; instead, we’d throw the frisbee around, end up sitting in a circle, and talk about whatever’s currently going on in our lives. When COVID-19 forced all of us home from college, those nights on Rose Hill, carefully seated six feet apart, became something of a solace for all of us.

But to Grace, frisbee is an active part of her college experience. She’s a member of the Miami University

Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team—or the “Frisbaes”—and has been for the past two years. She played soccer in high school, and wanted to continue to play a team sport, but was looking for something a bit less competitive. She found the frisbee team spring semester of her sophomore year, and the rest is history.

She takes a few more steps back, unsatisfied with the distance I’ve put between us, and throws the frisbee. It

sails over my head, and I have to run to scoop it up from the ground. Grace is laughing when I throw the frisbee back, and she jumps a little to catch it. When she throws it to me, I miss again and again. I was never any good at frisbee in high school, a fact I’m brutally reminded of now. When I eventually manage to catch one, nearly twenty minutes after we’ve started, Grace smiles. We do this, back and forth, for about an hour. I think I catch maybe a third of Grace’s throws; she catches about twice that.

“You’re just a bad thrower,” I grumble as we head back to the apartment.

She laughs. “Yeah, some of mine weren’t great. My apologies.”

This catches me off guard. I was just joking; I didn’t think she’d agree, much less apologize. I don’t actually

know if her throws were bad or not. When we get back to the apartment, Grace heads out to the balcony and slides the frisbee into her gym bag, on top of her cleats.

​

Ultimate frisbee (or just “ultimate”) is a relatively simple game. The field is similar to that of football,

composed of two end zones at opposite ends of the field. Two teams, each having seven people on the field at a time, try to get the frisbee to the end zone opposite the one they’re guarding. The team on defense—who just scored—throws the frisbee to the other team, and only then can the players leave their endzone. The best throws here are long and high, which give all the players time to get to their spots.

Once a player gets possession of the frisbee, they have ten seconds to throw it to another teammate. They

can either take three steps with the frisbee in their hands or establish a pivot point—they can’t move from that pivot point, but they can change the direction they’re facing. If they don’t throw the frisbee within ten seconds, if the frisbee touches the ground, or if a player from the other team intercepts it, the frisbee goes to the other team. The game ends when one team scores fifteen points; each time a player catches the frisbee in an endzone, they score one point. They can’t walk into the endzone—they have to be in it when they catch the frisbee.

“A big thing about frisbee is the Spirit of the Game,” Grace says, in the middle of explaining the rules to me.

We’re seated in the living room, me on a black faux-leather couch and her on the matching adjacent armchair. It’s a few days after we first threw the frisbee back and forth, and she’s got on the same sweatshirt. Her feet are pulled up on the chair so her knees are bent in front of her chest. Her black sweatpants ride up her right leg, showing a bit of a tattoo—a small outline of a cat in black ink. Her mom has a matching one. On her left calf, hidden by her pant leg, is a large, colorful flower. The orange and yellow and green ink stand out against her pale skin.

The Spirit of the Game, which has its own section in the official rulebook, is a set of guiding principles that all

players are to follow. It’s the players’ jobs to keep the game fair, as ultimate is a no-contact, self-reffed sport. It operates under the impression that the players will not intentionally break the rules, so rather than there being harsh punishments for anyone who does something wrong, the rules dictate that the game proceed as if the rule-breaking never happened. In addition to being responsible for their own actions, players should keep an eye on their teammates to make sure they’re making valid calls.

When I ask what happens if someone doesn’t follow the Spirit of the Game, Grace cocks her head to the side,

as if the question confuses her. “I don’t know. We all just follow it.”

I try to press a bit further. “But could you lie about hitting someone? Or take more than ten seconds to throw

the frisbee? If there are no penalties, what do you have to lose?”

She’s silent for a second, then shrugs. “We just don’t do that.”

 

The Miami U Women’s Ultimate team has been on campus since 2009, and currently has about thirty

members. Anyone who identifies as female can join, as there is a separate men’s team. “Although we’re working on allowing non-binary people to join as well,” Grace says on our walk to Cook Field. It’s a little before 5 PM, and the team’s practice is starting soon.

When we arrive, I see a lot of familiar faces—many of my friends are members of the team. They all wave

enthusiastically at me, and I hear various cries of, “Hannah! Hi!” and “What are you doing here?” I grin and wave back. Because we’re outside, and will be standing appropriately far apart, none of us have masks on. But even if we did, the team’s smiles would shine right through them.

Grace had previously described how practices work: they start with static and dynamic stretches, then spend

some time throwing frisbees around in pairs. Then they work on specific types of throws—she gives me names, but they all go over my head—before doing drills meant to strengthen throwing and defense. Finally, they either warm down, stretch again, or do some conditioning.

At this practice, the captains have everyone run laps around the field. “Try to do five, but stop whenever

you’d like. We don’t want you too tired for the rest of practice!” The team trots over to the side of the field and starts to run. Some do all five; others just do one. When the members who are still running pass those who have stopped, they’re greeted with enthusiastic cheers and shouts.

They practice some throws that all look the same to me before dividing in quarters and starting a scrimmage.

I keep waiting for the Spirit of the Game to fail, for someone to hit someone else and vehemently deny it, or to accuse someone else of cheating. But it never happens. Teammates instantly own up to their mistakes, hold each other accountable, and make honest calls. When the opposing side scores, shouts of, “You cheated!” could be heard, but they’re lighthearted, and no one makes any move to challenge the point.

As I watch the team play, I think about the fact that the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF), which oversees

all flying disc sports, including ultimate, has a Spirit of the Game committee. Everything clicks into place. Respect for the rules and other players is such an important part of this sport, what allows it to be self-reffed yet run so smoothly. It’s easy for the Spirit of the Game to be so central to ultimate when you’re playing in such a positive environment. It seems this team has found the perfect balance between competitive and supportive play.

“Are the tournaments like this, too?” I ask Grace on our walk home, about two hours after we first arrived.

The team plays a few tournaments in the fall, but the spring is where the games start to matter. If they win enough, they make it to sectionals, and then to regionals. They hardly ever get to regionals; while the team isn’t the lowest-ranked in the state, they’re close to the bottom.

“Yup,” Grace says. “I can count the number of fights I’ve seen on one hand.” Due to the team’s low ranking,

they tend to focus more on having fun and playing well than winning. “Even if we weren’t so low-ranked,” Grace adds, reading my mind, “we’d still be friendly. It’s just part of the game.” I can’t help but think of the hockey games, of the Miami fans booing the ref and chanting “It’s all your fault!” at the opposing team’s goalie.

The WFDF also recommends that teams give themselves a “Sprit Score” at the end of every game to

determine things like how well they followed the rules and what they could do better next time. The team doesn’t do this after their scrimmage, but Grace says they do after actual games. “We usually score pretty high,” she says. “And so do the other teams. I can’t think of a single instance where we had a legitimate problem.”

Long after we get back to the apartment, I keep thinking about the Spirit of the Game, about how incredible

it is that it’s able to be such a huge part of this sport. When I tell her that the next morning, she smiles. “Yeah,” she says, over breakfast. “It’s pretty cool. I think that if every sport had something like that, we’d all be a lot happier.”

She takes a bite of her cereal, and a few moments later, adds, “Except for hockey. I wouldn’t trade those

chants for anything.”