• a map to where we play
• join our e-mail list
• a rambling description of Ultimate
• photos from a winter game

January 23, 2005

We play Ultimate every Sunday afternoon in Greenbelt.

Ultimate is an energetic, non-contact sport played on a field using a frisbee; the disc is passed among teammates with the intent of scoring goals in their endzone. It takes about 4 minutes to learn how to play. For an introduction to Ultimate, visit The Ultimate Handbook.  For comprehensive information about Ultimate, visit the Ultimate Players' Association.

No experience required.

Women and men welcome.

We play every week--year round--that the field is free of thunderstorms, and is not simultaneously cold and wet, or covered in several feet of snow (see our winter photos later on this page). Wear athletic clothes suitable for the current weather; soccer or football cleats can be handy, too.

Many of our players live in Greenbelt, but others come from throughout the region--Columbia, Silver Spring, Lanham, Lothian, Bethesda, Baltimore, Rockville, Laurel, Washington, and Northern Virginia.

These games are for fun--no excessively serious players allowed. We don't keep score, and our field is substantially smaller than official-size. (More intense players are happier at other games in the area such as the full-size fields on the DC Mall; check out Ultilinks.)

For more information about Greenbelt Ultimate, use the form below, or reply to Tom Jones or Jen Williams, or just show up!

For nearby Tuesday and Thursday summer games of similar intensity, check out the Goddard Ultimate Frisbee Club (which no longer has a web page); write to kogut@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov for more information.  They play on the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt.

Watch this page for updates as the time changes from season to season.

Winter Ultimate It seems that the most common question to come down the electronic pike at this website these days is "Do you folks really play Ultimate throughout the Winter?" And, once this question is answered in the affirmative, the second most-common inquiry generally results: "Why?" Before going any further, it is perhaps judicious to give a general summary of typical Maryland weather to any out-of-towners who might have wandered in. The mid-Atlantic region is rather notorious for its beastly humid summers that wilt the strongest of constitutions.The typical native of Phoenix or Albuquerque, upon returning to the desert from a representative August Maryland day, seems a bit unpersuasive. "No, really," he implores to his associates, "even though the temperature barely snuck into the 90s, the general composition of the Eastern atmosphere most closely resembles an inescapable sauna into which the exhaust from a diesel bus or two has been piped." It is important to note that we have our own variety of winter, too, that preserves the year-round edge on living in these parts. While the typical winter temperatures in Maryland cannot compare to the frightful lack of warmth in more arctic places, when it comes to playing Ultimate, the routine proximity to the freezing point of water turns out to be something of a liability, viz. the regular presence of liquid water lurking on and in the ground, ready to soak into trousers and shoes, capable of transforming human limbs into frigid blocks of petrified flesh. At any rate, the game of Ultimate involves dividing the assembled crowd into two opposed gangs called teams, and centers around a brightly-colored plastic disc. Before proceeding further, it is important to understand the sort of people who make up these teams. Some of the participants are of such stature that reaching up and plucking migrating fowl from the heavens is done with ease; others may have a direct eye-view of the navels of these titans, but leap about the field with speed unmatched by cheetahs in hot pursuit of a gazelle. Others find that their small stature and gazelle-like poise enable them to dash to and fro in wildly erratic fashion, confounding the attempts of cheetahs to lurk close by. Still others have the ability to determine with uncanny accuracy the precise spot in which an object soaring through space will land; while their occupations undoubtedly use this skill to pinpoint the ground-zero spot for incoming meteorites for NASA, in the midst of a game of Ultimate, they are able to evaluate the precise spot at which will land a throw from a strong-armed lunatic in the midst of a coughing fit. Tossed in with these superpowers are a higher number of third-world regimes who occasionally find that, by the time we can bound from one side of the field to the other, it is only just in time, for the more sprightly members of our own team have already shuttled the disc to the other side ahead of us, and the next point is about to begin. Yet, even with this motley assortment of variegated players, it is almost always the case that, even though they inhabit the same field, all manage to find their own enjoyment and be tossed the disc with good frequency. The way this all works out is that the cheetahs tend to find themselves most satisfied when paired up on the defense with other cheetahs, and the gazelles with gazelles, and so on, including the third-world regimes, who find that the other third-worlders are only too happy to position themselves in direct opposition. One team starts out with this disc, but, in an ironic twist, is compelled to promptly launch the disc through the air into the clutches of the opposite team. It is the duty of this team given the disc to heave it back and forth amongst themselves in such a manner as to progress toward the far end of the field without taking more than the most minimum number of steps while actually holding the disc. If a particular heave results in failure, viz. it isn't caught by someone on the same team as the thrower, the other team is given their chance to propel the disc in their favored direction. With just enough of these changes of power (called "turnovers" but seldom filled with apples or cherries) scheduled at opportune intervals, a single point can last for an interminable duration. And so the game goes every week in Greenbelt, throughout the year. Come by sometime, and see for yourself.

Today only at our 2nd location, Greenbelt Middle School.

This information is maintained by Tom Jones, who may be reached at tjones@spril.com