Summer night in 1968, David Leiwant watched his friends toss a white disc in the gym of Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ. After that night, Leiwant threw some rules into the mix and created a game played by hundreds of thousands of people today: Ultimate Frisbee.

“It’s all about the spirit of the game,” Andrew “Andy” Dugan, Ultimate player and junior, said. Dugan plays on the Carmel Ultimate Frisbee team and although the Ultimate team is not an official sponsored club by CHS, the team plays against other schools such as Brebeuf Jesuit and North Central.

Today, more than 42 countries participate in the sport of Ultimate. In the past 10 years it has been one of the world’s fastest growing sports, according to The New York Times. Although Leiwant is credited for creating the sport, co-creator, Joel Silver, is recognized for increasing the popularity of the sport by becoming a movie producer and creating Silver Pictures, which has produced “Lethal Weapon,” “Die Hard,” and “the Matrix” series.

The object of Ultimate Frisbee is to get the disc to the end zone to score a point. A regulation game has seven players on each side. While one team is on offense, that team cannot let the disc touch the ground or be intercepted by the defense or else the possession of the disc will change causing the team on offense to become defense.

According to Daniel Kahn, Ultimate player and junior who is on both Dugan’s Carmel Ultimate Frisbee team and also his team out of the Indiana Soccer Academy (ISA), Ultimate Frisbee is a lot like football and soccer. There are handlers, like quarterbacks, that are especially good at throwing, and there are cutters, like receivers, which are people that are especially good at catching. Unlike football, Ultimate players are constantly moving and do not have a set of downs. Whichever team has the most points by the end of the game, wins.

“You need stamina, speed, agility and the ability to read the disc,” Kahn said.

According to Dugan, the team has an extremely fun time playing the game and enjoys all aspects of it. Before games, the players get together and go out to eat to focus and prepare for the game. Many games are played throughout the year, and the team has games and tournaments all over central Indiana. Usually, practices are on Fridays after school on the soccer field at Carmel. Dugan also started an indoor team that plays at ISA and is also involved in tournaments. This past month they competed in a tournament in Greenwood, and even though they did not do as well as they hoped, it was still incredibly fun and good practice, according to Dugan.

“It’s fun to compete with people that have the same passion as you do for the game,” Kahn said. Kahn and Dugan said they both get very competitive with the game but the rules of Ultimate encourage this since Ultimate is played with no referees and relies on the sportsmanship of players to call their own fouls.

In the end, players like Dugan said they just enjoy the sport. Dugan said, “Ultimate is an amazing sport, and I encourage everyone to give it a try.”