Due to the growing popularity of Ultimate Frisbee (Ultimate) in New York City, there is an increasing need to accommodate a diverse community of players seeking to play Ultimate. In contrast to the “recreational” pick-up games on weekends in Central Park and other locations, the time has come to offer an organized, competitive, co-ed ultimate league, open to all players from all boroughs. To meet this growing need we seek to launch New York City’s first all-city ultimate league played to Ultimate Player Association (UPA) standards, which requires suitable athletic fields. The mission of this league to provide playing time to some of the best players in the nation who live in New York City, one the few major US cities without a competitive Ultimate league. This proposal addresses the new development of an 8-team competitive Summer co-ed league with 16-18 players per team during weekday evenings in Manhattan and other Boroughs.
The New York City Public Ultimate League (NYCPUL) was founded by Amir Lopatin as a co-ed recreational Ultimate league or “rec league” with the NYC Parks Department Sports permits in 2001. Although Amir was tragically killed in an automobile accident on March 25, 2004, this recreational league continues to grow and exist in his memory. Every summer hundreds of players participate in this activity, which is currently scheduled to continue on weekends this summer in Central Park’s East Meadow. An indication of our desire to further strengthen and stabilize Ultimate in NYC, NYCPUL online will process registration for both recreational and competitive level games, which will make it possible to efficiently manage and create team rosters, provide for personal liability protection, and to take financial responsibility for all permit fees and league requirements. In the past, NYCPUL has been primarily a social/recreational league. We are now seeking appropriate playing fields and build organizational structure to make it a proper competitive league in line with UPA rules and regulations and comparable to other major cities around the country.
In addition to our short term goal of obtaining field space for this competitive co-ed league, we also have great interest in developing a youth program. In partnership with the PAL, PSAL, DiscAbilities, and the existing high school ultimate players, NYCPUL seeks encourage disc sports to youth groups and increase the visibility of our sport. High school players already participate in our weekend pick-up games on a regular basis. We are considering sponsoring an all-city high school tournament, including 7 Teams in NYC: Horace Mann, Riverdale, Fieldston, Beacon, Bard, Stuyvesant, and Hunter. We wish to set an example of a successful partnership of Ultimate and Youth Leagues, to sponsor and organize charity tournaments to benefit local schools, non-profit organizations and run a youth program designed to teach young people the benefits and joys of Ultimate. One measure of such success is the Annual Amir Lopatin Memorial Spirit of the Game Ultimate Tournament.
Ultimate is a unique athletic activity in many ways. Born in the late sixties, this “alternative sport” is democratic in nature and encourages open participation for newcomers, along with players of all ages and abilities. On the most organized level, Ultimate is fast paced but is also a non-contact, co-ed sport. Though it lacks the traditional support enjoyed by most sports, it is actually a hybrid of the best aspects of major sports: Ultimate is a very active game which requires a good deal of running in addition to throwing and catching skills. The game combines the passing and scoring of football, the cutting and guarding of basketball and the non–stop field movement of soccer. Games are self-officiated. Players are responsible for their own foul calls and resolving disputes. A unique quality of sportsmanship, the Spirit of the Game, places the responsibility for fair play on the players rather than referees. Competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of respect between players, adherence to the rules and the basic joy of play. The Spirit of the Game sets Ultimate apart from other competitive team sports. Ultimate has been played in accordance with the Spirit of the Game since 1968, and has achieved the highest level of competition. Relatively, this sport is still in its infancy, which is why it requires a closer look in consideration of sports permits as it is truly deserves at least the same recognition as traditional sports.
Ultimate exists on many different levels around the country (and the world), ranging from beginner pickup games to high level competitive Ultimate where club teams travel widely to compete in tournaments across the country. An estimated 770,000-114,000 players across the country participate in Ultimate. Worldwide, the sport is played in more than 42 countries by hundreds of thousands of men and women, girls and boys. Despite the lack of an actual city league, New York City has produced some of the finest players and best club teams in the history of the sport, dominated by “New York, New York,” a five-time National Champion team, who ushered the game into the modern era. Anchored by such legends as Ken Dobyns, Skip Kuhn, and Pat King, the team won both national and world championships through the early 1990s, and the team’s legacy is without question. Across the country, there are approx. 150 UPA sanctioned leagues, 59 of which have more than 800 members. NYCPUL seeks to give New York City, what it currently lacks, and what can be found in other urban centers in the region, such as Boston (BUDA) and Washington DC (WAFC), specifically a competitive co-ed ultimate league in line with the rest of the country. In New York City, The Yahoo! Sports Groups membership provides a unique way to look at active player numbers and breakdowns of populations across skill levels. For example, the current weekend summer games in the East Meadow are comprised of players specifically from the original NYCPUL list serve, and has nearly 500 currently registered players primarily from Manhattan. However, several other such listserves reflect different levels of games for different communities, such as nycUltimate, UltimateNomads, New York Ultimate and most significantly NYC-Ultimate, which in itself has nearly a thousand members and is the primary focus group for this proposal. Every Spring and Summer, many of the most devoted of these players trek to Westchester (WUDI) to participate in a competitive league there, spending considerable time and resources on a commute out of the city, that would be unnecessary if we could obtain adequate appropriate field space closer to where we live and work.
We are faced with a growing need to accommodate the increasing number of players of Ultimate, a relatively new athletic activity. Although traditional sports enjoy the legacy of ongoing sports permits, Ultimate deserves to be recognized in the permitting process as a serious, growing competitive athletic activity that requires suitable, safe athletic fields to play on. We wish create an “even playing field” that will bring the practice of this great sport in line with other sports, and the availability of ultimate in line with other cities. While we recognize that suitable sports fields are in high demand in New York City, we offer that we are willing to be very flexible to maximize playing time, to grow the the scope of the league in reasonable phases, to support the development of youth (high schools) leagues and begin a competitive ultimate league long overdue in NYC. Based upon the huge community of Ultimate players in NYC, we will effectively utilize as much space as permitted by the NYC Parks Department. The number of teams and players will only be limited by the number of hours on a suitable field provided. Below is our proposed breakdown for an initial phase of New York City’s first ever competitive Ultimate League.