The participation of women has helped Ultimate Frisbee grow.

By BONNIE TSUI


Ultimate Frisbee has the speed and endurance of soccer plus the aerial passing and end-zone scoring of American football. The beauty of disc flight and the athleticism of the chase have won Ultimate its fans.

In the last 10 years, Ultimate Frisbee has moved beyond its hippie roots to become one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. It is played in more than 42 countries and at the college level attracts traditional athletes from sports like soccer and football to compete.

The rise of women in Ultimate is another crucial part of the sport’s growth. Watching these women play, one can see the athleticism that has drawn them: gorgeous arcing throws, full-extension dives, vertical leaps, and discs pinched out of the sky.

“I play pickup most every week, even in the winter,”said Fi Cheng, 33, who works for a backpack company in New York. She helps run a league in Brooklyn.“I’ve noticed a lot more women playing than when I started.”

The Ultimate Players Association, the governing body for the sport in the United States, has nearly 30,000 members. Total membership has risen 168 percent since 2003. From 2003 to 2008, membership of women nearly doubled, composing about a third of total membership. Around the world, it is estimated some 5 million people play Ultimate.

Though the game was invented in Maplewood, New Jersey, in 1968, modern Ultimate has its epicenters in California and the Pacific Northwest. Its expansion is helped because all that is needed is a plastic disc and a field, and a few simple rules. A team tosses the Frisbee to each other to advance it up the field (running with it is not allowed) and score by crossing a goal line. If the Frisbee hits the ground, the defending team gains possession.

“I love to run with purpose, meaning I hate the track, but I like to chase things,” Susan Batchelder, a 29-yearold fourth grade teacher in Oakland, California, said.“I love the fact that when you’re playing, you make hundreds and thousands of little decisions - where the disc is, where your body is - but they happen without thinking.”

It may be a non-contact sport according to its rules, but Ultimate is hardly free of injuries. The quick cutting and sprinting have made anterior cruciate ligament tears among women players especially common.

Joy Chen, 33, a software developer in Alameda, California, considers herself lucky that herniated disks, a rotator cuff tear and ankle sprains have been the extent of her Ultimate injuries.“We hit each other and the ground pretty hard,”she said.

Ms.Chen discovered Ultimate in college after years as a soccer and tennis player. She played with Stanford University’s Superfly, which went on a three-year run as undefeated women’s national collegiate champions.“At first I thought it was just something you did while in college, but not as a ‘grown-up,’”she said. But the eclectic, close-knit community was tough to leave behind, and she continued to play on various teams after college.

For Ali Fields, 36, a teacher who learned how to play as a volunteer with the Peace Corps in Zimbabwe, teaching the game is part of being in the Ultimate community. She and a friend have been instructing students in the basics of the game in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.“What I love is that in coed Ultimate, girls can huck the disc just as well as the boys,”she said.