Nuggets of Fantastic Enlightenment - Part 3

HISTORY LESSON OF THE WEEK: As Ultimate continued to spread, the concept of manifest destiny took hold in a big way when the sport reached Santa Barbara, California. UCSB began playing Ultimate in 1974, eventually coming to be known as the Condors. In 1977, the Condors won an early “National Championship” in one of the first tournaments to feature nationwide competition. To this day, the Condors are still a force and are one of Ultimate’s greatest dynasties, having won multiple Championships at the Club level, as recently as 2001, and are still making regular appearances at Club Nationals. When the Ultimate scene finally reorganized into Club and College divisions (around 1984), UCSB was and is still a force, winning College Nationals a number of times with both the Open and Women’s teams. One of the Condors’ founders was Tom Kennedy, who went on to found the Ultimate Player’s Association in 1979 in an effort to unite the growing Ultimate community under a standard ruling and organizing entity. Of course, the UPA remains as the national governing body of the sport. One of Kennedy’s and the UPA’s earliest accomplishments was to organize the various Ultimate teams into competitive regions and turn the championship series into a collection of regional champions.

LINK OF THE WEEK: This week, we're posting two links:

The Ultimate Handbook: http://www.ultimatehandbook.com/wordpress/     
This is an older website that is undergoing some recent updates. This is one of the first places I ever found to explain strategic concepts in Ultimate. They diagram plays, drills, and formations using Flash animation. Since parts of the site are apparently still going through changes, here is another site:

Zip's Tips:
http://www.brown.edu/Athletics/Mens_Ultimate/zipstips/index.html  
Josh Ziperstein won the Callahan Award his senior year at Brown University in 2005 as the top college player in the country that year, taking his team to the Finals of College Nationals. He now plays for Chain Lightning in Atlanta, a frequent Club Nationals participant. Earlier in his college career, he began posting daily tips for his Brown teammates so they could become better Ultimate players. The page became popular nationwide and is still up today, with some tidbits that are informative and sometimes funny.

RULE OF THE WEEK: Rule XVI.I. is the "Pick" rule. In addition to travels and fouls, the calls on the field that you are most likely to hear and call are picks. The rule exists mostly for safety reasons, with the intent of avoiding collisions. Basically, when you make you cut, you can't lead your defender into another player.

By the way, "Guarding" as used below, is defined in Ultimate (according to II.G) as: "A defender is guarding an offensive player when they are within three meters of that offensive player and are reacting to that offensive player."

Picks:

1. A pick occurs whenever an offensive player moves in a manner that causes a defensive player guarding an offensive player to be obstructed by another player. Obstruction may result from contact with, or the need to avoid, the obstructing player.

2. A pick can be called only by the obstructed player and must be announced by loudly calling pick immediately after it occurs.

3. If play stops according to XVI.C, players reposition according to XVI.C.4. In addition, the obstructed player is then allowed to move to recover the relative position lost because of the pick.

XVI.C and XVI.C.4 refer to the "Continuation Rule," which applies to just about any violation and basically says that if a call (such as a pick) is made when the disc is in the air (or if the thrower tosses it before realizing the call is made), then play continues until the disc stops. If you hear a travel or pick call, don't throw the disc, and if the disc is thrown, you better hope it's caught, or it's a turnover! Please read more about the continuation rule on the rules page, and we will be sure to discuss it in future weeks.

http://www.upa.org/ultimate/rules/11th