Besides being relatively inexpensive to play, part of Ultimate’s appeal lies in the fact that stature isn’t as critical as speed and dexterity: catching, throwing, jumping and pivoting. One of the star players for the Filipino team Pula, Panoy de los Santos, for instance, is just 1.57-meters tall (but the fastest member of the team).
Another attraction is that Ultimate is a noncontact game, so women like it as much as men do — 35% of the 500 players in the Philippines are female. As a result, Asian teams typically compete in the mixed divisions.
Ultimate calls for players — seven to a side — to pass a plastic disc to each other within a 110-meter-long pitch and to score points by catching the disc in an end zone. The game has no referees; players resolve their own disputes and those who commit fouls are honor bound to admit them. At higher levels of play, there may be “observers,” but they make calls only when a team appeals. (Some Americans refer to the disc as a Frisbee, after a trademark brand.)
In Singapore, the dominant Ultimate country in Asia after Japan, the game became popular in the late 1990s when some expatriates vowed to play once a week “rain or shine,” says Mr. DuBos. Then, students at the National University of Singapore and Singapore Management University took up the sport. Today, the city-state boasts eight club-level teams, which train together and compete in local and international competitions.
