45°

No frills, a few flexible rules, no referees. Just a field, a disc, devoted players and the game they love.

Ultimate - often called "Ultimate Frisbee," though Frisbee-brand discs are rarely used - is a relatively new but rapidly growing sport with a strong following in Juneau. It combines elements of soccer, basketball and a host of other sports to form a unique activity - with an important credo that permeates play.

Ultimate traces it roots to 1968 at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., when a group of students - almost as a joke - proposed a Frisbee-based sport to extend athletic opportunities to more students. The game, adapted from "Frisbee Football," caught on and grew in popularity, spreading far beyond the high school by the early 1970s.

Over the years, the standard format evolved into two teams of seven players each, playing on a 70-by-40 yard field with 25-yard-deep end zones. But in keeping with the self-refereeing style, those factors and others - like the length of a match - can be adjusted upon agreement by both teams' captains.

At the start of the game and each new point, the two teams gather at opposing ends, and the defense throws the disc the length of the field - called a "pull" - to the offense in a style somewhat similar to a football kickoff.

Players roam the field; there really are no positions other than offense and defense. The offense tries to pass the disc down the field toward the opponent's end zone to score a point, while the defense tries to intercept passes or force bad ones.

"If the disc hits the ground or is intercepted, it's turned over and the other team can immediately play it," van Tamelen said. Passes that go out of bounds are also turnovers.

The basic defense is one-on-one. The defender cannot make contact with the person he or she is guarding, and the player with the disc must make a pass within 10 seconds. Players with possession of the disc cannot move forward or backward - they can only pivot, like in basketball - so the burden is on his or her teammates to make themselves open for a pass.

Van Tamelen said the frenetic pace of the game makes a mastery of basic throwing and catching skills and the ability to think on your feet the most important keys to success.

"Since it's a non-stop game, strategy has to be fairly simple," he said. "You don't want to be doing fancy things. If you blow it, it's a turnover."

Ultimate play in Juneau began to take off in the early 1990s. In 1992, van Tamelen, Jim Rehfeldt and other Juneau residents responded to a flyer posted by Brian Douglas that sought to create regular Ultimate games in town. Starting that spring games were played at Sandy Beach, and moved to Twin Lakes later that summer.

"From the beginning, we just had a bunch of friends who were playing," said Rehfeldt, who had Ultimate experience from college before picking up the sport again in Juneau.

Norm Dornbirer, a civilian employee with the Coast Guard, was known for bringing lots of friends and co-workers to participate in Ultimate games, van Tamelen said. The sport's growth in Juneau suffered when Dornbirer died in a boating accident near Douglas Island in October 1992, and the group suffered another loss when Douglas died in an auto accident a year later.

Despite the difficult losses, Ultimate has survived in Juneau.

"We've come a long ways after starting with some tough times," van Tamelen said. "Persevering through the loss of fields and the loss of key players. It continues to grow. ... It says a lot for the sport and for the people playing in Juneau."

Moving on from Twin Lakes, the group turned to dirt fields for their weekly games, but van Tamelen said they were far from ideal.

When Adair-Kennedy Memorial Field received its artificial-turf surface in 2000, the Ultimate players had a perfect field surface for games. In order to have the chance to use the field, Ultimate players created a formal league - the Ultimate Players of Southeast Alaska - that has now finished its second season of games.

"We've had two fairly successful years, with about 80 participants each year," van Tamelen said. There have been four teams each season, which starts in May.

The development of Ultimate in Juneau has been helped by active support from the University of Alaska Southeast. UAS has an Ultimate Club and an Ultimate class taught by Arlo Midgett.

Joe Sears, who helps lead the UAS club, said he and Midgett started playing after high school in Ketchikan and continued once they arrived at UAS as students in 1994.

"After the first few points I was completely exhausted, but I had a lot of fun," Sears said of his first Ultimate game. "What really appealed to me about Ultimate was that people just showed up a couple of days a week just for the fun of playing. ... The game is out there to be played for fun, to be played with friends."

As Sears and Midgett moved from students to UAS employees, the club's success inspired the creation of the class in fall 2000. Both club and class play indoors at the Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School gym - the class on Monday nights and the club on Friday nights.

"It's really good for people to learn indoors because you have to be more cautious," Sears said. "When you get outdoors, you have a sense of the field."

"Everyone was so encouraging, so patient with beginners," she said. "It was a lot of fun. ... It's a good workout, and the game itself is so challenging. You're in constant motion."

Yarnall now plays regularly in the summer UPSEA league, and in the winters with the UAS club.

"It's a neat community," she said. "Everyone is genuinely helpful and very enthusiastic."

Ultimate players said they would like to have more field options for pick-up games, but Sears said the sport is doing well in Juneau.

"We're in a really good place right now," Sears said. "This is the second year of the league, we're getting more and more people in the university club. It's really coming into its own as a sports option in Juneau."

For more information about this fall's UAS Ultimate offerings, contact Sears at 465-8571. For more information about UPSEA and for links to more Ultimate information, visit www.upsea.org.

Andrew Krueger can be reached at akrueger@juneauempire.com.