Scobel Wiggins Photography

I have been playing Ultimate for 2 years. But I believe that there was a Ultimate tournament (called Fly Baba which is held at Kodiakannal International School) as far back as 1998. It was not a regular affair. Fly Baba 2008 was the first tournament I played in. We had a great turnaround and its now becoming a regular affair. We had a beach tournament at Chennai in Dec 2008 and had about 8 teams participating. It was played on a public beach under flood lights with a lot people very curious. I guess the game was started by expats. In addition, lot of folks have played Ultimate in other countries (like USA) and just spread the game.

I guess there have been people playing in various cities for several years. But its only in the last 2 years that things have taken off. Every tournament has new teams joining in. In Bangalore, we started off with about 20 folks playing. We had 2 teams. But now, we have more 50 Ultimate enthusiasts and its growing. We have been trying to get more people join in and its working! We are having a tournament on Aug 15 to promote the game.

We dont have any established league/clubs. We just have teams from various cities. May be about 10 teams in all. And about 200+ folks. But the numbers are growing. The next steps would be to introduce Ultimate in universities.

No National administration yet. As of now, we just have a mailing list.

Finding a suitable field is THE biggest problem we have. Given that India is a cricket crazy country , and the lack the good fields, we find it hard to find fields to play on. In fact for a tournament we planned to host in Bangalore, we did not find any playing field which we could reserve and hence had to move the venue to another smaller city.

No international play yet. The plan is to travel to Singapore next year and play with other teams. We have 7 people flying in into Singapore this year, but next year we will probably have a full team.

Major contributors to the game here are Bryan Plymale, from Kodai International School (he teaches there and is originally from San Francisco) and Manu Karan and other folks in Chennai, who are doing a lot to spread Ultimate in Chennai. We are doing our bit to get more people to join in at Bangalore.

More than money, getting access to playing fields would be of immense help. In addition, getting hold of good Ultimate discs in stores in India is a problem. We usually source our discs ( Discraft Ultrastar) from USA, but that would mean we dont have too many spare discs. Would be great if we could have large number of discs (50-100) shipped directly to Bangalore, which we could use to give out at schools, universities etc. We don't mind paying for the discs.

Having played here in the US, i would say the style we have is more random. In US, you find some structure. A stack, with cuts etc. However, our game is more chaotic. But having said that, I think we do a good job. Most of the teams have folks have been playing with each other for a long time, and that keeps the disc in good "flow".