Scobel Wiggins Photography

How long has your country had Ultimate?

28 years; since 1980.

Does your country currently have:

Leagues? How many? How many people play in them?
There are three leagues. Open A and B and a Mixed Division. There are about 450-500 people playing in these leagues. Compared to the US this seems to be very small. It is smaller in relation, but you still need to consider that Switzerland has about 7 million people.

Club Teams? How many? Are there dominant club teams?
Most of the teams are club teams. There are about 30 Clubs, some of them have an A and B team (all the top teams have). In the early ninties there was the Club Team ZUF (Zurich Ultimate Flyers), the dominant team in Switzerland. They won about 9 out of 11 seasons. Then in the late ninties and early 2000s the Team from Berne (Flying Angels) won 10 seasons in a row. The FAB reign was built on a core of about 10 players who played together for more than 10 years. There were some new guys every year integrated into the system, plus the success of the team pulled many good players from other swiss teams to play with them.

Historically, I can say that these Swiss teams going abroad to play international tournaments for some time end up on top of the league. Only 4 or 5 Swiss teams have experiencies with WUCC or European Ultimate CC—these teams share all the titles of the past 25 years.

University or College teams? How many?
There are about 6 college teams, but as said before, in Switzerland the sport is on a club basis. All the college teams were founded by club Ultimate players. These teams are not very consistent. Same thing with the college championships: they have happened maybe three times so far.

Youth (under 18-years-old) teams? How many?
Nope, there is no youth program. Some of the (clever) club teams try to work with junior teams, but it's tough; either they play soccer, basketball, floorball, handball, or are not interested in sports...it's tough to get juniors.

But, the Swiss Ultimate federation tries to put a juniors team together for every big Ultimate event like WUGC or EUGC. This is always a big adventure for the kids and most of the kids who experienced this stick with the sport for some time.

A National administration for Ultimate?
There is the Swiss Ultimate Federation which is together with disc golf part of Swiss disc sports. All of the people involved are volunteers. Most of the work is done in the clubs, the Swiss Ultimate federation "only" organizes the league, a Swiss cup tournament (the same Swiss teams as in the league but in a single elimination tournament), and give some support to the National teams.

The big goal of the Swiss Disc Sports Federation for the upcoming years is to become a member of the Swiss Olympics. A membership would mean to be accepted as a "real" sport, make it easier to get fields for practices or tournaments, and last, but not least, bring some money from outside into the sport (as so far every thing is payed by the players themselves).

Where or how do most people learn about the game?

In club teams. More and more teachers (some of them Ultimate players themselves) bring the game into schools. In the meantime Ultimate is a fixed part of the physical education in high school! One Guy (Reto Zimmermann from Berne, Discathon and Accuracy World Champion in the nineties) who works for the sports departement at the university in Berne did some hard work to spread Frisbee (not typically but also Ultimate) in Switzerland.

Where do most people play?

The clubs rent soccer fields. We have a soccer field three times a week.

Do people in your country play in or against other countries?

Most of the teams only play in Switzerland. Most of them play Ultimate only as a recreation and for fun. There are few teams who only play for fun, but still travel maybe once a year to an international fun tournament (beach tourney or something similar). Then there are some individual players who travel by themselves and pick up with other teams at a tourney. Only about four teams travel on a regular basis to international tournaments and play competitively (Flying Angels Berne, Freespeed Basel, Wizards Geneve).

Have there been individuals that have been major contributors to the growth of Ultimate in your country? Who are they? What did they do that helped the game grow so well?

In the eighties we didn't have Ultimate players in Switzerland: we had Frisbee players. Everybody played all the disciplines. The pioneers of these times are the Brothers Cron (who brought disc sports to Switzerland in 1980).

When ZUF from Zurich was big in the late eighties and early nineties Markus Gschäll, Karim and Thomas Tischhauser were the main guys. They travelled a lot through Europe to play in big tourneys (i.e. all Worlds and Europeans) and got a lot of playing experience in this way, which they brought back to Switzerland. They also picked up a few times with the Red Lights from Amsterdam who was one of the huge European teams in the early nineties.

Philippe Schüpbach (a former Angels player living an Basel nowadays and playing for Freespeed) did a lot to improve Ultimate frisbee in Switzerland. He is a PE teacher and tried to spread the word through his connections in university and school sports. He led clinics, wrote in official Swiss sports papers and also has trained the Freespeed mens team for about five years now.

What does your country need to continue to develop? If the UPA were to donate $3,000 to you to help develop Ultimate in your country, what would you do with it?

What I'd do with the money: train-the-trainers-events. Also, do events in schools. We kind of already have this, but it's always just one isolated event—so maybe we should try to develop some continuous events.

Every country has a different 'style' of play...what is yours? (This question is particularly interesting to North American readers!)

There is no common Swiss way of playing. Swiss Ultimate used to be pretty static with a lot of knives, overheads, insides, and all kind of fancy throws—some of the weaker teams in Switzerland still play this way. The better Swiss teams are influenced a lot by the US way of playing: vertical or horizontal O, a lot of running, mostly flat and straight throws, more and more a good deep game. One of the top teams (Freespeed) still uses many overhead throws, though.

What is next for the game in your country? What is one upcoming development, or what is a hurdle that Ultimate will have to overcome to continue to spread?

The Swiss Disc Sports Federation is trying to become a member of the Swiss Olympics. This is the next hurdle. If we get accepted, we might get easier access to fields, some money and the media.

Lorenz has been playing with the Flying Angels for several years, when he isn't a starting handler for the Santa Barbara Condors.