Auroville’s Ultimate Ladies join Team India

As part of Auroville’s integral approach to education, sports plays a large role in our lives. Different programmes in Cripa, Certitude, Pitanga, La Piscine, Dehashakti and New Creation Sports Ground support physical education from a young age with the aim of promoting sportsmanship as well as athleticism. For many years, Aurovilians, especially youngsters, have been taking part in high-level national sport events in basketball, racing (cycle and motorbike), surfing, rugby, and horse riding. In the same line, an entirely new chapter has begun for three girls from ‘Spinergy’ – Auroville’s Ultimate Frisbee team.

Any Monday afternoon while driving past Certitude, you’ll see a team of Aurovilians playing ‘Ultimate’. Manjula, Bhavya and Smiti are among them – three Auroville youngsters who have been selected to represent India Women’s team in the 14th World Ultimate and Guts Championship (WUGC) to be held in the U.K. this summer. As the girls retrace the events of the past few months, their beaming faces and captivating smiles tell an incredible story.

In India, the hype around Ultimate began in Chennai and Ahmedabad approximately 15 years ago, when a college student who returned from the U.K. introduced it. A combination of American football and basketball, its increasing popularity can partly be attributed to its mixed gender component. Since last year, Ultimate Frisbee in India has been played in mixed teams of seven, with at least three women in each team. In fact it is one of the few sports in the world where teams are mixed at the championship level. The sport’s emphasis on having mixed teams created a platform for promoting women’s participation in sports. Bangalore – the city that hosts the most tournaments, even hosts an all-women Ultimate tournament. All over the country, the number of existing teams exceeds 40.

Beyond Spinergy

In Auroville, Ultimate is mostly played on the ground between Cripa, Dehashakti and Gaia but also in Certitude. The team plays three times a week, and anybody can join. Since it became part of Dehashakti’s sports programme its popularity has grown fast. Today, there are enough Auroville Frisbee players to constitute two teams, which means almost 40 people.

Smiti started playing approximately six years ago while both Manjula and Bhavya have been playing for five years. Since then, they have attended about three tournaments a year, usually in a different city. They tell me that this number is increasing fast. When Mark (their first coach) left, Kumaran took his place. He says: “Although as coach I teach the basics, they have developed the sportsmanship and the game skills themselves. They have earned where they are today.”

Manjula explains, “Normally each team member has an assigned role. For example, handlers have the best and the longest throws so they handle the disc, cutters are fast and agile runners so their role is to move the disc forward, and receivers can jump high and are fast, so they run far ahead onto the opponent’s side and try to catch the disc in the end-zone. But every time we play, nobody can figure out our strategy because we don’t have any! We run constantly, that’s our secret!”

Importantly, Ultimate has ‘spirit of the game’ rules. There is a team captain as well as a ‘spirit’ captain. Bhavya has become the spirit captain in India’s Ultimate women’s team. “The spirit of the game is a crucial element of Ultimate Frisbee”, she says. “Together with my co-spirit captain, we ensure that the team knows the rules of the game, as well as how they are implemented, among other Spirit-related things. For example, we focus a lot on honesty. All the players are responsible for administering as well as adhering to the rules. Each player is expected to and trusted to make the right call in the right manner and not for an advantage on field. And ideally, each player wants to do that. As there are no referees in Ultimate, not even at the Championship level, it is our responsibility as players to know what the rules are and how the Spirit of the Game works.”

The first women’s Ultimate team

“There has never before been a women’s Ultimate team at the international level,” says Manjula. “So, a while ago, India began to gather more women for the sport. That’s when Kumaran, Bhavya, Smiti and I went to Singapore and the three of us girls played for a small women’s team of India. Although the tournament was not an international championship, it was lots of fun.” Smiti adds: “When women and girls started to register for the Indian women’s team for WUGC, the Ultimate Players Association of India (UPAI) chose coaches as well as selectors and set up selection camps.”

“We have a training camp every month,” says Manjula, “which includes drills, workouts and throws. One needs a lot of individual motivation. In the last few months, I’ve been training more intensely, getting ready for the championship. The other teams are made up of athletes and they know each other very well, while we are very new.” “Those who play Ultimate Frisbee are like part of a big family,” says Smiti, “there is less emphasis upon the competitive side. Anywhere you go you can contact players and the community takes you in.”

The selection process for the national team took place in Bangalore and Surat, with more than hundred people vying for places. “Some of the things we had to do was sprint to check our timing, do a stamina test, and perform some long jumps to see how much we could push,” says Manjula. “They combined us in different teams, then made us play games the whole afternoon. They also made us throw the Frisbee from varying distances such as 30 or 40 metres and hit a target, using many different kinds of throws.”

“I am so happy to be part of a team which is the pioneer in the growth of women’s Ultimate in India,” says Bhavya. “This is a big step in the growth of Ultimate in India. And having three players from Auroville makes me very proud. This team will break barriers, conquer the fears that every pioneer has, and make way for more women to represent our country in the future.”

The rules of Ultimate

Ultimate is a non-contact, self-refereed team sport played between two teams of seven players on a large rectangular field. The opposite sides are divided by a line drawn across the pitch, and the goal-scoring areas or end-zones are also demarcated by a line. A goal is scored when a team completes a pass to a player standing (or, more likely, running) in the end-zone they are attacking.

Players cannot run with the disc. When players get the disc, they must stop and try to throw it to another player. By passing from player to player, the offense moves the disc up the pitch towards the end-zone they are attacking. If the disc hits the ground or is intercepted or knocked down by the other team, then the opposition takes possession. Possession also changes if a receiver is outside the playing area when he or she catches it.

The defending team attempts to stop the team with the disc from making progress upfield by marking them. Just as in football, the offense won’t want to pass to a player who is being marked closely, so the offense players try to get free of their markers to receive a pass.