Spirit of the Game

The underlying philosophy in the sport of Ultimate is the notion of sportsmanship and fair play. Ultimate is a self-refereed, no-contact sport. Competitive play is encouraged but never at the expense of mutual respect between players, adherence to the rules and the basic joy of playing. Every player should clearly understand the rules of the game. The integrity of Ultimate depends on each player’s responsibility to uphold the Spirit of the Game, and this responsibility should not be taken lightly.

After a game that has been played hard, a cheer or fun inter-team game can serve to both celebrate the spirit that was exhibited and to deflate any high running emotions that might carry over to future games. Playing in non-traditional athletic clothing such as skirts, hats or costumes is a way of showing that winning the game is no more important than having fun. However, these things are not necessary elements of spirit and it would be unfair and unreasonable to judge the spirit of a team or player based on the clothes they wear or the songs they sing.

Spirit is a combination of respect, integrity and dignity. There is no dignity in choosing to break the rules intentionally. Respect implies that no matter how sure you are of your call, someone else's reality may be different and the disagreement can be accepted without anger or arguments. Spirit of the Game involves understanding that your opponent is not your enemy. Without an opponent you couldn't play the game. Spirit of the Game does not compromise competitive play in any way but it also emphasizes fair, honest and respectful play between teams and players.

Change to Rating System

In the former spirit rating system (SRS), team captains were asked to rate the spirit of their opponent on a 5 point scale, where 5 was exceptional and 0 was horrible. A rough qualitative guideline was given to help players evaluate their opponents’ spirit.

With the use of the former SRS, one of the biggest limitations was shown to be the variability (or subjectivity) of spirit evaluation. The key to truly benefiting from this new SRS is to NOT equate your score with the traditional notion of a grade. If you are scored a 5, it is NOT because you failed. All teams will be rating your spirit according to the same scale and so it is required to drop any previous notions you might have about spirit scores. The new SRS is intended to emphasize the really important points that make up the “SPIRIT OF THE GAME” and help remind you of them every time you enter a team’s spirit score. We have created a table for the SRS where we list these important criteria. The selected criteria make it quite difficult to obtain a perfect score. The new SRS offers more criteria for minus points rather than plus points so that each team can see what aspects of the game can be modified to better understand what constitutes good or bad spirit.

How it works

All teams start with a spirit rating of 5 and points can be added or subtracted according to the criteria listed in the SRS table. You are asked to check off each of the criteria that best describe aspects of your game, then to add the respective pluses and minus. The Spirit score then becomes:

Spirit Score = 5 + (total_plus) – (total_minus)