Growing the Game - UCLA Men’s Club Ultimate Frisbee

Since its birth in 1996, UCLA’s Men’s Ultimate Frisbee team has competed in Division One Collegiate Tournaments across the country and has continuously been a top contender and presence in the Southwest region. 

UCLA’s Men’s Ultimate Frisbee had its strongest ever performance last season, 2018-2019, producing a 5th place finish in the region, and 35th nationally (out of 500+ teams). Returning a majority of the team, and adding some promising rookies, this year we hope to make nationals for the first time in team history! 

With over 75 active members from a variety of different majors and backgrounds, UCLA Men’s Ultimate Frisbee connects and unites people in the spirit of fun, competition, and fitness-requiring a 10-15 a week commitment through practice and training. 

We pride ourselves on being the cheapest club sport that travels and we are committed to never stopping anyone from experiencing the amazing sport and community of ultimate frisbee because of financial reasons.  

Like many club sports, Men’s Ultimate is largely self funded, and with so many student members juggling classes and other organizations, we strive to keep the fun and competition high while keeping the costs low. 

As our interest in ultimate continues to grow, so does our team, and this year we’re growing so fast, it’s exceeding our funding! 

Unlike many other club sports, ultimate is still very underdeveloped as far as youth and high school programs. Therefore, we need to allow a longer tryout process for people to become acquainted with the sport and level of play. Of course, a longer tryout process means a longer time before roster selections are made, and hence a longer time where our team funding is in flux.

With your help, we can ensure everyone receives an equal chance at tryouts, while also giving us the ability to attend tournaments before the season. To ensure that our growing program can safely and efficiently travel and lodge at competitive tournaments throughout the region and country, we need your help!

As one of the fastest growing sports worldwide, Ultimate frisbee is growing as exponentially across the globe as it is at UCLA. We hope to embrace this growth by ensuring every student athlete who wants to play ultimate, has the resources to do so.

We also aim to use this campaign to improve our visibility through the larger UCLA community, by hosting home tournaments and games to showcase the sport we love. Your support helps ensure the expansion of a community built on camaraderie and competition that aims to bring this perfect blend of sport and spirit to a larger, more diverse audience.

Specifically, your donations go towards our transportation and hotel rooms for tournaments, the bid fees to play in those tournaments, travel and parking costs for our four wonderful coaches, and equipment (mainly discs, cones, agility ladders) to ensure we are prepared for those tournaments. 

Due to the overwhelming early support, which we could not be more grateful for, we have increased our goal. With this extra money, we will be able to attend a higher level tournament that requires a flight to attend. In previous years, monetary restrictions have stopped us from attending tournaments that require flights. Additionally, we can cover more tournament fees throughout the year, meaning that we can lower dues, which have been steadily increasing due to the needs of growing program. Finally, we can also begin to reimburse for food at tournaments, something that players previously had to pay for themselves. 

Some of you probably recognize the name from your middle school P.E. class, but trust us, College Ultimate is a fast-paced, high energy sport, consisting of hundreds of collegiate programs across the US and national programs across 30+ countries.

With massive throws and even bigger catches, Ultimate Frisbee, created in 1968, was founded on the principles of spirit of the game and the greater sense of community and family. The sport itself is largely self-officiated, besides select high level games, to promote honesty and camaraderie between its participants with opponents and each other.

The basic gameplay is similar to a non contact version of football: two teams line up on opposite sides of each other and have to work the disc up the field and catch it in their opponent’s endzone, without the disc touching the ground. Except unlike football, you can’t run when you have the disc, and play does not stop until a point is scored.

We couldn’t be more thankful for your donations. Every little donation counts. Thank you so much for donating and spreading the word about our campaign!