Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY PRESTON KERES / MCT VIA GETTY
Since the early nineteen-seventies, when it first appeared on a high-school lawn in New Jersey, Ultimate Frisbee has been kicked around like the frayed hacky sack of the sports world, getting called everything from a “glorified game of toss” to “World of Warcraft for extroverts.” Type the phrase “Ultimate Frisbee is” into Google’s search engine and the first autocomplete pops up: “not a sport.” Frisbees, it seems, are just not the right shape or material to be taken seriously. But on August 2nd, the International Olympic Committee announced its disagreement with this popular consensus, officially recognizing the sport’s international governing body, the futuristic-sounding World Flying Disc Federation, or W.F.D.F. Ultimate is now eligible for inclusion, and I.O.C. funding, in a Summer Olympics program, as one of the roughly two dozen certified sports on display. This is not a joke.
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