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I remember my first night at IIM Ahmedabad. After months of test preparation routine and some crazy interviews, here I finally was, at the Louis Kahn Plaza. The LKP, as it is (quite obviously) known, serves as the iconic IIMA backdrop. It also serves as the playing field for (a) Garba - the most important time in a Gujarati's year and (b) Field for Ultimate (Frisbee) - the soul sport of IIM Ahmedabad.
IIM Ahmedabad has two cult sports groups - one which plays Poker, and the other, Ultimate. The sport is more famously known as Ultimate Frisbee, but the word Frisbee was dropped since it was a registered trademark of a toy company. As a lawyer by training, it was the easiest thing to understand about the game. Progressively, as I came to know about the rules of the game, I could not stop marveling it.
Ultimate is a high intensity, high adrenaline game, played in teams - and still is a non-contact sport. The gameplay gave me the first impression of a Quidditch game. Later, as the technicalities unwounded (points accumulated for successful passing in opposition rear end), restricted movement while you held the disc, time-based restrictions on your hold and a hold jargons of passes. However, the most striking feature was, this game was based on a true sense of ethics and sportsmanship. For the many uninitiated like me, this game does not have a referee, and I have never seen a quarrel or a dispute, even at competitive levels. For an outdoor sport, played in teams and having a whole complexity in rules, it was unbelievable there is no neutral official to referee the game. If there is one sport which manifests true sportsmanship, this is it. Even as I write this, having spent 18 months at the college, I really cannot reconcile because it is so natural to have disputes in such sports. While professional leagues worldwide have deployed match officials, the ease with which the game can function officially without a referee is marveling.
Emerging out of the US college culture in the 60s, the game is dominated by the US. There are now more variants other than the grass turf - the beach Ultimate. The game has strategies in terms of shapes, quite analogous to football formations and have elaborate gameplay types - zonal marking, person to person marking, straight attack, horizontal play, diamond play etc. The game deserves to be more famous and is undersold. Some of the tricks and techniques pulled off by maneuvering the discs, especially while it is in flight, is beyond belief. A study can be done into Magnus effect and air drift and throwing grip and angle, but for pure viewing purposes, it is such a work of art.
While the institute has its own cricket, football, hockey, racquet sports (squash, tennis, table tennis) and other teams, the Ultimate team is specially recognized. While the cult of the game has grown with the cult of the institute, even as a spectator (which I often am), the game is a mixture of the extreme crazy and extreme discipline, and perhaps makes for one of the best viewing sports. Hoping it catches on to more college cultures and becomes a more prominent, yet unadulterated sport.
