Spirit of the Game

As a captain last year, I never formally introduced the new players to the concept in ultimate we call "Spirit of the Game." This was not a point of focus that was officially introduced during practice time. Guys on the team would candidly mention the term, but only in passing, never giving serious attention to it. I have been wondering lately why I have not actively integrated "spirit" into the ultimate vocabulary of my team. I came to a couple of conclusions on the matter.

Spirit of the Game means different things to different players. Although it is defined in the rules, spirit has taken on differing meanings throughout the landscape of ultimate. For some players it is being jovial and cheering for the other team after the game. For others it is playing hard, playing fair. I wouldn't say there is an exclusive dichotomy with respect to Spirit of the Game, but there is a divergence among players. It's for this reason that I feel it's important to teach certain principles of the game in their own right, rather than confining them to an awkward definition of Spirit of the Game. I would rather teach sportsmanship and how to carry yourself on a field, than vaguely tell players to "always play with spirit." Furthermore, spirit is a loaded word, and I don't want guys getting caught up in the semantics of it all. Telling someone they have "bad spirit" or "good spirit" is quite a subjective assertion.

Maybe it could be that I have an aversion to the "let's all cheer for each other; don't take things seriously; everyone's a winner" definition of Spirit. It is this definition that is prevalent among the teams I have played for most of my career. I guess this has caused me to approach the concept with great caution and hesitance in using it. The biggest malignancy with this approach is (what I take to be) a huge misunderstanding on their part.

First and foremost, it is the responsibility of all players to know and understand the rules. We play a self-officiated game that can only exist if all players are in command of the rules we play by. I think that this gets lost among many players and they think that rules are secondary to a good attitude. They are not. (I have said this a bunch of times but...) Not knowing the rules is one of the most unspirited thing an ultimate player can bring onto the field. The "misunderstanding" I mentioned is exactly this concept, that a smile and goodwill supersedes a knowledge of the rules.

The way the UPA defines Spirit of the Game is relatively satisfactory and gets a lot of the core concepts right. We play a game that depends on people being honest and fair. However I think the term has been somewhat hijacked by a portion of the community to serve themselves. Many will call a team unspirited if they argue about calls on the field, but the team calling the fouls/violations may have very little understanding of the actual rules. This would seem to indicate that the other team is in fact unspirited. This is not a convoluted way of trying to defend our own team for engaging in arguments on the field (Which, by the way, arguments about calls are not inherently bad. Many times they promote better understanding of the situation that occured and facilitate the use of the most appropriate rule.) This is to show, what I find to be, a common misperception and detriment in ultimate.

I personally like to stay away from the word because it has too much baggage associated with it. Regardless of how you chose (or chose not) to define Spirit of the Game, I think there are valuable principles to be learned from the concept, but you should ultimately recognize that you shouldn't be constrained to someone's subjective determination about it. I like to play hard. Play fair. Play smart. Play honest. Play with passion. Play with respect. Play with pride. All of these make playing fun for me. These are the things that I look to teach new ultimate players. These are the things that I hope this team looks to bring to the field each time we play.