Additional Information

About Ultimate

Ultimate Frisbee is more than just a backyard game of toss or a middle school gym activity. It is an international and rapidly growing sport with high school state and national championships, extremely competitive intercollegiate tournaments, national championships, high-level club divisions, and even a professional league - The Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA). Nearly all official United States related Ultimate activities, tournaments, and programs (With the exception of the UFA) are sanctioned through a governing body called United States of America Ultimate (USAU). For a much more in depth analysis of the history of Ultimate, its current status nationwide, in addition to a full explanation of the rule book, please visit the official USAU website. If you're looking for a quick overview of the rules, you view those here

The actual game of Ultimate in a nutshell resembles a cross between soccer and football. Each team plays with 7 athletes on the field at a time and the goal is to catch a pass in the end-zone for a score. The spacing, running, and general flow of the game resembles that of a soccer match, while the rout running, throwing, and catching resemble plays from quarterbacks and receivers in football. The biggest standout aspect unique to Ultimate is that the sport is completely self-officiated. Each member of the team is responsible for maintaining high character, sportsmanship, and fairness by assessing accurate foul calls or any other rule infractions. This has lead to a sport where bad sportsmanship is a rarity, even in the most intense and competitive of games.

Who we are

The University of Kentucky has fielded an ultimate frisbee team for many years dating back to the 1980s. However, it was only until a few decades ago until Kentucky Ultimate transitioned into an officially recognized club sport in the mid 2000s under the name "Disclexia." With a steady population of between 10-20 members each year, Disclexia thrived on the brotherhood mentality of a handful of gifted raw athletes. Eventually, the team decided to become officially sanctioned under USAU and transitioned to the KULT name that is worn by players today. With the rise of youth ultimate and especially the high school ultimate scene in Lexington, KULT has grown to field 2 full teams of 20-25 people each! Lexington's home school team "Pi" has been a dominant force in high school ultimate on a national scale, being invited to High School Nationals five years running. In addition to their development, other local high schools such as Lexington Catholic, Henry Clay, Lafayette, as well as others, have contributed to producing some excellent ultimate players to feed right into Kentucky's system. However, we still recruit the vast majority of our freshman as complete rookies to the sport; some of which have never even thrown a frisbee before! 

We love hanging out as a team off the field almost as much as we love ballin' out on the field. Each off-weekend is usually filled with cookouts, UK basketball/football watch parties, some campus disc golf, and a wide variety of other team bonding activities. We also hold 1-2 alumni weekends each year where we invite all our past teammates to come back in town, hang out, and play some ultimate throughout a fun weekend. 

If you're interested AT ALL about anything ultimate related at the University of Kentucky, please don't hesitate to contact us at our team email account or by reaching out to one of our captains. If you need any other reasons as to why you should join us, check out our hype video on the "Highlights" page!

Our Season

We spend the first 4-6 weeks of our fall season allowing our veterans to finish and recover from a physically demanding club season by encouraging them to be leaders and mentors to assist all of our rookies in their early development. Our first few weeks of practice are heavily based in fundamentals of everything from catching and throwing to the basic rules and schemes of the game. Once we as a new team are fully established in our fundamentals, we take part in a try-out tournament before the captains and coaches start to craft season-long strategies and competitive game/practice plans.

Our "A-team" is selected by the coaches and captains prior to each tournament and is subject to change throughout the year. We take this approach rather than a traditional A/B split at the beginning because it allows for developing players to have a chance to earn their spot on A by the middle or end of the season rather than waiting a whole year. In addition, if we have an A-team caliber player who is unable to attend a competitive tournament for personal reasons, we are able to still show up with a full roster come game day by selecting from the available pool of players. We believe this keeps the whole team unified throughout the season and allows KULT to bring their maximum potential each and every time we are out on the field.

As far as our competition goes, we compete in the East Plains Section of the Great Lakes Region of USAU play. Our section consists of 7-10 teams including our top rivals: Notre Dame, Purdue, and Indiana. We typically compete in weekend-long tournaments 3-4 times each semester with the fall semester being "warm-up" and "preseason" while the spring semester starts with our first official "regular season" tournaments. Our "post-season" occurs toward the end of the spring semester around April-May and consists of a Sectional tournament and, upon qualification, Regionals, and finally Nationals. KULT has never achieved a bid to Nationals yet, but with our program on the rise, we inch closer and closer to that goal each and every season.