Spinning discs the ultimate for city students

John Holdaway, Contributor, Jakarta

As the last sounds of the call to prayer fade away in the distance and Jakarta begins to come to life, something new begins to take over in a secondary school in East Jakarta.
It’s the cheers and chattering of local students playing a game from a distant land — Ultimate Frisbee.
While Indonesian students usually stick to the conventional football match, students at SMP Perguruan Rakyat 2 in Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta, were recently engrossed in a sport most people think is reserved for the beach.
Ardy Ferdianto, a member of various theater troupes and a drama teacher, is also a sports coach at the school and introduced the students to Ultimate Frisbee.
After a series of chance meetings with some members of Indonesian frisbee club Discindo, he came along to training one Thursday night and got hooked.
Ultimate was invented by a group of American high school students in the late 1960s.
It is a non-contact, fast-paced game played by men and women on the same field and without referees. A game where sportsmanship is valued above all.
Officially, the game is played by two teams of seven, which line up at opposite ends of a field about 100 meters long and 37 meters wide — that is, about as long as a FIFA World Cup pitch, but somewhat narrower.
There are 18-meter deep end-zones at each end.
You throw the disc to your teammates, trying to make your way down the field and catch it in your opponent’s end zone.
If the disc is dropped or intercepted, the disc changes possession.
The game is now played all over the world, with upwards of 10 annual international tournaments held in East Asia alone, including the Bali Nusantara Cup held by Discindo since the mid-90s.
Ardy’s own fascination with the game soon become contagious.
Friends and theater students came to see what all the fuss was about and ended up joining in.
After Discindo ran a training workshop for around 30 secondary school students from Kampung Melayu back in May and donated a few old discs, the group started their own competition.
Unable to find a large enough space, Ardy and his charges practiced on their own on the 150-square-meter concrete badminton court at their school.
The field presents interesting challenges — the front end of one end zone is marked by a foot high concrete step!
These practices culminated in the Poncol Cup, the first Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Indonesia to feature only local players.
As there were 16 teams
and just one day for preliminary rounds, a single loss meant elimination for that unlucky team.
Fortunately for the most eager players, no-one seemed to worry too much about team rosters. One player was spotted suiting up for 3 different teams.
Even one of the local motorcycle taxi drivers joined in for a few points to help out the Bad Fresh team in their quarter-final against the Crazy team.
By the end of the day the 16 teams had been whittled down to four: Stupid, Crazy, Ketupat and Kancil.
The final, played the following week on a soccer field in Bung Karno Sports Complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, provided by Discindo, was won by Ketupat, but there was plenty of fine play by all involved.
The Kampung Melayu Ultimate players took a break for the fasting month. They plan to continue coming to Discindo training sessions in Senayan, but are going to focus their efforts on raising money for their own field closer to home.
And, of course, spreading the gospel of Ultimate Frisbee throughout Jakarta and beyond.

For further information on Klub Frisbee Jakarta, please contact the author at johnholdaway@gmail.com. For further information on Discindo visit http://www.ultimateindonesia.com.