Speaker Meeting

20 September 2018  Ultimate the Sport Tom Styles

Before the main speaker, our honorary member. Head teacher Rob Gilbey, on his first visit, gave a brief outline of how, with the help of members of our Youth committee, we had started a Rota Kids club at Robert Miles School.

The Club was then treated to an excellent presentation from Tom Styles, a Bingham local, talking about the emerging sport of Ultimate Frisbee.
Tom has played Ultimate for many years, and now he also commentates on the sport at local, national and international levels, as well on TV. He has a passion for the sport which came over most eloquently in his talk to us.
He covered the history of the sport from its origin in 1938 by Fred Morrison to the Pluto Plates of 1955, using 'Frisbee' tin pie dishes, moving on to the use of 'Wham-O' plastic Frisbees right through to today's major competitions and world championships. Ed Headrick then formed the International Frisbee Association, as well as developing Disc Golf.  Joel Silver, an American film producer wrote the first rules for Ultimate in 1968 in Columbia.
Tom explained how Ultimate is an all-inclusive sport, in that it can be played by all ages and all levels of fitness and in mixed teams. Amazingly, and quite uniquely, the game does not have any referees, relying on sportsmanship and self-discipline, to police the games which invokes a 'Spirit of the Game' to maintain fair play. He was part of the commentary team for the World Games in WROCLAW Poland 2017 and The World Flying Disc Federation in Cincinnati. Rob Gilbey now plans to introduce the sport in the 10 schools in their Trust.
An excellently delivered presentation which was very well received by all Club members.            APC