Rules
For the most part, the Kingston Ultimate Summer League uses the The Official Rules of Ultimate. There are a few areas in which the league rules differ from the official rules, however:
Players and Gender Ratio
The gender ratio of players on the field is 4:3, with the team receiving the pull choosing whether there are 4 men or 4 women, and the throwing team matching.
Games must start within 10 minutes of the scheduled start time. A team can play with as few as 5 players without defaulting, but can never have any more players of either gender on the field than the receiving team has chosen. So if a team only has two women, and the other team is receiving and chooses to play 4:3, the team with two women can play 4:2. If the receiving team chooses to play 3:4, the team with two women must play 3:2. Late arriving players can join any team at any time.
Under extraordinary circumstances, the team captains may agree to change the above rules. If, for example, both teams had 8 women and 4 men show up, the captains could agree to play the game with 5 women and 2 men on the field to give players more equal playing time. However, any such changes must be agreed to before the game starts, and they should only be made if they are reasonable and mutually beneficial (for example, if one team has no women, it's not fair for them to expect their opponents to play without any women). It is extremely important that captains of the short handed team realize that the other team is under no obligation to make changes and that they should not be pressured into doing so. In fact it would be considered to be in poor spirit to criticize the team that has enough players, because they want to play the game the way it is intended.
Additional Rules
- All games are played to 15 points or until the time slot ends; there is no soft cap. If neither team has reached 15 points at the end of the time slot, the current point is finished. At that point, if the game is not tied, the game is over. If the game is tied, one additional point is played to determine the winner.
- Games should start on time. Games should start as close as possible to the scheduled time. If a team doesn't have enough players to field a proper team at the time the game is scheduled to start, they can choose to play shorthanded, but they still can not have more than 4 people of one gender on the field at a time. Alternatively, they can default the game and play a pick-up game for fun (the score will be recorded as 1 to 0 against the defaulting team).
- Each team may take one timeout per half. Timeouts are 2 minutes in duration and may be called by the offense during play or by either team in between points. "Equipment" timeouts are allowed and do not count as an official timeout, but they may only be called when play is stopped. For example, if you notice that your shoe laces have come undone, you may call an equipment timeout to tie them up, but only during a stop in the play (e.g., when a foul call is made). Neither team can call a time out once the time cap has started. If offense attempts to call a timeout after they have used their one timeout for that half, they lose possession of the disc.
- Foot blocks are not allowed. To clarify, a foot block is when a defensive player tries to block the throw with a foot while marking the thrower (which can lead to broken wrists, fingers, etc.). This rule only applies when the defensive player is within 10 feet of the thrower (i.e., you can use your foot to block a low pass as long as you outside of the 10 foot perimeter, but please be aware of people around you and avoid injuring anyone who is reaching for the disc with their hand).
- Metal cleats are not allowed.
- One of the great things about ultimate is that it is self-refereed. However, this means that players need to be somewhat knowledgeable about the rules. I'd ask that experienced players/teams please take the time to explain the rules to newer players/teams, especially as infractions occur.
