Activity is not hard to find on the ball fields during summer nights at Marlboro High School, and the school’s turf football field is also a place to work out.

Sean Moul pulls in a score as Brendan Chapman pursues him.

On the east end of the field during a recent summer night was a group playing soccer and at the other was a sport frequently seen on college campuses or city parks.

John Triolo, a 2001 Marlboro grad, was playing Ultimate Frisbee with Morgan Rusk, Brendan Chapman, Todd McEwen, Sean Moul and many others sideline to sideline across the field’s west end red zone.

Tossing a Frisbee with a friend or friends can be as fun and refreshing as picking up a mitt and ball and playing some catch.

As a non-contact sport and usually self-refereed, Ultimate Frisbee, or just Ultimate as it’s generally called, is as visually exciting to watch as college lacrosse and as physically demanding as football, soccer and basketball to play.

The Marlboro bunch, playing across the football field, covered a space 50 yards in length and with enough room to score. A regulation Ultimate Frisbee field is 70 yards long, 40 yards wide with end zones 25 yards long.

Teams with seven players crisscross the field like players do on a basketball court after every possession. Along the way to each end zone, they run, glide and dive across the expanse to catch and keep possession of the disc as they try to get into position to score during the games which last 40 minutes with 20-minute halves.

There is no running with the disc, like players do with the ball in lacrosse. A thrower generally has 10 seconds to throw the disc to a teammate. If the disc is not caught, it’s turned over to the other team to then take possession and to try and score.

If a team is lucky, they’ll take possession near the end zone so one teammate can make a quick strike to another for a score. If the disc is tossed a distance, the defense has time to gauge its velocity and try and time their catch – so the other team is denied a chance to score and pick up a point.

By Bond Brungard
sports@tcnewspapers.com