Self-Refereeing System in Ultimate during the Joint Junior Ultimate Championship in Three Different Divisions—A Different Way to Promote Fair-Play?

Abstract

In ultimate games governed by the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF), all competitors also take on the role of referee. The players discuss disputed calls with each other during the game, and then follow rules designed for these situations to determine how the play continues. The number one rule of the sport is to respect the spirit of the game (SOTG), which encourages competitive play while preserving mutual respect and minimizing the risk of injury. The use of SOTG in ultimate in the framework of self-arbitration as a moral practice aligns well with other tools of critical pedagogy. For this study, the SOTG scores of the WFDF Joint Junior Ultimate Championship (JJUC 2022) were analyzed. A total of 1009 players from 19 countries competed in 434 self-refereed games (29 national teams in the WJUC Under-20 (U20) tournament and 20 teams in the EYUC Under-17 (U17) tournament). All the scores from the individual criteria correlated well with the overall scores, but for the most part, they did not correlate with each other. Our experience with the scoring system has highlighted the importance of participants understanding the meaning of the results and how they may lead to a constructive reflection to improve exceptions, including scores representing fouls and rules knowledge. The findings provide important information for physical education teachers, coaches, and sport consultants and may be of use to design SOTG programs that could foster the experience of sportsmanship and to facilitate the ethical conduct of athletes in either recreative or in competitive contexts.