PERTH, 8 Jan 2018:
A team of 28 young Malaysian athletes, representing the country for the first time at the World U24 Ultimate Championships.today began the round robin portion of the challenging frisbee competition.
The event is being held till Saturday Jan 13 at the grass fields of the UWA Sports Park.
This bi-annual event has national teams competing in three divisions – men’s, women’s and mixed. The last events were held in the city of London, UK and Toronto, Canada in 2015 and 2013 respectively.
A total of 41 teams from 20 countries are taking part in this year’s edition. Malaysia is participating in the Mixed division, in which there are 14 countries represented.
The Mixed division teams will play a round robin format in two groups of seven, and the top 4 teams of each group will advance to the knockout rounds.
Malaysia is in the same group as New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Canada, India and the hosts, Australia.
The U24 national team campaign was initiated by Malaysia Flying Disc Association (MFDA) in September 2016.
A series of regional tryout sessions were conducted in Bintulu, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Penang and Kuala Lumpur to scout for talents from across the country.
The 74 candidates who made it through these regional tryouts had to go through a second round of selections in Kuala Lumpur in December 2016 and after several training camps, the final squad of 18 male and 12 female athletes representing the country was announced in July 2017.
Ultimate is a non-contact, self-refereed team sport played with a flying disc (or frisbee). Two teams of seven players compete on a playing field about the same length as a football field, but narrower.
At each end of the playing field there is an end zone. Each team defends one endzone. They score a goal if one of their players catches the disc in the opposite end zone. The player with the disc is called the thrower.
The thrower may not run with the disc. Instead they move the disc by passing to team-mates in any direction.
The defensive team gets possession of the disc if an offensive team’s throw is not caught by a player of the same team. Then the defensive team becomes the offensive team and can try to score in the opposite end zone.
MFDA is registered under Section 18 of the Sports Development Act (1997) and is recognised by the Sports Commissioner Office, Ministry of Youth and Sports as the national governing body of flying disc sports in Malaysia.
MFDA is also a full member of the WFDF, which is the international governing body for flying disc sports recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International World Games Association (IWGA).