Discs for Ultimate

Embrace Variety

There are few things that consistently irritate me as much as players throwing a disc out of a drill because it’s not a Discraft Ultrastar.

I understand completely that if you have only ever thrown with an ultrastar, another brand of disc is going to feel different. But just get over it. It’s only holding yourself back.

When I coached the Irish women’s team in 2019 we used Eurodiscs at all our training weekends. Changing discs had no impact at all. The reason we used Eurodiscs was that they were a sponsor for the European Championships, and we wanted to prepare in case it was enforced that we use their discs. In the end, teams were able to choose but I do think we still benefited at least from never needing to worry about what the other team was going to want to use, because it made no difference to us.

For anyone competing at European Championship events in future I would not expect Eurodisc to sponsor the tournament and not enforce use of their discs. Already at EUCF 2022 we were supposed to use Eurodisc in all streamed games. If you want to compete at that level you need to get used to all approved discs so it’s not something that will be a mental hurdle for you.

You could also work on your self-awareness and realise that your attachment to ultrastar is because you are familiar with it, not because it’s actually inherently better.

Personally I would love if more players embraced playing with Eurodisc in particular.

• They are already financially supporting European ultimate. Discraft and other manufacturers of approved discs are not likely to.

• It is so much cheaper, quicker and easier to get Eurodiscs. Ordering discs from North America that you have to pay huge shipping and import costs for when it’s not even the type of disc you’re going to use at the highest level makes zero sense any more. From an administrator perspective, the Irish Flying Disc Association switched to sourcing discs for schools to Eurodisc a few years back as it made no sense to pay more and have longer lead times for an essentially identical product.

• From an environmental perspective not only are you saving a lot of air miles by shipping within Europe, Eurodiscs are manufactured using recyclable plastics and come in paper rather than plastic.

This wasn’t supposed to turn into an ad for Eurodisc, I swear! As things stand it’s the only European manufacturer that makes an approved Ultimate disc, however, once a disc has been approved for Championship Level play by USAU - WFDF relies on this certification process for it’s own list - I’m totally happy to use it at my training sessions. There’s a fairly rigorous testing and approval process to ensure all these discs meet the same performance standards, you can read all about it here: https://usaultimate.org/programs/disc-standards/