The ultimate frisbee Substack community
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A short post today, more in-depth stuff will be coming soon. I like to make lists. Here's a list of all the ultimate frisbee-related Substacks I've found. Let me know if you know a blog that's not on this list, I'd like to keep this page updated as the community grows.
Feel free to not read this the way you would a regular blog post. It's less "article" and more "resource". Just a little something I felt like putting together, maybe someone will find it useful some day.
[Update 2025-01-03: I updated this article to (a) add notes on which sites are still active, (b) re-ordered the list to give priority to bigger/more active Substacks, and (c) re-phrased a few sections to better reflect the current state of each newsletter.]
Some Flow — You’re already here, but I’ll include myself on the list just for completeness. [I’m still active as of Jan 2025]
The Breakside — Author Noam Gumerman says:
The goal of this newsletter is to tackle what I see as a gap in the present coverage of Ultimate as a sport. I hope that this newsletter will provide an outlet for important, yet overlooked people and stories to receive the coverage and perspectives they deserve.
A variety of topics, including “opinion” essays, tournament recaps, interviews, stats, and more. I'm obviously a big fan of Amateur Statistics For Professional Athletes Part 1. [Update Jan 2025: very active in 2024, Noam is working hard]
bettereveryday coaching — Written by former Ranelagh coach Ian French. He lists some of his own top posts here.
Part coverage of European frisbee news, part coaching/strategy blog. We have similar playing/coaching philosophies and somewhat different writing styles. For example, my post Oodles of OODAs has a lot in common with his post on Scanning the Field.
Zone Offence Moves I Like is exactly the kind of thing I would write. [Update Jan 2025: still active]
Live Ultimate (live.ulti.tv) — Essentially the newsletter of ulti.tv. Sign up to get notified when there's live ultimate being streamed. I don't know much about ulti.tv, but scrolling through their pages I'm impressed how many free streams they offer. [Update Jan 2025: Still posting frequently to inform people about upcoming streams]
TOP Therapy (Fiona’s Substack) — Fiona is a top European frisbee player. Her blog mostly focuses on physical therapy/strength and conditioning, but with a focus on ultimate frisbee. [Update Jan 2025: still posting recently]
Bricklock’s blog — Written by Nicholas Whitlock, a New Zealand ultimate player (and thrower of one of the biggest hammers you’ll ever see). Recaps of the author’s tournaments and a few strategy articles. [Update Jan 2025: Still posting recently]
SidelineBandit’s Substack — Another New Zealand ultimate player. A little bit of everything. [Update Jan 2025: Still posting recently]
InsideOut Ultimate — An Australia-based publication with a number of contributors. Some Aussie frisbee news, some tips & strategy articles (don't miss Give Goes are a Cheat Code), some comedic posts (e.g. 'I wish I was a smarter defender,' Says Freakish Athlete), and some miscellaneous opinion articles.
I'm especially impressed with their news coverage—they recently had daily updates during both the WFDF U24 worlds and the AOUGC. [Update Jan 2025: Still relatively active]
Autimate — Austrian ultimate. They put out a number of posts in May and June 2023 and haven’t been seen since then. It’s not in English (German I think) so it’s not for me, but listed here for those who may be interested. [Update Jan 2025: had a number of posts in 2024]
Ranelagh's Substack — News and updates about top Irish club team Ranelagh. Ian French also writes posts here. They offer a paid subscription to raise money for the team. [Update Jan 2025: Only one post in 2024 after many in 2023, looks mostly dead.]
silly drop — Short, illustrated posts chronicling some of the author's frisbee adventures. Not many posts but bettereveryday coaching has them as a recommended blog so I'm including them here as well. [Update Jan 2025: A few posts in 2024]
Hive Ultimate Articles — Apparently there is a Substack where Hive reposts their articles? Although it seems that they stopped updating at the end of 2022. I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but you can always follow their new posts on their site at hiveultimate.com. [Update Jan 2025: Hasn’t posted since 2022]
Ultiverse — Written by some of the people behind Ulti.tv. They only have a couple posts in 2023, so it seems to be half-dead. There are a number of posts from 2020/2021 on their attempts to start a European "UltiLeague" (for example).
(It's not a "dot substack dot com" domain, but I decided it still counts for this list. Substack lets you use their technology/layouts on your own domain name, which is what's going on here. Most Substackers don't do that because it can be a hassle (and costs money), but some do.) [Update Jan 2025: only 2 posts in 2024; mostly dead]
Those are the blogs I've been able to find so far. Let me know if you're aware of a blog I should add to the list.
Hey, could you also share other sources of ultimate knowledge (besides substack). It seems to me that on the internet it's not always easy to find answers to all my questions about the intricacies of ultimate, and it's generally difficult to find all the sources of information scattered on various blogs and sites.