Alex Thorne practically was born with a Frisbee in his hand.
"My parents met playing in college, so I was born into them going to tournaments all the time," said Thorne, 17, of West View. "Instead of playing ball with my dad, I was throwing Frisbee."
Now he's playing on one of the top teams in an area organizers call a hotbed for Ultimate, the Frisbee sport that combines various aspects of soccer, football and basketball.
The Pittsburgh High School Ultimate League has grown from seven to 45 teams in the past seven years, and the number of registered high school members has jumped from about 90 to 600.
Abe Sunwoo, 18, of Kennedy said the fast pace is what draws him to the game.
"You always have to be on your toes. As soon as you mess up, you have to recover," he said.
Many of Thorne's North Hills teammates have been playing Ultimate since elementary school and joined the league as a team when they were in eighth grade.
"Me and a group of friends were just messing around and realized we were getting pretty good, so we joined the Pittsburgh league," he said.
Players on most of the other teams were at least two years older and much larger, but they did OK, he said.
"By 10th grade, we were getting to be as big as everyone else, and we actually won the league that year by one point. It was really intense," Thorne said.
The game starts with two seven-person teams lined up on opposite sides of the field. Like a football kickoff, the defending team throws the Frisbee to the other team and both teams start running.
From there, the play becomes more like basketball with the player holding the Frisbee standing still and looking for an open teammate. The defending players try to block or intercept the throw, and if they succeed, they gain possession and start moving the disc in the other direction.
A team scores a point when one of its players catches the Frisbee in the opposing team's end zone. The first team to reach 15 points wins.
The sport's popularity with students has led to some school districts giving it official recognition. The Woodland Hills school board recognized Ultimate as a club sport in February. That gives the team easier access to school facilities. And they get the ability to earn varsity letters, and be recognized in the yearbook and at the annual athletic awards night.
George Novak, the district's athletic director, said Woodland Hills recognizes several nontraditional sports because the district believes kids involved in an extracurricular activities do better in school.
"We support all the kids who have different interests. We just try to get them all involved in something," he said.
Senior Ryan Burg, 18, of Forest Hills founded the Woodland Hills team three years ago after hearing about the Pittsburgh High School Ultimate League from another student. He started working on getting it club status this fall. He first learned of the game from his older brother, who played it with friends in college.
A strong selling point is that the sport is structured to teach players conflict resolution, as well as Frisbee throwing, he said. There are no referees. The players call their own fouls and work out disagreements through discussion, he said.
"It's a great sport for students to learn cooperation," Burg said.
Not all the districts welcome the new sport. The Montour team has been around for three years, but doesn't have club status.
"We basically get to use the name only," said Ryan Smith, 18, of Robinson. "We've been kicked off their fields before."
Mitch Galiyas, Montour's athletic director, said the district's policy requires a team to survive five years before it receives club status because many teams tend to die when the people who started them graduate. The teams can use community parks, but they shouldn't expect to share resources with Montour's 68 established teams until they show they have some staying power, he said.
"Just because you start a team, the school district shouldn't be expected to support it," Galiyas said.
Darren Shultz, the league's founder and commissioner, said many districts resist recognizing Ultimate because they fear it will rob athletes and resources from other sports.
The Ultimate Players Association is the national body that governs the sport. The organization's Web site includes a place for teams to report their game results. Of the 181 youth teams using the site, 52 are from Pennsylvania and 30 are from the Pittsburgh area.
About 12 percent of the league's 4,238 youth members come from Pennsylvania.
Shultz predicted Ultimate will become a recognized high school sport throughout the area.
"The growth numbers for Ultimate are ridiculous. They're going to have to deal with it sooner or later," he said.
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