The spirit of the game.

This phrase is used in a lot of sports, but how many actually abide by it all the time? In ultimate frisbee, it's the governing law.

"The game is competitive yet friendly," said Rebecca Wysong, the Penn State ultimate frisbee Spring Phling tournament director. "The spirit of sportsmanship is the idea to play fairly. All calls are done by the players. We have no refs."

And maybe this is because it was developed by a group of kids in 1968 at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., just looking to have fun.

Penn State will continue this tradition when it hosts its Spring Phling tournament from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Bigler Field.

The teams in the tournament have been divided into groups, with each team playing the others in its own group on Saturday and competing in a single elimination tournament on Sunday.

Games will also be played on the fields beside the flower gardens and on Pollock fields.

Since the game was invented it has spread to colleges and communities worldwide, with the first college game being played between Rutgers and Princeton on Nov. 6, 1972. According to Wysong, Penn State started its men's team about 25 years ago and its female team about six years ago. The men's team is named Spank and the women's team is named Isis.

In 2001, 25,000 people are members of the Ultimate Players Association and the World Flying Disc Federation. This number doesn't include those people who play for fun in their backyards.

So what exactly is Ultimate, as the athletes who play the sport like the call it?

It is a fast-paced game that combines basketball, football, and soccer skills. It's played typically with seven people from each team on the field at a time.

The disc is put into play by one team (standing in its end zone) throwing the Frisbee to the other team (standing in its end zone). This team becomes offense. The only time a team scores is by catching the frisbee in the opposite end zone.

The trick is that when a player has the frisbee he/she can not move and has 10 seconds to throw the disc. If the frisbee is not caught by a member of that person's team, a turnover results.

The trick to ultimate frisbee is that no contact is allowed. That doesn't mean that no injuries occur, however.

"Rarely is injury caused by collision," said Peter Germanowski, co-captain of Penn State's men's team.

"Generally players are pretty under control."

Injuries usually occur when players dive for a disc, suffering bumps and bruises on their knees and hips. The most serious of the common injuries is torn ACLs.

According to the official rules, each ultimate frisbee game lasts 48 minutes and is divided into two halves.

However, most of the games that Penn State plays are played to a certain number of points. Penn State typically plays to 11 or 13, with the half being called when the first team reaches six or seven.

The tournament this weekend will be the first chance the Penn State teams will have to see how they can really play.

Two of their tournaments have been cancelled this spring, making this the first official outdoor tournament that they will participate in.

Both the men's and women's teams did participate in an indoor tournament in January where the women finished first and the men finished in the middle of the 12 teams that competed.

"We haven't had a season yet," Germanowski said. "It happens Saturday, I hope."