Joe Seidler

Joe Seidler singlehandedly organized the collection of data, facts, stories, anecdotes, and all the other elements that comprise the history of the sport of Ultimate. In addition to his self-appointed role as Sport Historian, he also served for three years on the board of the UPA (predecessor to USA Ultimate) and for nearly three years on the board of Ultimate Peace.

Joe was never a player; he began his love of ultimate watching his son, Jason, play at UCSB in 1993. Joe commented that “attending tournaments with his family brought them even closer than they ever thought possible.” He was motivated to document the sport and write its history because he was so impressed by what he saw on the field, by the people he met who were involved with the sport, and realized while serving on the UPA board that even board members had little sense of the sport’s history.

He gathered the data on championship records, team rosters, and so much more to create, organize, and manage all the content into an accessible website format for almost 20 years and then found a successor, through www.ultimate-reference.com, to carry on the work. To create the Ultimate History books, volumes I-III, Joe arranged and motivated the various authors of the books to do the primary research and interviews of the individuals and teams who made our history before their stories were lost to time, and then got the funding to publish two high-quality volumes of the books plus a third volume published as an e-book.

While there still would be an Ultimate Hall of Fame in the absence of all this incredible work, there would be so much less context, content, and longitudinal perspective available without Joe’s contributions.