Mark Licata

In his long career of service to the community and sport of ultimate, Mark has made many contributions, all in volunteer roles. He has served as a Sectional Coordinator, Regional Coordinator, Tournament Director, UPA Managing Director, Director of Competition, and Board of Directors member. However, Mark’s greatest contribution was as the Disc Standards tsar. With his engineering background, Mark was able to bring a scientific approach to the ultimate community in understanding how the plastic they played with affected the disc, such a crucial item for the sport. It was his work that demonstrated the reason for the deterioration in the Wham-O discs that led to the decision for the UPA to adopt the Discraft UltraStar in 1991 as the official disc. He served as the UPA/USAU Disc Standards Chairperson from 1994-2011 and developed the standards in the late 1990s to ensure that discs from other manufacturers could be tested properly to see if they met the standards for use by the ultimate community. He remained active in ultimate until his untimely death in May 2014.