Hourglass: United Way of King County
Sep 28, 2026 · 26 min · 12 segments
Send us Fan Mail Good news happens. This week's episode features a conversation about the sport of ultimate frisbee with staff from All Girl…
Joe BurrusHost
Ash EscobarGuest
Anthony ZieglerGuest
That was the voice of Anthony Zig Ziegler, the play-by-play announcer for Seattle's two Ultimate Frisbee teams, the Seattle Cascade of the Ultimate Frisbee Association and the Seattle Tempest of the Western Ultimate League.
Zig was calling play-by-play from the Ultimate Frisbee Association first-round playoff game between the Cascade and the Salt Lake Shred, which was held last July.
Zig has been playing Ultimate Frisbee, also known solely as Ultimate, since the third grade and went on to play at Mercer Middle School and Franklin High School.
He's also program manager for All-Girl Everything Ultimate Program, or Age Up, a Seattle-based United Way-supported organization that uses the sport to foster community, build leadership, and teach social justice.
Zig, Age Up, the local frisbee teams, and their regional and national leagues offer a glimpse into the globally popular sport whose roots stretch back to a New England bakery in the late 1800s.
The sport and the plastic discs from which it originated are spelled F-R-I-S-B-E-E.
But according to the Strong National Museum of Play in New York, the discs stretch back to a bakery in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that was founded in 1871 by a man named William Russell Frisbee, whose last name was spelled F-R-I-S-B-I-E. Frisbee's workers used to play a game of catch with pie tins.
The pie tin game subsequently caught on with students at nearby Yale University who would yell Frisbee to warn passersby as the tin sailed in the air.
Then-inventor Fred Morrison and developer Warren Francione created a plastic version of the disc in the 1940s and dubbed it the Flying Saucer.
Toy company Wham-O subsequently made its own disc and changed the Frisbee spelling to its current version.
For years, Frisbees have become synonymous with college campus yards, backyard barbecues, and playgrounds.
But the sport has always had a connection to young people and schools, from the students at Yale with pie tins to the creation of the game of Ultimate.
According to the World Flying Disc Federation, Ultimate Frisbee was introduced in 1968 at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, by Columbia student Joel Silver.
Silver and other students then introduced rules of the game, and the first collegiate match was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1972.
The Ultimate Players Association, now known as USA Ultimate, was founded seven years later and established standardized rules and original national championships.
The Ultimate Frisbee Association was founded in 2012, and the inaugural season of the Western Ultimate League came in the spring of 2022.
H-Up began while the sport was growing in South Seattle, and it has served as a tool for young people to forge community with a network of players, coaches, and alumni.
Although its name is All Girl Everything, it offers a girls' program, a boys' program, as well as a summer program and school-based teams.
The Girls and Boys Programs hire high school interns to lead and support workshops and hold facilitations on school issues that impact local communities.
Age Up also hosts field trips, retreats, restaurant outings, and it has ultimate teams at schools such as Beacon Hill Elementary, Mercer Middle, and Franklin High.
Age Up is funded by United Way of King County as a member of the Racial Equity Coalition.
a group of community-based nonprofits that deliver youth programming to promote positive cultural identity and help students succeed in school.
That was the voice of Anthony Zig Ziegler, the play-by-play announcer for Seattle's two Ultimate Frisbee teams, the Seattle Cascade of the Ultimate Frisbee Association and the Seattle Tempest of the Western Ultimate League.
Zig was calling play-by-play from the Ultimate Frisbee Association first-round playoff game between the Cascade and the Salt Lake Shred, which was held last July.
Zig has been playing Ultimate Frisbee, also known solely as Ultimate, since the third grade and went on to play at Mercer Middle School and Franklin High School.
He's also program manager for All-Girl Everything Ultimate Program, or Age Up, a Seattle-based United Way-supported organization that uses the sport to foster community, build leadership, and teach social justice.
Zig, Age Up, the local frisbee teams, and their regional and national leagues offer a glimpse into the globally popular sport whose roots stretch back to a New England bakery in the late 1800s.
The sport and the plastic discs from which it originated are spelled F-R-I-S-B-E-E.
But according to the Strong National Museum of Play in New York, the discs stretch back to a bakery in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that was founded in 1871 by a man named William Russell Frisbee, whose last name was spelled F-R-I-S-B-I-E. Frisbee's workers used to play a game of catch with pie tins.
The pie tin game subsequently caught on with students at nearby Yale University who would yell Frisbee to warn passersby as the tin sailed in the air.
Then-inventor Fred Morrison and developer Warren Francione created a plastic version of the disc in the 1940s and dubbed it the Flying Saucer.
Toy company Wham-O subsequently made its own disc and changed the Frisbee spelling to its current version.
For years, Frisbees have become synonymous with college campus yards, backyard barbecues, and playgrounds.
But the sport has always had a connection to young people and schools, from the students at Yale with pie tins to the creation of the game of Ultimate.
According to the World Flying Disc Federation, Ultimate Frisbee was introduced in 1968 at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, by Columbia student Joel Silver.
Silver and other students then introduced rules of the game, and the first collegiate match was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1972.
The Ultimate Players Association, now known as USA Ultimate, was founded seven years later and established standardized rules and original national championships.
The Ultimate Frisbee Association was founded in 2012, and the inaugural season of the Western Ultimate League came in the spring of 2022.
H-Up began while the sport was growing in South Seattle, and it has served as a tool for young people to forge community with a network of players, coaches, and alumni.
Although its name is All Girl Everything, it offers a girls' program, a boys' program, as well as a summer program and school-based teams.
The Girls and Boys Programs hire high school interns to lead and support workshops and hold facilitations on school issues that impact local communities.
Age Up also hosts field trips, retreats, restaurant outings, and it has ultimate teams at schools such as Beacon Hill Elementary, Mercer Middle, and Franklin High.
Age Up is funded by United Way of King County as a member of the Racial Equity Coalition.
a group of community-based nonprofits that deliver youth programming to promote positive cultural identity and help students succeed in school.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.