History

Although team sports using flying discs had been played decades earlier, Ultimate arose in a recogniseable form in the 1960s, in American high schools (as "Ultimate Frisbee").

Ultimate has been played in Cambridge since at least the 1980s. The current club has its roots in the early 1990s, when Sir Dave MacKay and others christened the community Cambridge Ultimate, and the competitive team Strange Blue. SB teams comprising of University of Cambridge students competed in student tournaments; student-agnostic SB teams entered club competitions. The Cambridge University Ultimate (Frisbee) Club was formed to meet the university's statutory requirements, but both students and non-students were involved in organising events.

In 2012, under club Open captain "Nimble" Graham Wilson and CUUC President Mike Fletcher (and many others in the CUUC exec and "brain trust"), the club (i.e. student-agnostic) team rebranded to Cambridge Ultimate, in order to make the club more accessible to people unassociated with the University of Cambridge. The organisation of the club otherwise remained unchanged, with club players and student players all contributing to the shared community, and the University team continuing the compete under Strange Blue. The Cambridge Ultimate logo was designed by Nick Tsao: the stylized bevel gear spelling "CU" narrowly beat out a depiction of Stephen Hawking with a jetpack catching a disc with a robot arm.

In 2014, Cambridge Ultimate placed 6th in the Mixed division of the World Ultimate Club Championships under captain Nick Wong, and in the same year, the Open team competed in the European Championships led by Chris Tull.

Through the late 2010s, the city's ultimate community continued to grow, competition structures became increasingly complex, and the University of Cambridge finally showed interest in recognising CUUC as a sports club. In early 2023, the decision was made to spin out a broader organisation to formally hold responsibility for events and competition not restricted to University of Cambridge students. The new organisation was named camdisc, after the community's mailing list which had long been the core of our club communications, and began operating on August 2nd, 2023.  CUUC/Strange Blue continued as a student-only club.

Snapshots of this history are available at Dave MacKay's original website, the old "new" student website, the previous CUUC website, and the former Cambridge Ultimate website.