One of Germany’s most successful women’s ultimate frisbee teams is located in Eppelheim. During training, the “Heidees” show what this sport is all about: the right technique, athleticism and fairness.
A short run-up, a quick flick of the wrist and Ava Müller sends the disc flying. Right across the field. 60 metres, 70 metres, in a long-distance bend to the left. It soars over Maike Tiro who is dashing across the playing field. Then, the frisbee slows down a bit, sinks down—and Maike plunges forward and catches it with both hands. A perfect throw, a perfect catch. Co-training the team today is Mona Schäck. “Nice!” she shouts out. Yet, despite the seemingly effortless execution when performed by the Heidees in Eppelheim, this requires years of practice.
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Maybe the fairest sport in the world: In our video the Heidees show what ultimate frisbee is all about.
This is the right technique for the thrower. She has to develop a feeling for how the wind might impact the flight, for the angle and speed the disc needs to attain in order to reach her team-mate on the other end of the field—while she is not even there yet. The catcher has to estimate the trajectory, predict where the frisbee will land, and how fast she has to run to get there.
Don’t let her throw it—Maike Tiro is blocking her opponent.
Ultimate frisbee has little to do with the leaned-back kind of disc-throwing practised in parks. It is a sport that is performed today even by professional players in its homeland, the US. There, students invented ultimate frisbee back in the 1960s; in 1983, the first championships were held. By now, about five million people go in for the sport in about 40 countries. In Germany, there are a good 200 clubs.
The Heidees’ training is held on the sports ground of the TVE Eppelheim sports club.
Before playing frisbee, some sprint training is in order.
Why? This becomes quite clear during a match...
...because if you want to catch the disc that has been flying 60 metres…
...you need to be fast!
Training discussion with Ava—team players are also team coaches.
And they also take on the role of the referee.
Maike has been playing ultimate frisbee for more than 20 years now. She started at the age of 23 “for love”. She studied logopaedics in Aachen back then and her boyfriend at the time played frisbee in the university team. She was fascinated, tried it out—and stuck to it. In 2010, the couple moved to Heidelberg because of their jobs. They really wanted to keep on practising their sport, though—and in finding the Heidees in Eppelheim they found their new club. By now, they have married and have four kids together—the oldest of whom already plays ultimate frisbee, too. Since the Heidees do not have their own youth section, she—so far—has been training with the Heidelberg Lions.
Everyone is welcome in our teams—with or without sporting ambitions
Maike Tiro
“It really is an extremely fair sport and a family sport, too,” Maike says. Her daughter had also played handball once, she recounts, “but the atmosphere is simply incomparable.” It is the “Spirit of the Game” that makes the difference. With few exceptions, there are no referees in the matches. Ultimate frisbee thus is the only team sport worldwide that is self-regulated. “As players, we take care that everyone plays by the rules,” Maike explains. In doing so, they trust that nobody will break the rules on purpose. Even if ultimate frisbee officially is a non-contact sport—when fighting for the disc, body contact cannot always be avoided. “When a player sees a foul she calls it—and either the opposing player accepts it or she argues against it.” If these two players cannot come to an agreement, the game is “rewound” and the move right before the alleged foul is simply repeated.
Good vibes—the “Spirit of the Game” is the essence of ultimate frisbee.
Loud music echoes across the sports ground in the south of Eppelheim. On the left-hand side of the playing field, the women’s team is training in the evening sun, while the men’s team is playing on the right-hand side. The club also has a mixed team. Elements from basketball and American football are combined in the sport. Seven players compete against seven players on the opposing team during the matches. Whoever catches the disc has to come to a halt and is only allowed to pivot—similar to the rules for playing basketball. Within 10 seconds the frisbee has to be in the air and flying again. If it lands on the ground, the teams switch. The aim is to catch the disc in the end zone —the last 18 metres—of the opposing team on the 100-metre-long playing field. When this happens, the team scores a goal. The match ends when the first team has scored 15 goals—or after an agreed time limit. Then, it is the team with the most goals that wins.
The player catching the frisbee in the end zone scores a goal for her team.
The Heidees were founded in 2001 as a division of the Turnverein Eppelheim (TVE) sports club. They were able to achieve quite a number of successes since then—every single team, that is. The men’s team (or open division) were runners-up to the German championship title several times. In 2014, they fought for the club in the world championships, just like the mixed division in 2010 and 2014. And the women, too, have been playing in the first league for many years and won the bronze medal at the German championships in 2025 with the chance to play on an international level. There, they will compete as Heidees Synergy—with the support of other teams of the region.
Successful Heidees—the women’s team won the bronze medal at the German championships in 2025.
“Everyone is welcome in our teams—with or without sporting ambitions,” Maike says. Each year, the club carries out the Heidees Cup where up to 16 teams compete against each other, but the fun factor here clearly has the upper hand. Here, you might see the contest of the Ugly Aardvarks against the Maultaschen Raviolis or the Bonsais. Maike has actually often considered quitting. “As a mother of four it can be quite demanding to reconcile family, work and such a time-consuming hobby.” However, she cannot picture a life for herself without the sport yet. “I need the inner balance. After a match I am completely exhausted—but my mind is clear.” Coaching is the only thing that she doesn’t do anymore.
Maike cannot picture a life for herself without ultimate frisbee.
In the women’s team, this task is shared now between players Ava Müller, Mona Schäck and Karo Gordillo. Ava has been playing ultimate frisbee since the age of 12, initially in Australia where her parents had emigrated to. In 2021, she moved to Heidelberg with her partner Nis-Julius Sontag. Both have been training with the Heidees ever since and they now even play in the national team. As a member of the mixed team, Ava also participates in the World Games—the championships for sports that are not Olympic disciplines. Since the end of 2024, the umbrella organisation of German frisbee clubs Deutscher Frisbeesport-Verband has been a member of the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB)—the German Olympic Sports Association. For Ava, this means one thing above all: “We receive some financial support now and don’t have to cover all the travel expenses ourselves, like we did in 2025 when we travelled to Chengdu in China.”
She participated in the World Games in China in 2025—Ava Müller.
The perfect mix of techniques and fitness—this is what ultimate frisbee means for Maike. In the team, they train sprinting as well as endurance and throwing techniques: backhand, forehand, overhead as well as mastering the spin of the disc. “The good news is: I might not run as fast as I used to, but I can compensate for that with my technique and my experience,” Maike explains. This is why men and women can practise this sport so well together in one team.
In Eppelheim, the sun is now slowly setting. Training lasts until 10 o’clock in the evening—under floodlights if need be. During winter, the teams train in the Rudolf-Wild sports hall. Even in the indoor season, there are championships—so, if things go really well, teams can rack up two titles in just one year. A double title has, however, not yet been in the cards for one of the Heidees teams. “So far,” Maike says and laughs.
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