In August 2009, Marty Nedjelski launched a Facebook group called the "Daegu Thunder Ultimate Frisbee" with the expectation that a few link-minded ex-pats from around his community would be interested in throwing around a disc in the park,  perhaps even making a team.  Within 24 hours of forming this Facebook group, over 50 people had joined.  Many posted that they wanted to see something more organized, something beyond casual pick-up games.  Something more in-line with Daegu's already-established softball league (DSL).  At that time, in Daegu, there was also a ball hockey league running directly adjacent to an empty futsal field, that was begging to be played on.  In terms of Ultimate in Korea in 2009, KUPA was established and ran a few club tournaments - the big one being Jeju Gnarly Nines, which evolved into a more reasonable Dirty Dozens.  A couple Club teams outside of Seoul (Pohang had some players - ask Tim Northe!) and so did Daejeon (the Daejeon Groupies, ask Gaupo!) existed then as did Seoul League.  Beyond that, recreational level players had no real opportunity to play / improve / socialize in a league environment outside of Seoul and a couple tournaments a year.  Through internet searches, a couple places (Daejeon, Pohang, Daegu, Seoul, Busan) did have informal pick-up and throw-around sessions, but nothing consistent.  After the intial boom of interest and some background research, Marty took it a step further and decided to form an official Daegu Ultimate league over some Pizza Bingo one night in August 2009. He then held DUFL's first league meeting, inviting everyone to the the local ex-pat watering hole at the time, the Holy Grill, for a league meeting.  25 people showed up, had some brews, and discussed together with Marty of what the league should look like. 
 

With the keen interest of Daegu ex-pats, mostly (if not all) English teachers, Marty's sport management background and an empty futsal field - the wheels were set in motion.  The facebook group quickly changed names to the "Daegu Ultimate Frisbee League" and a short 2 months after the initial creation of Marty's Facebook group - the inaugural season of "DUFL" was underway with it's first game taking place on October 18th, 2009.  The first season of the Daegu Ultimate Frisbee League (DUFL) consisted of 5 teams, all based out of Daegu:  Storm, Hurricane, Tsunami, Thunder, and Storm.  The "First Five" were all Daegu-based,  weather-related names, plural singular. Inspiration for the first 2 names (Daegu Thunder and Daegu Lightning) came from the movie called "The Rundown." (known as "Welcome to the Jungle" in some regions of the world).

 

The field was played in a metal fenced-in 60 m x 20 m futsal field, 6-on-6 with 2 metre end-zones.  Yes, that is no type-o - 2 metres!   In that inaugural season, each team played 8 games (playing each other team twice), and the playoffs were a single-elimination one-day tournament based on regular season fees.  Marty felt that to keep the league fun and recreational, every team should make the playoffs.  This philosophy has continued through till today.  Each season's regular season seed determines their playoff match-up, regardless if they finished dead-last with 0 wins, they are still in the playoffs.   Those first playoffs had the Daegu Tsunami ended up winning the league, as the number 1 seed going into the playoffs.  Although they were ranked #1, the Daegu Storm were the favourites going into the finals (they had lost their only game of the season on a forfeit earlier on).  The Tsunami were lucky to even be in the finals, after trailing by 4 goals with less than 5 minutes remaining in their first game of the single-elimination playoff bracket.  An epic comeback in that first game paved the way to a championship game victory.
 

Followed soon after the inaugural Fall 2009 season (initially called "leagues" until someone got confused that we were calling 'seasons' leagues),  the First Five weather-related teams in Daegu expanded it's team naming concept and league boundaries out to Busan, with the first expansion team to DUFL, the Busan Heat.  The plural-singular team named continued into the 3rd league season, Fall 2010, however the weather-related morphed into weather-related slash natural-disasters: The Daejeon Pandemic entered the league in DUFL's 3rd season.   Moving into Spring 2011, the 4th season for DUFL, 2 new expansion teams entered following suit, with the Daegu Pollution and the Gyeongju Godzilla.  "Godzilla" was deemed to be a natural disaster because it was one of the city-destruction features in the popular PC game, Sim City.
 

The league's trophy initially started with an actual "gold cup," which Rufus promptly broke on the train ride back to Busan in the Spring of 2010.  Marty bought something a little more sturdy for the start of the 3rd season, "Hucky the Cow" (now the league's Hall of Fame trophy) was purchased and used for a couple seasons, before "Hammy the Tiger" entered and has stayed since the league's championship trophy.  Hammy stands for Hammer if you didn't figure that out by now.

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By the league's 5th season, Fall 2011 - the plural-singular-weather-related-natural-disaster related team names had ran their course, and the league had expanded beyond its' league name.  Marty was decided the new name of the 'Republic of Korea Ultimate' league was more all-encompassing now that the league had teams in Daegu, Busan, Daejeon and now Gwangju, Gumi, and Ulsan.  The new league name had a catchy acronyms as well, with 'rokultimate' and of course, "ROK-U."  For those that were wondering, an alternative league name that suggested was the "SKUFL,"  the Southern Korean Ultimate Frisbee League.  With the league growing so rapidly, Marty no longer could balance his Moonkkang teaching and Thunderbirds beer drinking schedule - so a meeting in Busan at a coffee shop in Haeundae brought in Chris Pyles to the league management team.  Chris' designer and inventor experience brought a whole new element to the league!  Read more below about this.

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The Spring 2012 finals were held in Gyeongju, along the riverbank, under horizontal, terrential rain.  At the time, the games were rain or shine, with no weather back-up dates for finals.  Marty recalls the final game seeing an Evolution player layout for a disc and disappearing into a puddle.  The Pandemic ended up defeating the Evolution in what is to-date the worst weather for a finals game, ever?  The awards ceremony and trophy presentations took place in one of those "Badduk" shelter alongside the main road.  The Fall 2012 finals were held in Daegu, with the finals game starting in late afternoon, and running longer than expected.  That game went to Universe Point, in what literally was nearly pitch black at the time.  Watch the video and see for yourself!  You really can't see anything, only audio - It's hard to believe the players could see the disc!  In this game, there is an 'infamous' Andy Wind (also known fondly as the 'Bone Professor') Callahan that was called out.  Though, when you watch replays, it does leave it up for some debate whether he caught it with his foot down or not! 

 

2013 saw rapid league expansion, with the league topping 20 teams for the first time.  New field locations, a more involved captain's wire, big league purchases (a league van and a giant tent), as well as in-house jersey and swag production, under the creative eye of Chris Pyles, Marty's fellow league manager.  Chris brought innovative new ideas to the league, and started the on-set of league-wide sublimated jerseys, of which now is a staple of the league - a sublimated jersey included in your league fees!  Pohang's Yeongdeok fields, first discovered for ROKU league games by Oliver Votteler, a local Pohanger, ended the days of poor field conditions and poor lighting.

 

After the Spring 2014 season, Marty 'retired' from ROKU, heading back to Canada with his 4 cats and his wife, after 10 seasons leading ROKU to awesomeness.  Marty founded and created the league under the guiding principle of including all skill levels to the game, keeping the sport recreational and fun by drafting and evenly-dividing teams based on participation.  Anyone who signed up and wanted to play was able to join.  ROK-U is nationally-based league making player location as part of the equation to balancing teams.  This equation can be a nightmare at times - rather than a straight national draft, creating teams without regard to a player's locale - however, the follow the participation-based guidelines, making the players have a team and a league that is easily accessible for them (literally, in their city), it needs to be created this way.  This always has proven to be a challenge, but one that the league continues to strive towards.  It is the hopes that one day the league will be large enough to have teams and players be able to play and travel within reasonable distances of each other. Finally, although the league is recreational league, the league always tries to create an air of professionalism in hopes of creating a unique sport culture and legacy from season-to-season within ROK-U.  We hope you will see this professional-feeling in our website.