By the ladies' own admission, they're not as fast as the men, but they're just as tough. Forget the images of giggling girls limp-wristing Wham-Os on a college quad. One look at a speeding attacker "going ho" (making a horizontal dive) for a goal will erase them forever.
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You've probably at least heard of Ultimate. There's even a good chance you've played this fast-moving hybrid of soccer and football. Though the sport is getting more organized, the vast majority of play is still in grassroots, unofficial pickup games. Essentially, the rules are these: Two seven-player teams move a 175-gram disc by throwing it (players with the disc can't run). A catch in the end zone scores a point. Incomplete passes cause the disc to change hands, and the defense becomes the offense. Perhaps most radical, there are no refs, although some tournaments employ observers who judge appeals. Otherwise, players call fouls. Intentional contact is taboo.

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Sprains and dislocations are fairly common, and the constant changing of direction means knees are at risk, too. "It's very tricky on the knees," Corinne Bacon says good-naturedly. A 12-year veteran of various San Francisco Bay Area teams, Corinne's had five knee surgeries due to her Ultimate passion.
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In men's play, at the national championship, the joy of play has been known to make way for fisticuffs, but the more civilized women say yelling at each other is usually as bad as things get.
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