There’s a sport recognised by the International Olympic Committee that does not conform to the stereotype of a competitive sport.

It has no umpires or referees. Instead, the players police the game. This is ‘Ultimate Frisbee’, a self-refereed, mixed-gender sport that has become one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.

And former Delhi University student, Benoy Stephen, has played an integral role in popularising the sport in India. His journey with the sport started in 2015 when he was studying at St Stephen’s College in Delhi.

He joined a local club team that occasionally practised at Greater Kailash (GK) park in the southern part of New Delhi.

During these practices, he noticed that a few kids from the area would hang around and watch. Some would even join in.

“They were from Zamrudpur (a nearby locality) and came from socially and economically lower strata,” Stephen, now 27, recalls. “They were housemaids’ kids or daily labourers’ kids.”

However, most of the kids who wanted to play never got the chance, so in October 2015, they started their own team called GK Mad.

The children (between the ages of 10 and 16) played twice a day. What amused Stephen, who coached them, was that they were never upset about losing. “There were no pointing fingers.”

Stephen then went on to spend two years with Teach For India in Hyderabad, during which he ideated on a specific question: How could the lessons learnt in Ultimate Frisbee become ways of solving larger societal problems?

He started using Ultimate Frisbee in his classroom. If students misbehaved in his class, they had to play Ultimate at 6 am as a “punishment”. It was an instant success.

“It stopped being a punishment because it was fun, and when they were in the classroom, they were more relaxed and didn’t have the energy to cause trouble,” he said.

In 2018, Stephen returned to Delhi where he encouraged children to engage in the sport. He notes how the game kept children out of trouble. He was joined by coach Vivekanand Srivastava.

The duo’s intent was to take the game to neighbourhoods where delinquency, drugs and petty crime were common. And they observed remarkable results.

“Kids who previously made multiple trips to the police station cleaned up. Through observation and experience, we understood the power of this sport and thought, ‘Why not spread it to more children?’” Srivastava notes.

The duo formally registered their organisation as Flyingdisc Development Foundation in 2019. But it is widely known as Y-Ultimate among the general public.

Stephen says that they have impacted 4,000 children to date.