Born into a close, middle-class household, Westerfield lived with his parents and younger sister, Kathy, who graduated from Winston Churchill High School in 1972 and made a career in special education.

Their shared anti-establishment attitude and lifestyle, which included their rejection of traditional sports, led them to develop a proficiency in playing Frisbee that had never been seen before.

After graduating from Franklin High School in Livonia, Michigan, in 1965, Westerfield and Kenner spent their summer days at Cass and Silver Lake beaches.

They stopped along the way to perform Frisbee street shows to audiences in cities and at popular annual events such as the Klondike Days in Edmonton and the Calgary Stampede in Alberta.

They made a minimal income by selling alternative newspapers, the Georgia Straight, on the city streets by day and performing nightly Frisbee shows in the historic Gastown area, in front of a railroad car turn restaurant named Frisby's.

Because of the urban settings, their performances were highly surreal, as they freestyled with a frisbee at night in front of crowds in the streets.

One night, while performing at Frisby's, they unwittingly became involved in the Yippie-organized Gastown Smoke-in, a demonstration for the legalization of marijuana.

The subsequent smoking of marijuana in the town square quickly turned the peaceful but illegal demonstration into the now-famous Gastown Riots.

[11] During the fall of 1971, Westerfield and Kenner, having to leave All Seasons Park due to continued police raids, needed money to return to Toronto.

Upon returning to Toronto, they resided in the notorious counter-cultural Rochdale College, while performing Frisbee shows on the Yonge Street Mall.

These tournaments were the IFT Guts Frisbee competitions held in Northern Michigan, the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships in Toronto (1972), and Vancouver, BC (1974), the Octad in New Brunswick, NJ (1974), the American Flying Disc Open (AFDO) in Rochester, NY (1974) and the WFC in Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA (1974).

[18][19] Freestyle is a competition where teams of two or three players perform a routine that involves a series of creative throwing and catching techniques set to music.

Unknown to them, there were a few Frisbee players in the United States with freestyle interests in Berkeley, New York, Ann Arbor, New Jersey, and Chicago.

In 1974, at the 3rd annual Canadian Open Frisbee Championships, Westerfield and Kenner introduced the freestyle event and won it.

[21] The first-ever freestyle competition featured several noteworthy Frisbee pairs, including Doug Corea and Jim Palmeri, John Kirkland and Jose Montalvo, Irv Kalb and Dave "Buddha" Meyers, Dan "Stork" Roddick and Bruce Koger, and Tom Cleworth and John Connelly.

[23] This is where Bill King, Jim Brown, and John Anthony made their first competitive appearance and gained early freestyle fame.

[24] A year later, the American Flying Disc Open (AFDO) in Rochester, New York, the Octad in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the 1975 World Frisbee Championships, held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, adopted Westerfield and Kenner's freestyle competition format as one of their new events.

Jim Kenner and Ken received The Decade Awards 1970-75 Top Freestyle Routine: Canadian Open 1974.

[2] Also in 1975, Westerfield invented a new freestyle move called "body-roll,"[4] (rolling the disc across outstretched arms and chest, or back), then presented the move in a freestyle event at a national tournament in Rochester, NY called the American Flying Disc Open, (AFDO).

In 1978, Boulder, Colorado, while doing a distance throwing demonstration at a North American Series (NAS) event, Westerfield threw a 119-gram World Class Model Frisbee, 552 feet, using his characteristic sidearm throw, beating the official world distance record of 412 feet.

With sponsors Orange Crush, Roots, and Irwin Group, Ken Westerfield and Bob Blakely, director of the Canadian Disc Golf Association, organized the event successfully, marking the first and only time the championship has been held outside the United States.

A player's conduct as a competitor is as important as winning the game," Ken Westerfield brought this unique competitive spirit to all of his disc sports, including ultimate.

Ultimate was the first disc sport to recognize this unique conduct of play and named it the Spirit of the Game (SOTG).

Westerfield played in these beginning ultimate Frisbee exhibition games with some of the early promoters of the sport, Johnny Appleseeds who were also there to compete in the other events at the Canadian Open competition.

Westerfield, using Bob Blakely's office copy machine and mailing facility at Irwin Toy, would produce a weekly newsletter highlighting the games and scores for each team as well as their league standings through the playing season.

Ken Westerfield is recognized not only for his athletic achievements and for being one of the best players of his time, but also for his contributions as a pioneer, innovator, and organizer for all disc sports.

From numerous shows and demonstrations, as one of the first professional touring Frisbee players, has made significant contributions to disc sports.

[58] Disc golf is played on over 7000 courses in about 40 countries with 500,000 regular players, including a semi-professional tour, set-up by the PDGA.

Operating a popular biker-themed rock and roll bar in downtown Toronto called the Rats Ass Saloon, (1990-1993).

Today Westerfield, mostly retired, spends his time in Bisbee, Arizona, a small town near the U.S. Mexican border.