Allan Hits His First “Beast”
I’ve been freestyling for about 14 years now. When I went to my first tournament (1997 Worlds), someone hitting a single 6 add move was a pretty big deal; hitting two consecutive 6′s would have pretty much instantly propelled you to upper-echelon, and someone completing 3 consecutive 6 add moves would have seemed other-wordly.
As Ryan Mulroney starting linking 5 add moves together and 6 add moves were being thrown into routines, folks like Ahren Gehrman started connecting the dots, so to speak. I believe Ahren was (please correct me if I’m wrong) the first person to hit three consecutive sixes (blurry blender x 3) around 2000 (’99? ’98?)); it was epic for the time.
Given the 6 > 6 > 6 rating, combos of this nature were coined “beast” combination’s–obviously–after the biblical reference. I suppose this in inescapable.
Somehow, between 2000 and now, beast combos became pretty much common place. This isn’t to say that people don’t still freak out when someone busts one out, but sealing one isn’t going to instantly get you inducted into BAP anymore. As with the general direction of freestyle recently, now the measure is more about the uniqueness of the combination; paradox-whirl-free (PWF) versions and all. It is good.
Today is my 33rd birthday. It was 5 centigrade outside, and a coastal breezy that made shorts … not cool. I wasn’t thinking about doing anything special today. I don’t really celebrate my birthday very much. But I wanted to kick for a while, I knew that. I called Matt up and he–somewhat reluctantly–came out. We headed over to the basketball court. I played in jeans for almost 20 minutes before braving my bare legs to the cold. I started playing with some stepping ducking.
At the end of last “season” I was coming really close to blurry torque > blurry blender > mullet, but couldn’t manage the symposium on the last move. I had also skooled the crap out of my alpine blurry whirl (ABW), and had that down pat on both sides. Today, since the ABW felt particularly strong on my flipside, I decided to see if I could step out of it. Then the thought occurred to me that it would be kind of cool if I could hit my very first beast combo on my birthday. Matt passed me the bag. I hit the alpine blurry whirl cleaner than I ever have–the step out of it felt perfectly normal–and halfway through the blurry torque, I just knew the blurry blender would fall into place.
alpine blurry whirl > blurry torque > blurry blender > 10-15 contact guiltless seal.
So, almost 10 years after first hearing about someone doing a 6 > 6 > 6 combo and thinking “I’m going to be able to do that someday”, I finally did it. I wasn’t recording video, but Matt Emmings saw it. And it’s not like it’s a huge deal now anyhow; I’m probably, what, the 50th person to have pulled one out? But it felt amazing and I’m stoked that my body has held out for this long for me to able to be even coming close to these sorts of combos at the ripe old age of 33 
I the’d nemesis a few times at the end of last season too. Now there’s a move that’s been on my brain for even longer than beast combos. Jubal first told me about nemesis in 1996. I’ve often said that I wouldn’t “retire” from playing until I could hit it. This spring is the time. You can bet I’ll post about it here when it happens