World Footbag Championships: Brief Synopsis
2007 IFPA WORLD FOOTBAG CHAMPIONSHIPS
August 11-18th in Lake Buena Vista, Florida was a week to remember. I had been to 15 World Championships in a row until missing 2005 and 2006 in Helsinki and Frankfurt due to the high cost of traveling to Europe. But I’ve known since 2006 when Worlds was announced to take place at Disney World in 2007 that I would find a way to make it, and I’m very glad I did.
If you were unable to attend this event, then it may be difficult for you to know just how amazing it was to be part of it. There was a core group of approximately 200 to 250 spectators, competitors, and organizers.
On the net side (sometimes called the “dark side” by freestylers) there were over 50 Open Doubles net competitors (of which 34 did Singles Open Net), 14 Open Women’s net competitors, 10 Intermediate Net Players, and 12 Masters Net Players (many of which competed in other categories as well). If you are interested in news about footbag net, we recommend you check out the best source around on it: Chaos Footabg. This site is maintained by retired world champion freestyler turned net player Eric Wulff. You can also watch the Open Doubles Net Bronze Match from Worlds in high definition on his site: Open Doubles Bronze Match
For freestyle there were 41 Open Singles Freestyle competitors, a mere 8 Open Doubles Competitors, 9 Women’s Singles competitors, and 25 Intermediate Singles Freestyle competitors. In shred 30, there were 34 Open Shred 30 competitors, 9 Women’s Shred 30 Competitors, and 19 Intermediate Shred 30 Competitors.
All in all there were slightly more freestylers than net players, and I would estimate that the average age of the freestylers was more than 10 years - maybe even 15 years below the average age of the net players. I was the second oldest freestyle competitor, second only to Scott Davidson. It was really interesting to note the dichotomy between the net and freestyle players… The sport is really divided, and I don’t know if this is good or bad, it’s just an interesting observation. I think there were only about 3 players that actually competed in both net and freestyle. Back when I first started in the early 90’s, the vast majority of the players competed in both events. Nowadays, the disciplines are so advanced that it’s extremely difficult to focus on both of them. It’s interesting to see that many of the top freestylers have moved form from freestyle to net… This is probably because of how hard on the body hard core freestyle really is. Many past freestyle world champions, including Kenny Shutls, Sam Conlon, Jody Welch, Lisa Mc Daniel, Trica George, Becca English-Ross, Tuan Vu, and Eric Wulff hardly touched a freestyle bag (if at all), yet competed in net.
If you’re interested in the competition per se, you can see a complete list of results here:
2007 IFPA World Championships Results
For videos of the freestyle competition, I’d like to give a huge thank you to Mathieu Gauthier for taking the time to and effort to make these available to the public:
2007 IFPA World Championships Freestyle Vidoes
Also, if you’d like to see the YouTube versions and skip the hassle of downloading (though sacrificing quality), quite a few of the of the routines were posted here by Taylor Chaintreuil:
Taylor Chaintrueil’s YouTube Gallery
Here’s a direct look at the winning routine by now 6 time Singles World Champion, Vasek Klouda (you can also watch it directly on YouTube):
You can see Jim Penske’s second place routine in our previous blog.
Jonathan Haber had one of the most memorable routines of Worlds. Admittedly there were quite a few drops, and he had some tough competition in his pool: He did not advance to the semi-finals. Nonetheless, this routine is worth watching for the entertainment value alone:
Or, watch it directly on YouTube.
A few final words on the competition… I ended up being a judge for the Open Finals routines. This was admittedly one of the most difficult rounds of competition I’ve ever had to judge. This was probably also one of the most well rounded competitions I’ve seen as far as world wide representation, with 3 finalists from the Czech Republic, 3 From the United States, one from New Zeland, and one from Australia. Prior to 2000, nearly every finalist was from the USA or Canada, sometimes having one European player representing. David Clavens, Gordon Bevier, and Vasek Klouda all had dropless routines, while Jan Webber, Phil Morrison, and Jim Penske all had only one drop and most of the finalists had 2-4 five add moves, while Penkse was the only player to land a 6 add in the finals. Judging and clearly remembering the complexities of 8 separate two minute routines (each having about 100 or so tricks, with 35-50 unique moves) that were so close in technical merit and presentation was extremely tough. If I’d had time to go back and watch each routine on video, it may have made it easier. But as it was, we only had a minute or so between each routine to score each player.
While the competition is a part of the World Championships, it really only takes up a very small percentage of the time there. So for now I’m just glad my judging assignment is over - it was no easy job. Worlds is a week long in order to accommodate both net and freestyle, so there’s lots and lots of time on the sidelines and some good times to be had hanging out in the evenings. A lot of the highest level shredding happens outside the competition because on the sidelines players don’t hold back as much as they would striving for a dropless routine. One good thing about having this blog about worlds come out so late is that there are now several completed videos out there showcasing the event. Here are a few of them:
David Claven’s Worlds Video
(Size: 94mb, Length: approx27mins, File Type: wmv)
Zeb Jackson’s Worlds Video:
(Size: 75mb, Length: 10mins, File Type: wmv)
Jim Penske also recently captured several clips of raw sidelines shred footage taken by my wife Sunny. The video features Lon, Jim and Jorden in some of the phattest footbag (hacky sack) tricks ever caught on tape :
You can download the full version from our site in Jim’s Player Spotlight Section, or watch it directly on YouTube.
There were too many fun and interesting things that happened outside the competition throughout the week to even recall them all… But, a few of the highlights included having Lon Smith mention a meteor shower and then looking up to see one literally a second later, (the producer of Lion’s Den, Vortex, and Balance of Power) Chad Devlahovich’s birthday party, and playing fire hack were among them. One other really fun, and interesting time was the Footbag Hall of Fame dinner held on the last Saturday of the event. I really appreciate all of Ted Huff’s hard work on the Hall of Fame, as well as his World’s sponsorship.
Next to judging finals, my most nerve wracking experience was getting my Quantum Footbag Shoes in time to have some available for the players at at the event. Even though the shoes had been in the country for nearly three weeks, they were still stuck somewhere on a train between Long Beach, California and Tampa Bay, Florida during the first few days of the event. On top of that, due to a mix-up with the freight forwarder the shoes didn’t have the appropriate documentation to clear customs. It wasn’t until Friday afternoon, a day before finals, that I made the drive from Disney World to Tampa and I was half way to Tampa before I got word from my customs broker that the items had cleared. It was as close a call as possible, but I luckily got the shoes in time. Had I not received them on Friday many people would have had to go without getting their footbag shoes, and I would have had the added expense of figuring out a way to get the shoes from Tampa to Nampa…. Whew!
All in all this worlds, like every other one I’ve attended, was awesome. I’d like to close by thanking Steve Goldberg and Chirs Ott of the IFPA for making very generous contributions of both time and money to make this a successful event.
Peace.
