The Footbag Hall of Fame Historical Society (http://www.footbag.org/hof) is pleased to announce that voting has concluded for this year’s nominees, and we have the results (below)!

Please join us in congratulating the following six individuals who have all demonstrated the highest dedication of their lives to the sport of Footbag and are worthy of their place in the Footbag Hall of Fame (in no particular order):

(1) Jack Lentz - Erie, PA (USA)
http://www.footbag.org/members/profile/38318

One of the best-known and longest playing footbaggers on the US east coast, Jack has been a grass-roots footbag promoter for over 25 years. He has also been one of the primary sponsors of east-coast footbag tournaments — sponsoring with money, footbags, and more, year after year. Jack is one of the longest active players in footbag history (since 1984) and has attended and competed in every single Funtastik Summer Classic (23 years and counting), and nearly every East Coast Championships (26 years and counting). Jack is undoubtedly one of the longest current active competitive players in footbag history. Jack is also the two-time Intermediate Singles Net world champion.

(2) Daryl Genz - Nampa, ID (USA)
http://www.footbag.org/members/profile/12199

Owner and founder of Freedom Footbags, Daryl is one of the biggest sponsors of footbag in the modern era. Daryl is four-time world champion in Open Doubles Freestyle, and has made top-quality footbags accessible to the general public for many years. Daryl has sponsored nearly every North American footbag event with either footbags or money (often both) since the mid-late 1990s. Daryl’s freedomfootbags.com website has been one of the best sources for footbag freestyle on the internet, and Daryl continues to work extensively to spread and promote footbag. Daryl went so far as to quit his job as an engineer to devote his life to making and selling footbags and promoting the sport. Daryl is still a world class freestyle player in his own right.

(3) Jane Jones-Zerbe - Seattle, WA (USA)
http://www.footbag.org/members/profile/12180

A long-time promoter of women’s footbag, Jane has worked tirelessly to promote footbag to women during her extensive career. She was particularly intent on introducing women to highly technical freestyle, and was trailblazer in that field. She started the influential website, shreditas.com, which offered some of the first videos of women’s freestyle, and was the largest source of women’s footbag information in the world. This website was a huge influence on women’s freestyle, particularly in Europe, and helped expose women’s freestyle to the world. Jane toured the United States and performed footbag for over 100,000 school kids as a tour member for the World Footbag Association. Jane co-founded the Rain City Shred Club in Seattle, and was an organizer of the Seattle Footbag and Juggling Festival. Jane was one of the most technical women freestylers of her time, inspiring many women to push their limits and the limits of women’s freestyle in general.

(4) Steve Smith - Malta, IL (USA)
http://www.footbag.org/members/profile/12631

Steve Smith has been an influential and important force in the midwest (US) footbag scene for over 15 years. As a world class net player, Steve has trained and mentored many Chicago area players, including world footbag net champion PT Lovern. In addition, Steve has earned true distinction in the realm of footbag golf, as a consistent top performer at the World Championships — including at least two world champion titles in footbag golf. Steve has helped organize midwest footbag events, and has served for years on the International Footbag Committee, the official rules body for the sport of footbag, as member and/or chair of the golf and consecutives subcommittees.

(5) Carol Wedemeyer - San Francisco, CA (USA)
http://www.footbag.org/members/profile/13386

Carol is the 6-time Women’s Singles Freestyle world champion, and is generally regarded one of the top women’s freestylers in the sport to date. Carol unseated Sam Conlon, and continued to dominate women’s freestyle for quite a few years. No other woman since has been able to match her record. She was the first woman in history inducted into the Big Add Posse, an elite club of footbag’s best freestylers. Carol helped develop women’s freestyle, inspiring many freestylers around the world to compete in organized footbag.

(6) Justin Sexton - Helsinki (FINLAND)
http://www.footbag.org/members/profile/12028

Justin co-founded and led the Finnish Footbag Association, one of the first organized footbag associations in Europe, and as such was central to the development of footbag in Europe. Justin organized many important footbag tournaments in Finland, culminating in the IFPA World Footbag Championships which he helped bring to Helsinki in 2005. Justin has served on the European Footbag Committee, the International Footbag Committee, and won the Mike Marshall award for his outstanding contributions to the sport. As a player, Justin was known as the “Flying Finn” — he competed at a world-class level in both net and freestyle for many years. Justin inspired and galvanized a generation of footbag players in Finland and Europe.

Our thanks and congratulations to these individuals for their contributions to the growth of the sport of footbag. Please feel free to congratulate them yourselves — you’ll find their e-mail and other contact information on their player profile pages at the corresponding links above.

The formal induction ceremony for these 2009 Hall of Fame members will take place during the US Open Freestyle Championships in Portland, OR (USA) on the weekend of July 11-12, 2009, with Mr. Hacky Sack (John Stalberger) presiding.

For those inductees who cannot attend, we will celebrate your induction in your absence, and there will be a second ceremony at the 2009 Funtastik Summer Classic in Harrisburg, PA (USA) as well, hosted by Brenda & Joe Solonoski, with Yours Truly as Master of Ceremonies.

Thanks to the footbag community for your continued enthusiastic support of the Hall of Fames by participating so actively in the nominations process this year.

Congratulations once again to the new inductees!

Peter Irish, Chairman
Footbag Hall of Fame Nominations Committee

http://www.footbag.org/hof

1. You have seen, understand, and will comply with all of the recommendations for fire safety that are listed.
2. And you also agree that you will be personally responsible for any injury or damage to property caused by your Fire Footbag
3. You fully understand that due to the nature of this product personal injury and/or damage to property are likely (Hence the requirement that you watch this video to minimize any injuries or damage)
4. You agree not hold Freedom Footbags responsible for any injury or damage to persons or property damaged while using the Fire Footbag.

5. I’ve personally played fire footbag many a time and had not considered many of the tips outlined in this video, so please pay close attention - (This Video is in TWO parts - you must watch both!).

   
   SEE OUR BLOG FOR ADDITIONAL INFO AND WARNINGS!

   A summary of important tips include:

   * Items to have on-hand, at the ready:*

   1. Cell Phone (So you can call 911 in case of fire or serious burns)
   2. Note Pad (With your known location/address)
   3. 1st Aid Kit (Suitable for Fire Wounds)
   4. Tin or Clean Paint Can
   5. Damp Towell
   6. Clear Fire Exit
   7. Propery Marked Fuel Container
   8. Water Squirt Bottle (For Eye Wash or Soaking Wounds)
   9. Funnel (For safe fuel pouring)
   10. Kitty Liter (to clean spilled fuel)
   11. Fire Blanket or Military Wool Blanket
   12. Dry chemical fire extinguisher on hand for type A, B & C fires - Remember that water does not fight all types of fire, but a proper fire extinguisher will!

   *DO NOT WEAR: POLYESTER, SYNTHETIC FIBERS, NYLON, ACETATE, OR RAYON.
   (THESE ITEMS WILL MELT TO YOUR SKIN - YES, OUCH!) OR LOOSE, FUZZY CLOTHING.*

   *Use the fire bag only in a SAFE location:*

   1. No fire ban restrictions
   2. No overhanging trees, power lines
   3. Have clear, unobstructed exits

   *Have a designated Fire Safety Person who is trained in first aid and is sober and ready to deal with any potential dangerous situations. It is easier than you might think to catch on fire playing this game!!*

   Fuels NOT TO BE USED:

   1. Citonella oil (some people have severe allergic reactions to it)
   2. Gas, gasoline, ligher fluid, or “white gas”: These are highly explosive!

   Recommend Fuels:

   1. Kerosene
   2. Lamp Oil

   There are a few important points that are specific to Fire Footbag which are not mentioned in the above video. Fire Footbag is inherently more dangerous than Fire Poi since you are *trying* to come in contact with the fire with your feet. Your feet will likely catch on fire (I’ve yet to have a night where this did not happen several times!). We strongly recommend that you wear non-flammable hats and that you WET YOUR HAIR, CLOTHING, and particularly your SHOES prior to igniting your bag!

   SEE OUR BLOG FOR ADDITIONAL INFO AND WARNINGS!

   You’ve been warned, you’ve been trained, you’re ready to take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, you’re ready to buy a Fire Hack!

I’ve not seen Genzu do anything but support footbag with everything he has in the almost 10 years I’ve known him.

• He quit a good paying job to promote footbag and has sponsored dozens of tournaments.
• He’s personally supported quite a few players, financially and emotionally.
• He is still active with running Freedom Footbags, supplying 1000s of people with proper footbag equipment, shipping it all around the world.
• He’s created educational material, including a fundamentals “flyer” that goes out with every product sold.
• He’s been a Double’s World Champion multiple times over.
• He’s innovative stylistically and technically in influential ways.
• And he still has plans to do more.

As an active, still playing, blogging, teaching, tournament-going-sponsoring freestyler, Genzu is the prototypical Hall of Fame Member.

This is a move that is (generally) set from a clipper, and always ends by having one leg go over the bag out-to-in direction (i.e. the leg passes outside relative to the body around the bag - see the 8th frame above) finishing on a clipper stall (the foot that catches is always the opposite leg/foot of the one that circles the bag). In my beginning freestyle days, just as I was moving from hacker to (wanna be) shredder this was my first three add move. The funny thing is, I had thought I was doing a symposium whirl - or something similar (perhaps it was a symposium butterfly I saw). This just goes to remind me of how difficult this game is when you are first trying to figure it out - everything pretty much looks the same. It takes many many hours of training to get the brain to recognize and categorize what moves are really being done. Let’s see the move now in the video and I’ll continue elaborating…

(If you can’t view the video in your browser you may be able to watch it directly on YouTube.)

The above video shows:

1. @ 10%: Butterfly Stall to (Same Side) Butterfly Stall
2. @ 50%: Clipper Stall, Butterfly Stall, (Same Side) Butterfly Stall, Butterfly Stall, (Same Side) Butterfly Stall, Butterfly Stall, (Same Side) Butterfly Stall, Butterfly Stall, hand catch
3. @100%: Same sequence as 50% (No, this is not sped up)

There are a small number of footbag move names that are actually a combination of two or more moves, and Butterfly back to back is one of them: This is called an Infinity (note that there are no Same Side Butterflies in an Infinity.) Butterfly can also be done ending in a kick. Though this may not be an official name, sometimes a Butterfly Kick is also called a Butterflier. (This would be called a “superjester” or super-jester in some hack circles).

The Butterfly is arguably one of the top three intermediate building blocks for freestyle footbag (the other two being Osis and Paradox Mirage). I say intermediate, because there are a number of basic fundamentals that the aspiring player would need to have in their repository before attempting this move. Among the first steps would be a solid grasp of basic kicks (should be able to easily do 50) and the basic stalls (Toe, Inside, & Outside Stalls, and particularly the Clipper Stall).

I can’t seem to stress this enough: If you can’t land a Clipper Stall consistently, you’re not ready to be learning Butterfly (or any other complex move ending in Clipper)! That being said, here are a few hints on clipper that I did not include in my original post.

1. Before you can learn the Clipper Stall, you must have a solid command of the Inside Stall
2. To get good basic form on an Inside Stall, put your stalling foot directly in front of your support foot on the ground in front of you, such that the outside of the shoe that will stall the bag is on the ground.
3. While making a loose “fist” with your foot, bring it straight up such that your the heel of your stalling foot is just in front of your support leg’s knee.
4. Now get comfortable staying in this position, keeping your balance and using those strange new muscles
5. Once you can hold the inside stall consistently, practice slowing bringing it around behind your support leg while keeping it level. This is probably one of the best ways I know of to build up those clipper muscles.
6. Once you have that part down, practice bringing the bag back around from the Clipper Stall to the Inside Stall

When watching this video, keep in mind that Jim Penske has been playing for many, many years, and that for him, this is an extremely basic sequence of moves. In fact, I started this post earlier today, and, had the pleasure of shredding with Jim earlier today. I witnessed him landing the first four moves of the above sequence, except that on every trick before the butterfly he did a stepping set, and after the butterfly he did a swirl… That’s right, four unique triple dexes back to back, Stepping Same Side Butterfly Swirl, Riptide (Ripwalk Swirl, or Stepping Op Butterfly Swirl), repeat! That’s 12 times around the bag in four moves. Wow!

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

I mean to keep up with all the cool footbag stuff I see on the web, but my posts recently have been few and far between. I’ve passed up talking about a lot of neat stuff recently, and regret that very much.

In this case, I liked the video enough that I figured I had to share it here:

Phil Morrison, a USANA Director on the Flying Kiwis team in New Zealand, sent this cool video and I had to share it with all of you.

The clip shows off his passion for Freestyle Footbag and his love for Rev3! It also demonstrates how talented and creative USANA Associates are.

Check out the video on the blog post

( http://www.whatsupusana.com/2009/03/kickin-it-with-rev3.html )

I aim to start posting more as the season comes into being

I’ve been trying to find the time post about Twitter for the past year, but things just keep coming up. Finally, some others have taken the initiative, and have been talking about it. David Wilder started this modified thread. Evan Lovely responded there, illuminating his success in using it to organize his local scene. He’s since since re-published this explanation as a separate blog post on the Missoula Footbag website, entitled: How I use Twitter for Organizing Footbag.

Evan explains in good detail the process that you can go through with the people in your local scene that will help them keep notified of sessions in a decentralized way.

Beyond this local organizing use, I see Twitter (or another Twitter-like “microblogging” platform) being useful in all sorts of ways that could be the most directly beneficial thing to hit the footbag community since the Internet. Mob-casting tournaments would give people not in attendance real-time results. This could easily be adapted (via the API and, for example, #ifpa-wfc09 tags) as a crowd-sourced poll; in the future, maybe those results will matter more than the panel of official judges. “Yeah, the judges gave it to Vasek, but Allan won the twitter-vote by a landslide.” All anyone would need would be a cell phone (not even a fancy one) and an account, and they could vote.

There are also all sorts of other promotional ideas it could be used for: walk the streets before the event telling people to “follow ifpa” for official tournament notifications.

I could also see this concept completely overtaking the “Footblog” concept, as made popular on Modified. Having a service to track your game progress and follow that of others is a powerful idea. Why wait until you get in front of a computer to tell people you just hit nemesis for the first time? Text it in on the spot! Get props in real-time.

As Evan wrote:

In conclusion, Twitter seemed like dumbest thing I’d ever heard about (think back to the first time someone tried to describe Twitter to you), but one of the coolest things I use. It took a little (ok, a lot) of getting used to, but I get it now, and I think that it is an amazing tool.

Twitter Accounts:

• The Missoula Footbag Alliance: @FootbagAlliance

My personal Twitter account: @EvanL

• My geeky web designy, Mac lovin’ Twitter account: @freeStyle_Media

Freedom Footbags has been on Twitter for some time now, though I’ve yet to push Daryl and Sunny into using it, and I’ve not had a chance to integrate it into the site … yet. Follow us: http://twitter.com/freedomfootbags

1. So Cal Jam 2008
2. Chaos Green Cup 2008
3. Montreal Spring Jam III
4. US Open 2008
5. Worlds 2008
6. New Years Jam 2008
7. Las Vegas Jam 2009

The video features about 30 of the world’s top players. Though it does tend to be focused more on North America’s players, there is a section from the 2008 World Footbag Championships in Prague. I’ve been very fortunate to have gotten a sneak peek at a few of the sections, and I am definitely excited about this video. Every time I watch the trailer I get pumped up to go out and shred…

As of right now this video is still in production. It’s a massive undertaking to compile and edit the footage Eric has, but it’s coming along. Eventually we will offer this video for sale here on www.freedomfootbags.com but advanced copies will only be availiable directly from EZ Productions. Check out the modified thread for more info.

If you have an IFPA membership through Footbag Worldwide, we still highly recommend uploading your media through that superior interface for all media files that are below 100MB in size. This accounts for most of the files you’ll be publishing. But sometimes you have a project that is longer than usual, and/or perhaps you want to distribute it in a higher quality version.

Well, now you can send us an email to request FTP access to a special area we’ve created, just for these larger (footbag only!) video files. You’ll have to upload the file(s) though a traditional FTP client (as browser-based uploads are inherently “fragile”; if the upload is interrupted for any reason, you have to start all over again), but this is still a much better solution that using one of the myriad advertising-based file hosting services like “megaupload”. We can help you with the FTP part if needed.

We absolutely recommend that you still create an entry in your IFPA profile’s media gallery; they do provide the ability to add videos by linking to an external source (rather than uploading there directly). Once you’ve uploaded here, you can create an entry for it there, and simply provide the link we create here. Make sense?

http://community.freedomfootbags.com/ already has a couple of videos listed, but please do note that you’re not really meant to access the videos from this page. You’ll mostly be seeing links to videos in IFPA gallery pages or in the forums, where they belong.