Name: Honza Weber
Location: Czech Republic
Website: www.honzaweber.com

Honza Weber Nucleus Session from Honza Weber on Vimeo.

Between helping revolutionize the sport of Freestyle Footbag as well as train for the upcoming World Championship’s in August, it would seem that trying to get a hold of Czech superstar Honza Weber would be tough. Luckily for Shred Global, our own Will Digges was able to get an exclusive interview with one of the best Freestylers in the history of the sport.

Will D – Thanks for taking the time to give us this interview! How exactly did you get interested in Footbag? How were you introduced to the game?

Honza W – In 2000 there was a huge Starburst (candy company) footbag campaign here in Prague and almost every young boys tried the game. Not me though. I am trying not to do what the masses do and so I started a year after in 2001 when almost everyone forgot about Starburst and footbag as well. I knew some basic tricks from some guys from school and I searched for other moves on the internet and learned them from videos. After like 4 months I met players like Dexter and Tomas Tyrpekl and started playing with them. It was a lot easier because I was given many tips on how to improve and it worked!

Will D – What are you looking forward to most at Worlds 2010 in Oakland, California?

Honza W – Well, if everything goes smooth for us in Czech, it is gonna be first World Championship with all the top players since 2004. That means huge challenge and opportunity for everyone. The last few years the events were also becoming more and more professional, so I hope that the conditions for the players will be even better this year! It really looks like so far. I am partly cooperating with the organisers and I must say I am always happy to hear the news they have. The judging will be also crucial this year, more than ever because the competition is gonna be incredibly tight. Hopefully everything will work this year and there won`t be any similar mistakes in judging like at Florida in 2007. Well, they say you can`t cross the same river twice.

Will D – What do you think your chances of winning Routines are this year?

Honza W – I was in really good shape last year. I lost a lot of weight and tried some new practise methods, which obviously worked. Unfortunatelly I did not perform well in the crucial momets and that cost me dear. I have kept the shape more or less the whole year and I am really looking forward to show my improvement and of course I am gonna go for the victory. I think I have good 50% chance.

Will D – How do you think the future of Footbag will unfold?
Compared to 4 years ago, how has the Footbag community changed?

Honza W – In 2006 the community was really big and widespread. Since that time it has changed a lot in my opinion. There is a lot less players and the level has gone a lot higher. The current trend is that not very succesfull players leave the sport and so there are just the good ones left. In the past the sport used to be more about fun, random people used to join it because the level was not that hard and they could easily reach the top or at least take place in the center of the community. This “specialization” discourages many of the new potential players and closes door for most of the general public, but only in combination with no commercial succes, which is exactly what is happening these years.

Will D – Was this change for the greater good? Would you have done anything differently?

Honza W – I think the trend I described in the previous answer is something like natural selection and so inevitable. If that was a change for greater good is hard to say. It depends on the point of view, there are pros and cons. The same thing happened to frisbee and the sport became a lot smaller and less popular and did not recover from it until now. It will be interesting to see what way will footbag choose and how it will develop. It depends mainly on the players and the committees. In my opinion there many things to be changed in the structure of the competitions. We have to make everything more friendly for the audience and more interesting for the commercial sphere and entertain some big companies. Freestyle Football did these steps and has been experiencing great boom in the last couple years. This is something we have to do as well and it will bring us more players to the community as a reward.

Will D – Name one upcoming young shredder that the community should be keeping their eyes on?

Honza W – Very interesting question I must say. I took quite some time to think about that, but I simply cannot see any new footbag „superstar“ in the crowd of young players. It could also be just due to my ignorance, but I am quite confident in fact. It is also possible that I just cannot distinguish the talent inside the players like for example I did not think that David Clavens would become that good after I had seen him in Montreal 2004. On the other hand I predicted bright footbag future to Ilja Mitrofanov, but he quit the sport very early… unfortunately.

Will D – If you had to pick a pair of Feet, legs, arms and torso from any Footbag players to create the ultimate shredder. Who/what would you pick?

Honza W – Ok, I guess I would take Milan`s legs, Karim`s feet, Yacine`s torso, hands from Ales and my head, which I was not asked for. It is actually quite dissapointing to realise I would not choose any of my parts as the best in the sport, but I think the combination of my limbs has worked also very well in the past and hopefully will improve in the near future.

Will D – What is the funniest/most memorable moment in Footbag that you can recall?

Honza W – There are just so many, so it is really hard to pick a particular one. Well, there would be a hilarious one including Vasek in Vienna during his final routine, but considering we have some younger readers I guess it is not the right one to choose. I guess the most memorable momnet for me was the few long seconds after I did my final routine in Montreal 2004 Worlds. It was just unbeliavable. I felt I could… do everything. Just incredible, even now it is almost impossible to describe the feeling from back then. It was also big satisfaction after previous Worlds and I guess even best moment in my life. Those, for me, precious seconds I will remeber forever…

Everyone at Shred Global would like to thank Honza for taking time out of his schedule to give us all a look into his throughts on Freestyle Footbag, and his quest for a world championship!