Name: Andrew McCargar
Location: Portland, Oregon
Website: http://www.outsideworld.org/footbag/index.html

My nick on footbag.org is “nemesis” a move that after more than a decade of trying I still have yet to hit. You could say it’s my personal obsession and for as many times as I’ve gotten shit for having that nick, the move has too much personal meaning for me to ever get rid of it now.

The second footbag tournament I ever went to and my first world’s was 1997 in Portland. I guess everyone remembers their first tournaments fondly, but I still believe it was a great tournie. Portland’s waterfront is gorgeous in the summer and it was a big year as far as freestyle was concerned. Red, Ryan, Chad Devlahovich and Dave Holden were added to BAP. Brian McKenzie, Stuart Macferson, Adrian Dick, Ellis Piltz, Allan Haggett, Eric Winsor and a lot of other players who would go on to shape freestyle for the next few years were all there.

In retrospect we really didn’t know what we were doing back then. A lot of sets and concepts were still new and we really didn’t know how to do them or what to do with them yet. I remember seeing Peter Irish hitting blurry legbeater and blurry flux with the second dex being huge and leggy. In some ways I miss those days. There were still a lot of tricks floating around like cloud stall, gimp, pincher and rakes and a lot of player with really unique styles that fell out of use in the next few years.

Back then there were a few moves that were frequent topics of conversation (ocasionally, whether they were even possible). Two in particular were tripple around the world and nemesis. I think tripple around the world vexed people so because so many people were so close. There were persistant rumors about people having hit it (especially this post from 1998. Unfortunately from what I understand the author is dead now.) but nothing on film till Ales finally hit it at the Frankfurt Footbag Open in late 2001 (please correct me if I have this is wrong). But nemesis remained illusive, the craziest move anyone could think up, probably posible but no one was even close to it. Way back in 1997 Paul Munger even offered a bag to anyone who could hit it clean on video (after the Bila Lavice video came out I e-mailed Dexter to say that Vasek should claim his bag from Munger).

While I was talking with Adrian Dick I swore I would hit it by next worlds. Unlike my unintentional prophesy of Vasek this prediction turned out to be completely wrong. I didn’t manage to hit nemesis and I didn’t make it to the next world’s. But that wasn’t for a lack of trying.

During that year I devoted myself to the trick. I tried to think of ways to hit it. I tried changing the timing, I tried raising and lowering the set, I tried changing the way I did the dexes, I tried just beating it with speed. I managed to get the set, but I couldn’t control it or do anything with it. I was cleaning the barraging set above my knee, but the bag was flying all over the place. I even managed to get in all the dexes a few times, but the last two were probably questionable at best and at any rate I never came close to catching it, let alone a seal.

With the value of 10 years of retrospect I realize what an idiot I was. I was so obsessed with trying the move I didn’t think to take it one piece at a time. If I’d been a little more methodical you might now all be hitting “Andrew-walkers” but I wasn’t, I wasn’t even the first person to fail to hit it and Sunil deserves all the credit he gets and then some for pioneering the set. Nevertheless, the obsession never abated.

I’m not even certain what it is about the move that attracts me so, but I have my theories. I think there’s something to the straight forwardness of the move. But mainly I think it was just the elusiveness. With most moves I could picture the motion, butt my head against it enough times and crank it out, but nemesis just stayed there, possible but out of reach, taunting me. I came to find the name very fitting. After a while the word itself began to have special meaning for me. Doing an absent minded search for “nemesis” at the library I ended up reading Nemesis: The Death Star a book about the theory that mass extinctions on earth are regular and caused by asteroids displaced by a theoretical twin star, the nemesis. This book may have been the catalyst that eventually convinced me to go back for a degree in physics.

Anyway as we all know, it wasn’t me, it was Sunil who first hit the move. When he visited Portland in late 2001 for the Portland Juggling Festival he could hit janiwalker and plasma so logically many of us guessed if he hadn’t hit nemesis already he would hit it soon. Originally he was going to stay at my place so I picked him up from the airport. We went for lunch and call it a personality clash but I think I almost imediately started weirding him out. Anyway when I asked him if he had hit nemesis yet he gave me a very evasive answer that basically said nothing. I went on to partially explain my obsession with the trick and the whole concept of an unbeatable opponent. Sunil then said in an off hand way, and I paraphrase here “You know I really hate how some guys will chose nicknames for themselves of moves they can’t hit.” Shortly there after people started reporting seeing Sunil cleaning nemesis in circles. So not only had I failed to hit the move first (or at all) I had been dissed by the guy who finally did it.

You’d think that would have been the end of it, but still the move continued to haunt me. Every so often I’d get these flashes of inspiration, just enough to keep me going. Sometime in 2003 Justin Dale and Ricky Moran were visiting Portland. We had a long shred session, then came back to my place where we started drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade and decided to have a final session in my garage. I was worn out, out of shape and a little drunk but somehow everything clicked and I started cranking out my biggest moves. That night I managed to get my barraging set up to waist level (Justin and Ricky claimed it was clean) but still I just couldn’t hit fucking nemesis.

As I slowly become one of the last active players of my generation I’m more and more convinced the move will finish me. You see I wasn’t “the nemesis,” although people thinking that was why I got so much shit for the nick, the point was that the trick really was my nemesis. If I quit Footbag tomorrow it’ll be the one thing I’ll regret and I’ve sworn I’ll hit it before I retire for good. Three years ago Red called for an on-line nemesis headcount. All sorts of people started chiming in I’d never heard of. The sport had moved on to bigger and better things, all it is anymore is my personal nemesis. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Name: Andrew McCargar
Location: Portland, Oregon
Website: http://www.outsideworld.org/footbag/index.html

Like a lot of you I started out playing “Hacky Sack” before I ever found out what Footbag was. Unlike most of you though I first started kicking back in 1995, when few people were on-line and I certainly wasn’t one of them. Back then information was harder to come by. Boy bands were frequently reduced to playing malls to promote themselves and footbag promoters were sometimes reduced to actually calling people (with a non-mobile telephone) to tell them to come. Where I was all I had were rumors, legends of “the pros,” of these crazy, rubber-legged tricks, of world championships, sponsorships and videos.

On a sunny weekend back then you could walk down Portland’s waterfront park and find over 50 people kicking in 10 or more circles. I’d get there early (I didn’t have a choice in the matter, it was get a ride at 6 or ride a bike 25 miles). I’d wait for a circle around my level and play all day until I soaked up everything I saw. As far as I knew it was like this everywhere, and logically if footbag had such a big presence there must be professional players, clothing and equiptment endorsments, rankings and the whole lot. I built this whole picture in my mind and there sitting at the top of it was our own local footbag superstar, the Enforcer himself, holder of 50+ world footbag titles, Kenny Shults.

It might be posible to overstate Kenny’s role in the history of footbag. Or to put it another way, he’s so much more visible than a lot of early players because of his role in the formation of BAP and the Tricks of the Trade video that other player’s contributions to the foundations of the sport may sometimes go overlooked. I can say this with many years retrospect, but to us then he was practically a demigod.

Back in the days that osis confused me and mirage was a mystery I would meet players who after amazing me with a frantic blur of legs would further astound me with stories of Kenny Shults. I couldn’t even understand what these guys were doing and here they were telling me about a guy who made them look like they were playing in slow-motion, a guy who could hit tripple around the world blind folded while fighting dragons with a blurry onslought of his firey blades. From one of these players I finally got a card of Sole Purpose, for many years “the” freestyle club. The fact that they even had cards just further added to this picture I had of the great footbag empire.

After I’d been playing for a year I was better than almost all the guys I played with. I could hit mirage, I could hit legover, I figured I was ready to kick with the “pros” and I called up Sole Purpose. I think I was expecting some huge professional player’s organization. As you can imagine I was slightly confused when I got someone’s house. On the other end of the line a very nice woman seemed slightly confused by the way I was asking question, but she understood the word footbag and told me they usually kicked on Wednesday and I could come over around 6.

When I showed up more confusion followed, I think I was expecting us to leave from there to the practice hall. You see part of the local legend of Kenny Shults was that he’d built a dedicated Footbag gym onto his house called “the Skool House” where the pros gathered from far and wide. It quickly became evident to me however that there was no magical super organization of pro players and I’d unintentionally invited myself over to Kenny and Kendal’s house for a private session. I then sat on their couch for half an hour waiting for Kenny to get home from work. You see the great demigod Kenny Shults was a family man with a normal job who didn’t have much time to play anymore. The “Skool House” was a poorly ventilated garage with some carpet duct-taped to the floor. Kenny did still manage to blow me away though.

Fortuantely I wasn’t too disillusioned and I had a great session. I hit blur, weak side butterfly and bunch of other moves for the first time, in front of my hero no less. And as it turned out Kenny and Kendal were great people and thankfully very patient as well (as was anyone able to put up with me back then). Kenny even gave me a few pairs of shorts. You see I’d turned up to play with the great demigod wearing jeans and Airwalks Thanks for reading.

Name: Andrew McCargar
Location: Portland, Oregon
Website: http://www.outsideworld.org/footbag/index.html

I first met Dexter at the German Footbag Championships in December 1999. He had crazy colored hair, wore sandals and had a huge, hurky-jerky style, which he explained to me, was the result of learning to play from reading trick descriptions on line before ever seeing them. So when I met him again at the first Todexon the next year I at least recognized him.

I ended up at Todexon by complete accident. I checked footbag.org and saw that a tournament was happening in Prague, “There are footbag players in Prague?” I thought. The tournament (which I won, yay me) ended up being one of the craziest, most fun days of my life. The amount of alcohol that was bought for me should have been lethal but somehow I survived. I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before, played for around 13 hours straight, then we all went out clubbing till 5 or 6 in the morning. I got another 4 hours of sleep then sat on a train for 6 hours so I could get back in time for classes. I litterally almost couldn’t walk the next day.

After TODEXON 1 the Prague crew just couldn’t get rid of me. Whenever I had some days off I would head back to Prague, and survive on Footbag and beer, but no sleep and little food until I had to go back. Dexter, if you ever read this, thanks again for your hospitality and for putting up with me back then.

Sometime in 2000 I also got interested in video editing and 3D animation. Mostly I was just manipulating photos or short video clips. I had already created some animated gifs including one of nemesis. As a joke when the subject of nemesis (and whether it had been hit) came up on the old e-mail discussion list I posted “Oh yeah, I hit that all the time,” and posted a link of my animated gif as proof. I never expected or wanted anyone to believe me, but a whole Zapruderesque frame by frame analysis of my animation followed. I had never intended to fool anyone, but I am a bit of a prankster by nature so I couldn’t help but be amused. Finally everything came together at euros 2000 in Paris.

Footbag was finally starting to take off in Europe after many false starts, what it lacked was a super star. World’s was still dominated by the Americans, what we needed was something to draw attention to footbag in Europe. When I met Dexter (he had smuggled beer across the border into France in his camera case) I told him of my plan: “I’ve been doing some video effects lately and I got the idea to create a fake Czech Footbag prodigy. I can make a 3D model, You can take some video of people reacting to him in a circle then I’ll digitally insert him. At first we’ll just have him in the background or doing like one trick to make it more believable, then we’ll have some short runs. By the time the video’s shrunk and encoded no one will notice it’s been faked.”

Dexter seemed enthusiastic so when after I left Euros to go to South Korea (I only took 6th place, blah) I had a project. At first everything seemed to go alright. The first short videos (it has to be short, faking something like this in a convincing way takes a lot of time) of Czech players with Vasek in the background went online without anyone suspecting anything, but then not a lot of people watched those videos. Ditto for the first videos of him doing just a couple tricks. We steadily got better at it till we had him hitting some longer, pretty good combos. Soon the excitement level was high for this new player, just like I’d planned, but still no one suspected anything. By the way, I didn’t choose the name, the Czechs were responsible for that.

Finally when I came back for the next Euros excitement for this kid was getting almost to a frenzy, there was a constant buzz of “I heard he hit mobius to vortex last week,” “well I heard he hit gyro baroque.” At the tournament the sport of footbag in Europe was still closely knit enough we were able pull off the illusion, with only the concession that the other American players had to finish above him so as not to bruise any egos. Steve Goldberg, who had always been a strong force behind spreading footbag dutifully went back to America telling stories of this amazing Czech kid and how the sport of footbag was growing strong in Europe. But at that point the Vasek creation was out of my hands. I was traveling and then going back to America and wouldn’t have the time to keep up something like this anymore, so I passed off the responsibility to the CFA.

Whereas my plan was to stir up some interest then have my creation quietly disappear before anyone suspected anything, the Czechs weren’t about to let their superstar simply fade away. The videos just kept coming, but imagine my surprise when Vasek won World’s in 2002. I was there but I’m still not sure how they pulled it off (although I have my theories). Anyway they certainly weren’t content to stop there. A record number of consecutive world championships, multiple other tournaments, TV spots and commercials later the Vasek phenomenon shows no sign of stopping. I figure if it’s survived this long, me telling my part in its creation won’t hurt anything.

I plan for this to be the first in a series of stories about the history of footbag that I’ve witnessed, but we’ll see how much time I have. Feedback is very much appreciated. You can reach me at feedback at outsideworld dot org. Thanks for reading.