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

Preamble

The BAP, for those who don’t already know, is a players’ organization of the top footbag freestylers in the world. To enter active members must vote you in. This vote usually takes place only once a year at the world footbag championships, but exceptions have been made. At one point in my life it meant a great deal to get in to BAP.

Disclaimer

Before I begin the story though, I feel a disclaimer is needed. First, my comments about world’s 2002 are not meant to be any kind of impartial record, rather they reflect my state of mind at the time and as such are heavily biased. There was originally a version of this story that named a lot more names, but aside from not wanting to piss anyone off, the names are a little beside the point, this is a personal story and ultimately I’m the only one responsible for myself. Second if you were playing around the time this story takes place and remember anything differently I’d love to hear about it (I’m far from a perfect source of history), so please leave a comment below or send me an email. Ok, here we go:

The Quest For BAP

I first touched a “Hacky Sack” in summer 1994. I have to laugh whenever I hear someone say they’re not coordinated enough for Footbag. That first time we must have played for more than an hour and I think I managed to touch the bag a total of 4 times, the rest of the time the bag just flew mockingly past my feet. After that I didn’t see another Footbag until around March 1995. I was going to a small school then and there wasn’t much else to do, so we’d gather in a circle hopelessly trying to get a “hack.” I think it took me the better part of 3 weeks to get up to a dozen kicks.

I finally broke down and with my meager allowance bought my very own knit bag. Maybe my natural talent was finally showing through, more likely it was my obsessiveness, but either way I quickly became the best kicker at my school. That wasn’t saying much. Anyway even at that point, only a few weeks in, just counting consecutives was wearing thin and I needed something else. The kid who’d brought the first Hacky Sack to school told me the real pros could be found at the Saturday Market and I was determined to find them. As it turns out I didn’t until I accidentally invited myself over to Kenny Shults’ house, but there were still plenty of people for me to learn from.

If I wasn’t a prodigy I was at least making steady progress. At first I think Footbag was just something to do, everyone’s a little awkward at that age and Footbag let me meet new people. But soon enough I was learning my first tricks and became more and more fascinated with the sport and by extension everything about it. I discovered footbag.org and watched the few videos they had religiously. I remember how one night I watched a tape of the 1996 Heart of Freestyle tournament and the next day got super excited and hit my first torque, in jeans. There was this amazing group of athletes I knew only from video who called themselves BAP and I wanted to be one of them.

I guess I started out having some curious ideas about Footbag, but in general I think I wasn’t that far off of a lot of new players. I can only guess at what players think of BAP now, but when I was getting started and first heard of it’s existence BAP was a very exclusive club. There were 16 members, 14 of them active who I can still name from memory (Kenny Shults, Peter Irish, Tim Kelly, Genzu, Greg Nelson, Rick Reese, Denis Jones, Eric Wulff, Ahren Gehrman, Steve Cramer, Scott Davidson, Paul Munger, Josh Casey and Tuan Vu).

I’ll admit to a bit of hero worship and when I went to my first world’s in 1997 I knew them all by sight. 1997 was something of a landmark year for footbag. A new generation showed up with some interesting new ideas. I saw quantum, atomic and blazing, even though we didn’t know what they were. I’ll never forget watching Peter Irish hitting leggy style blurry flux and being blown away. 6 new players were added to BAP that year. In case you’re curious I didn’t even merit an honorable mention, but I was hell bent to get in.

I taped some carpet to the floor of my basement, hung a florescent light and made myself go down and play for 2 hours a day. If I wasn’t completely hooked already it was that period that really got me. Most sports were too abstract for me. The difference between a great footballer (soccer player for my American readers) and a good one is hard to quantify. But in footbag when you hit that first paradox whirl, that first torque… you’re not just refining your craft, you can concretely do something you couldn’t do before. I think you need to be a player yourself to fully appreciate what a rush it is and I hit a lot of new moves during that time, each of them a dizzying high like no other. I also lost a couple bags thrown out of frustration. These days I tend to think of freestyle more as a social activity, but there’s something to be said for practicing alone. You’re responsible for no one but yourself, your triumphs and disappointments are yours alone. For as long as it lasted I got pretty good. Although such a thing is hard to judge I’d say by the time I left for Germany in 1998 I was probably somewhere in the top 50.

If I was top 50 in the world back then, I was probably the best player in continental Europe when I arrived. Although it was something of an ego boost, I was often treated like something of a celebrity when I traveled to footbag clubs, it was also frustrating not to have anyone to play with. Fortunately I was still motivated, able to travel and had access to the internet. I kept practicing, usually alone, and traveled as much as I could. One of the things I’ve only gained with age is a certain amount of tact. It’s fortunate I didn’t have it back then because I would shamelessly invite myself all over the place in Europe just by telling people I was a Footbag player from America, I’d like to visit your club, oh and do you have a couch I can crash on? I can’t imagine what they must have thought, but everyone seemed glad to have me. The scene was exploding, which slowly made up for my semi-isolation in Munich, but I still longed to make it to worlds, play with the top players and show them what I could do.

At Euro’s in Paris 2000, owing partly to me not concentrating on my second degree as much as I should have, I was on the top of my game. The first day we were on a big outdoor stage and for some reason everything was working for me. It seemed like every time I touched the bag I was cranking out at least 20 contacts and hitting my biggest combos with ease. It was while I was still warming up that I met Lon Smith. I’d heard his name but never seen him play before. I immediately loved his style and we quickly fell into the freestyle conversation of new sets and tricks. For what it’s worth while I was doing my blurry whirl drill (still a big trick back then) Steve Goldberg told me if I could make it to worlds I’d get BAPtized.

The whole story of Euro’s 2000 I’ll leave for another day, but Ahren Gehrman deserves a special mention. Although he was my age Ahren was part of the older generation. He’d been BAPtized in 1996, and I’ve heard people claim he was the top shredder that year. He’d gotten a little rusty but then came back in 2000 in a big way. He was hitting some combos and moves then that still hold up pretty well after all these years. I saw him hit “your mom” along with a lot of other crazy stuff. I saw him hit atomic whirl and a couple strings later I did it myself, first try, mid run. I was on one hell of a run that tournament. Sadly it didn’t extend to the actual competition where I placed 6th. Fortunately I got drunk on gold mettle winning French wine, bitched loudly about the judging and felt better.

After that I went from partial isolation to the total isolation of South Korea. The first few months I had a light work schedule, was still pumped from Paris and determined to hit everything I’d seen Ahren do. I skooled both sides, all sets and all kinds of new tricks. I made my own shoes modifying the holy hell out of a pair of high top running shoes. The combination of energy, time and good gear seemed to work and everything clicked. In practice I was consistently cranking out tripless runs in the mid to high teens, skooling new 5 add combos and to 6 and beyond. The climax, as it were, came when I hit 15 new moves in one day. A few weeks after that I hit my first 7 add move. I knew the Footbag scene pretty well back then and I’d guess I was somewhere in the top 20.

For the last part of 2000, with no gym and no one to kick with I tried to keep playing and keep motivated, but eventually my job tried to kill me. For about 6 months I was working 13 hour days and quickly lost interest in anything that didn’t involve sleep, alcohol or my growing collection of dvds. Towards the end of my year there I was physically and mentally done. I finagled my employers to let me out of my contract a couple weeks early so I could make it to Euro’s in Prague and headed out. When I made it back to Europe in summer 2001 I was badly out of shape and out of practice. Still, I could do a few new things and the footbag world hadn’t passed me by. It was there I got to see a young Vasek, Ryan Mulroney, Eric Wulff, Mika “Puka” Koistinen and many more. I was able to hold my own and even show young Vasek a few tricks. Let the record forever show that I beat him in a game of “shred.”

Again I had a great time, Prague is the happiest place on earth, and I have a lot of fond memories. BAP was still in my mind and I could have gone to world’s instead of Euro’s and had a chance to get in, but Prague was more important to me. In retrospect that subconscious decision was something of a turning point in my Footbag “career,” but at the time I never stopped to work it out.

If I had to guess I’d say those two years, 2000 and 2001 I was somewhere in the top 20 or 30, but top 30 is a hell of a long way from number 1. After that I went back to Portland where I found a lot had changed in 3 years. A lot of people still kicked, but the freestyle scene had dried up and blown away. I managed to track down some new kid named Noah Jay-Bonn who wasn’t bad, but he still lived at home and couldn’t meet that often. 3 years of not having a club or steady playing partner had taken it’s toll and I was struggling to stay motivated, but when I watched video of the top players, of Lon, Ryan, Ahren, Peter and Chad, I could see they were still a level above me, but the gap wasn’t so great I couldn’t bridge it. I could hit or was close to the tricks and combos they were doing. It’s hard to give up when you can see the finish line, so I kept trundling along.

I went to world’s 2002 a little rusty again but I thought I still had a shot at BAP. I played alright the first day, like every world’s I met a lot of new kids I’d never heard of and got to see Vasek again, who although he still wasn’t quite the monster he would become was working a lot of tricks I could tell were leading to unexplored territory. I reconnected with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in years and generally felt pretty good. One thing that did kind of weigh me down was the etiquette nazis who were in full force that year. One of them in particular I found particularly grating, but more on that later. In the end none of it, my dwindling motivation, lack of practice and other people sucking the fun out of the sport mattered. It didn’t matter because I quickly came down with the second worst flu of my life.

The next day it was 93F (34C) without a cloud in the sky. Most players were out enjoying the sun trying to show off what they’d learned shredding alone in their basements the last year. I however was bundled under three sweaters shivering in the sun. I scratched out of all events and was only able to play for another hour or so that whole tournament. I saw history being made when Vasek beat Ryan in the finals. I saw the epic “silent night” shred, Honza’s amazing sick 3 combos, and Alex Zerbe’s surprising final 8 routine, but I saw it all from the sidelines.

Usually at tournaments it’s the camaraderie and the energy that I enjoy as much as playing itself. I love standing in a circle seeing everyone challenge and hopefully surprise each other with their sickest combos. You prop each other up, push each other to crank out your best freestyle. Perhaps it’s because I was already in a bad mood being sick, but there was an air around some of the top circles that I found stifling. One player in particular would yell at people for self serving a dropped kick before a run had even started and even louder if he thought you’d ‘the’d or bailed. I’m not going to name names because I don’t want to demonize anyone, but if you were there you probably know who I’m talking about. At any rate, it completely killed it for me. I couldn’t play, and what was otherwise a very exciting world’s was drowned out by a couple people way to caught up in their own rules.

I think I realized at the time it was my last shot for BAP and at that point it was still something I wanted. I had worked hard over the years to get my game to where it was, I had paid my dues traveling and bringing advanced freestyle to a lot of places and the recognition would have been appreciated. But at that point, more than the recognition I had just wanted to play well. My game was forcibly shut down by illness and even just hanging around a lot of the circles wasn’t any fun thanks to a couple grating individuals. I felt like I didn’t belong in a place where the “rules” had taken on more import than the game itself so I left. I didn’t go to Footbag sites on-line and I didn’t play very much. Back in Portland the Footbag scene took off around me. Ethan Husted moved in, then Noah and more recently Nick Landes took off. I was barely there.

Now that I’ve reconnected somewhat with the footbag scene a strange thing has happened. Whereas while I was living in Munich I was the new young player, now living in Berlin I’m the old man of Footbag. Every now and again I’ll reconnect with someone I haven’t seen in forever and they’ll ask me if I was ever BAPtised. At some point I realized what a load off my mind it is that it never happened, that I have a certain amount of anonymity.

As I look back I realize that up to World’s 2002 I was always chasing something. First it was the other kids in my class, then a consecutives record, then the move list and BAP. For a long time Ryan Mulroney was our target, then Ahren, Sunil and Lon and now Vasek. I saw a lot of guys push themselves to great heights chasing BAP and I’ve seen many more burn themselves out and fade away. Maybe I’m one of them. The strange thing is I’m not chasing anything anymore, I’m just playing. I’m still learning, and year on year I’m getting better, but the freestyle elite have long since passed me by and I like it this way. I can dip in and out as my time dictates and bore all of you with my old stories. I used to beat myself up with frustration if I couldn’t master a new trick, now I focus on what I can do. I still have my own demons but they’re measured by me and no one else now.

I think, if possible I love this sport now more than I ever have. For the last 14 years it’s been one of the few constants in my life and I have nothing but good memories (even my flu at World’s 2002 ended up being a good thing in the long run). For all of you out there chasing Vasek and whoever comes after him, everyone shredding only with a webcam in your basement somewhere or making that winning routine and hoping to impress BAP at Worlds this year in Prague, don’t give up, you may not get there, but it’s one hell of a trip.

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.