One might have guessed that when we agreed to start passing the World Footbag Championships around from city to city like it was the Icecapades or King Tut's dishware, there were sure to be some concessions.

By Scott Russell

I mean this not in the sense of Uncle Happy's Texas-fried Mystery Sticks, but rather that sacrifices may be necessary if one hopes to maintain a good attendance record. However, for those of us with properly honed priorities, spending a month or so subbing mayonnaise for shaving cream to afford air fare is a small price to pay for such grande rewards.

If you passed on visiting San Francisco for the 1995 World Footbag Championships this past August, start planning for Montreal in '96 and join in the collective swig of the sport's most potent elixir. And while you're at it, brush up on your freestyle and reserve your brother-in-law's camcorder because there's a whole lot more to it than a hoard of sweaty people with their shoelaces tied funny.

For the second time in as many years, the Bay Area Footbag League (BAFL) did an exemplary job of hosting the event. As might be expected of this heralded hotbed of the computer age, signs of high technology and automation enhanced the tournament and kept moldy, throw-backs like me at bay, in awe like cave men of fire. The organizational staff was once again littered with an assortment of bright, technical minds boldly shouting phrases like "uplink that RAM cache through my laptop coaxial port" at each other -- even on Sunday.

These signs of progress notwithstanding, evidence suggests that there are still plenty of footbag competitors for whom simplicity still reigns. This is typified by those with an affinity for waking in the back seat of their car each morning of the 6-day event with a Wendy's french fry or other such trinket embedded in their cheek.

Although player lifestyles seem to diverge more radically each year, the pool of athletes remains unified in driving the average skill level upward and every spectator jaw downward.

While new milestones in the golf and consecutive events are obviously quantifiable and freestyle advances are easily measured according to what has never been done before, the absence of compiled statistical information makes footbag net a tough discipline to calibrate. Even so, individual performances occasionally help us to remember that standards of excellence in net play are developing just as rapidly.

Kingpin Randy Mulder let fall just such a realization on any remaining hold-outs that might still have questioned his authority as the best footbag net player in the game. As he mounted the winner's platform to accept his third of the three net titles attainable in Worlds competition, the broom he brandished overhead not only represented the first sweep of open net titles in footbag history, but may also have punctuated the pinnacle of his career. Mulder, whose name, incidently, comes from the Latin for "no offense, but I'm about to thrash you to creamed corn," departed San Francisco draped in the Open Singles, Open Doubles and Mixed Doubles Championship titles -- footbag net's triple crown.

The least evasive of these seemed to be the singles title, perhaps because he's already got a closet full of them back home in Denver. Not a game was lost in four singles matches, and Friday morning's 15-9, 15-8 semi-final basting of local favorite Alf Marcussen showed Randy opportunistic and comfortably confident.

Photo: Leg span vs. footspeed. Danny Borsky (left) and Kenny Shults discuss there personal preferences for defending 440 square feet of turf from a two-inch projectile. (Photo by John Caveney.)

The concurrent semi-final featured Mulder's open doubles partner, Kenny Shults, fighting for his life in one of the tournament's most memorable contests. Shults struggled in vain to simultaneously fight off an unyielding August sun and an equally unaccommodating Danny Borsky. A taxing 15-13, 13-15, 15-12 finish sent Shults packing and Borsky, unknowingly, to Mulder's chopping block.

In game one of the final, Mulder stayed surprisingly calm in light of several unforced errors, a defensive offense, and an 8-3 deficit. Acting as if he'd seen this part already in the coming attractions, his composure was impressive, yet seemingly inappropriate under the circumstances. As if premeditated, he turned the game around to 11-11 and slipped into a stunning 15-13 victory after having sat out for the first 15 or so points.

Still unable to overcome a rude habit of compulsively trying to stuff his sneaker in his opponents mouth, Mulder's indefensible kamikaze service returns helped him to a 14-8 lead in game two. However, following a Borsky time out, Mulder found himself on the ugly end of two net fouls, an upper-body foul, and an overruled judgement call. Staring down the barrel of a five-point run by the opposition, his luck finally turned, ending the match in straight games. Dropping immediately to all fours, his intense elation was a stark contrast to his matter-of-fact match play which evoked all the tension of folding laundry. (I suppose grace under pressure is often what makes the great ones great.)

In open doubles play, there was no reason to suspect that any two net players present could combine to give Shults and Mulder a game. No disrespect intended to the many talented players on hand, but the reality was undeniable. Not since Abbot and Costello have two partners meshed so seamlessly.

Photo: Golden Gate Park's air traffic controller, Kenny Shults (right), takes issue with skywalker, Brent Welch in the open doubles footbag net finals. (Photo by John Caveney.)

It's no mystery why "The Colossal Book of DON'Ts" now lists allowing Mulder to set up Shults in the front court just behind clamping the habachi to the baby's crib at your in-laws' picnic. Regrettably, this rule of thumb comes screaming to mind just as your loping, breakfast-muffin return drifts innocently into their unforgiving airspace. Then you brace yourself for a brand of spanking specially reserved for rookies and dumb veterans. These are just the type of mistakes that keep line judges wincing and chuckling as if they were officiating a Road Runner cartoon.

Perhaps Brent Welch and Alf Marcussen had this in mind as they climbed into the finals ring to vie for the open doubles championship. [Ya'ever watch those documentaries where the crocodiles hover inanimately in the shallow water with sinister patience until the parched, but cautious wildebeest overcomes its instinctive fears of the shoreline? Well, you get the picture.) Veteran locals, Welch and Marcussen immediately endear themselves to the crowd with an unceasing routine of animated antics and light-hearted commentary. This is amplified by the stoic, business-first demeanor of Mulder and Shults clad in black and white. Despite the support of hundreds of fans and providing the most "entertaining" net play of the week, Marcussen and Welch caved in and were politely turned away in straight games (15-9, 15-12).

If Mulder had hopes of living out finals day undefeated, they would be soured in the tournament's eleventh hour. Together with sharp-setter Julie Symons, Mulder squared off in the mixed doubles final against "The Institution," Brent and Jody Welch. In his poorest performance of the day, Mulder stumbled to a 15-8 loss in game one. Perhaps spurred on by the knowledge that either he or Jody Welch would leave the court with the triple crown and a smile to match, Mulder rallied by capitalizing on Symons' savvy doubles play, and the two took both remaining games without asking (15-6, 15-9).

Photo: Santa Clara's Julie Symons bats .500 in her finals day appearances, but falls just short of repeating as overall women's champ. (Photo by John Caveney.)

Although there must be a certain sweetness in sharing a title with one's spouse, Jody Welch had little more than the mixed doubles loss to complain about that day. Hours before the doubles final, Brent passed their son, Christopher, into his mother's arms in a victory salute for yet another women's singles championship. Thanks in part to an off-day for fellow Bay Area regular Lisa McDaniel, Welch's unshakable skill didn't miss many opportunities in two straight (15-10, 15-13). Later, Welch would call on her net partner eternal, Tricia George, for the doubles final. Unable to recover from a weak offensive start, the duo relinquished game one to McDaniel and Julie Symons 16-14 in a rally-intensive nail-biter. Perhaps a bit truer to form, Welch and George helped to render the ensuing two games somewhat less spectacular with a decisive, rebounding victory (15-2, 15-10).

In the credit-where-credit-is-due category, perhaps the most impressive net performance of the day came from Eugene, Oregon's Becca English-Ross in the women's doubles bronze metal match. One can only hope that such exceptional displays of determination are contagious in the sport.

Photo: In the opening match on footbag net finals day, Becca English-Ross sets an assaulting pace for Sunday's competition and great expectations for 1996. (Photo by John Caveney.)

As is the custom in Worlds competition, the daylight hours are saturated with voracious net play as each match virtually melds with next. But when the low evening sun begins to hinder players' vision, and small groups of competitors and spectators begin to migrate toward the indoor facility, thoughts turn to all that is shreddable and the freestylers are unleashed.

If it hasn't found its way into your face quite yet, there's a renaissance afoot. It has been largely facilitated, if not authored by footbag's only transcontinental freestyle evangelist corps, the Big Add Posse. Dedicated to the absolute cutting edge of freestyle, an elite group of 15-20 kickers from across the U.S. have banded together to drive the sport and each other as far as the laws of physics and human anatomy will permit. Although not without their critics typically charging that exclusivity of this type is counterproductive or antithetical to the sport, the inspirational benefits being provided to footbag freestyle seem to far outweigh these alleged drawbacks. Having enticed, conjured, and/or synthesized several new posse-lings in the past year, BAP is rapidly gaining broad name-recognition, including a truckload of creative, colorful, and marginally slanderous molestations of their acronym. So thorough is their recruiting program that all six open singles finalists and virtually every team finalist were BAP stamped, a fact which contributed to freestyle mogul Paul Munger's prophecy when asked what to expect from the finals routines: "They'll be big and fat,... and some of them might even be ugly." All accounts portended a night to remember.

With a canvassing deluge of 4-add bursts and eye-crossing combos, the freestyle finals are no longer characterized by conservative, high-percentage routines aimed first at keeping the bag off the floor and second, at maximizing adds. Rather, the ideal balance between these often directly proportionate variables is being aggressively pursued by newcomers and veterans alike. Blizzards, blurs, down doubles, symposium whirls, paradox whirls, rip walks, bar flys, and better rain down flauntingly from routines that might have previously employed them as infrequent highlights or avoided them altogether. (I'll forego an in-depth explanation of these maneuvers at this point primarily because it would be painfully obvious that I haven't the slightest idea how to actually do them.)

When the dust had settled after the sixth of six finalists, no sane mind would've declared anyone but Peter Irish the Open Singles Champion. And so it was. (For the record though, 1995 Worlds history may give equal press to his initiating a rash of competitor head-shavings.) Dropless in both the second and final rounds, Irish defeated the entire field of BAP brethren by a sound margin of as much as 2.5 points. That is, except for the newest and obviously most threatening force to hit the tournament in quite some time, Tim Kelly, whom he beat by 3.

Photo: Crowned prince and founding father of the Bald Ass Posse, Peter Irish is no Samson when it comes to post-razor exhibitions. (Photo by John Caveney.)

Catching Irish in a rare moment of post-tournament reflection, he dug deep inside to conclude, "If I had one shred of advice for all up-and-coming freestylers, it would be shave your head bald. Shave it bald. Clean. All the way. It's a blissful experience that you just can't understand until you shave it."

Praising Irish and the new blood invigorating the freestyle world in general, Rippin' Rick Reese conceded, "These guys are just plain too good. They're smooth and they're dropless--you can't compete with that." (For those less familiar, compliments like this are about on par with Michael Jordan confessing, "nice shot.")

In comparison to singles, the open team freestyle finals paled disappointingly. Many of the same players who tore a hole in time and space during open singles competition failed to impress in the final round of the team event. Greg Nelson and Tuan Vu grabbed top honors for their strongish routine with the proviso that Ozzie Ozborne's "Crazy Train" is never again to be recorded or played with the treble cranked to eleven.

Photo: Overcoming a challenging height differential, Tuan Vu (left) and Greg Nelson tie the knot on an open team freestyle title. (Photo by John Caveney.)

The most highly anticipated freestyle match up of the tournament was every bit as climactic as one could wish for. This, despite a proportionately thin showing in Women's freestyle overall.

Second year prodigy, Carol Wedemeyer, made another brilliant run at toppling Queen shred, Samantha Conlon. Like Conlon, Wedemeyer holds a black belt in poise and a Ph.D. in Personification of Fluid Dynamics. Perhaps single-handedly introducing four-add maneuvers to women's competition, she carved a rip walk, alternating drifters and a torque for the finals judges, but in spite of all that, this would not be Wedemeyer's year.

Photo: After a total of five singles titles, Samantha Conlon looks to the sport's future with selfless pleas for a resurgence in women's freestyle. (Photo by John Caveney.)

Opting to stick with what had earned her four previous singles titles, Conlon locked her now-famous smile in place and showed the house what it looks like when it's done perfectly. No kicker can polish a routine so smoothly and no amount of practice can teach the gift that enables her to do so.

With Conlon taking a pass on the Women's team competition altogether, the pressure eased off Wedemeyer and partner, Lisa Monti. Without much in the way of opposition, the pair offered a well-balanced routine and coasted to the top spot above a field of four finalist teams.

Photo: Dave "Tonga" Wedertz does the Bay Area Footbag League proud with a pro-quality finals routine that neted him the Worlds' first intermediate singles freestyle title. Look for the big man to emerge from the sandbox in '96. (Photo by John Caveney.)

As players continue to gravitate toward either net or freestyle in hopes of keeping pace with the big dogs in one or the other, previous concern for overall tournament points has plummeted. Many of the top athletes have chosen their discipline, and remain atop that field, allowing other skills to soften. Those opting to remain generalists of the sport typically harm their chances of being competitive in more than one or two events. There are few exceptions to this pattern, but Tricia George is most certainly one of them.

After taking a year off from Worlds competition in anticipation of her second child, she picks up where she had left off in overall: number one. Although defeating Julie Symons by only five points, George gained the needed edge with first place finishes in doubles net and one-pass consecutives, and garnered a new world record of 761 in speed consecutives.

In the Open division of overall, footbag's nomadic ambassador, Allan Petersen returns as King of the Hill. Just barely ahead of BAP's freestyle-focused Eric Wulff, Denmark's Petersen presented strong net performances and a run-away victory in one-pass. A truly gentle giant and admirable sportsman, I can't think of a more personable player to represent footbag as "the best in the world."

Ok, so what have we learned? Randy Mulder is a pretty solid net partner to play with if you ever get the opportunity; keep an eye out for freestyle barbers; and, when applied liberally, mayonnaise = airline tickets. I'd say that's pretty productive for a week's vacation, no?

Oh, and one more thing. While the heat of competition and glow of achievement motivate so many athletes to chase this event all over the continent, many, more have never and may never so much as smell the latter rounds of Worlds competition. Yet they, too, make the pilgrimage annually. Together with an ever-increasing pool of registrants that climbed to 143 this past August, these facts accentuate and flatter the sport as well as the event. The overwhelming majority of players compete in the World Footbag Championships for no other reason than to have a great time with great people. Hell, you get that just by showing up. (By the way, is it August yet?)

CONTENTS

Foreign Exchange | Shreducation | Barbie | Records
Worlds | Results | Tricks | Sipa
FootNotes | Events | Products

Copyright © 1996 World Footbag Association.

On-Line Edition by Steven L. Goldberg, January, 1996.