Check me on this if you'd like, but there seems to be a curious pattern taking shape. I write an article for Footbag World about Andy Linder battering the speed consecutives record beyond all recognition. Andy breaks the same record once or twice more before the aforementioned article reaches your doorstep. I look like a clueless hack for reporting old news. Andy breaks said record 2 to 5 more times. Work begins on the next issue of Footbag World. Bam! I'm assigned the Andy Linder article. Repeat.
If not for all of Andy's glowing character references, I might suspect him of trying to ruin my journalism career - that is to say, if I had one.
The truth of the matter is, Andy doesn't care what I or pretty much anyone else writes or thinks about his footbag endeavors. An endless supply of self and spiritual motivation fuels him to great heights and, well, if he happens to inspire a few folks along the way, that's all the better.
Even so, his most recent milestone has drawn a bit more attention from the footbag community than his low-key approach might otherwise attract. Those who've followed his tireless assault on the upper reaches of 5-minute timed footbag consecutive (speed consecs) over the past 18 months could write the next sentence for me. Andy is now the first player in footbag history to crank out over 1,000 kicks in the alotted 5-minute span.
Virtually uncontested since first claiming this record in November of '94 (944 kicks), he has periodically pushed closer and closer to the 1,000 mark. Most recently, Andy kicked 997 at the Illinois Indoor Footbag Championships in Malta on March 8. Apparently, this was too close for him to sleep at night, so arrangements were made for another attempt just 3 weeks later. March 29 at the '96 St. Patrick's Footbag Festival was chosen and, with his wife Dawn in her ninth month of pregnancy, this would be his last crack at it for some time.
After two foul-free attempts, video footage clarified each one at 1,017 kicks, decisively silencing any claims of a fluke. At 3.39 kicks per second, Andy's revolutionary style of right instep to left knee to right instep was and is clearly his recipe for success. Nobody else is using it and nobody else is kicking anywhere close to his numbers. We can expect to see either lots more speed-eaters adopting the Linder Shuffle or Andy becoming very lonely in his Land Beyond a Grand.
With the birth of his son Adam Andrew on April 20, he'll rest easy for a while in the knowledge that his closest suitor (Kenny Shults) is 77 kicks shy. To these ends, Andy has eluded to holding off on competition until some time in June, giving me at least a slim chance of getting this article to you before it's rendered obsolete.
In other consecutive news, Andy will once again have to share the world record limelight. This time he's joined by footbag veteran Ida Bettis-Fogle and 932 students and faculty from St. Patrick's High School in Chicago.
Long-time footbag promoter, athlete, and Mike Marshal Award winner, Ida Bettis-Fogle had always shown an affinity for speed consecs, but left the business of world records to the rest of the women's field. After years of placing amongst the top handful of competitors, I suppose it just came time to see whether the knees-only approach was truly worth its salt. The answer, of course, was yes.
On a cold April 13, Ida found her niche in the field house of the University of Eastern Illinois at Charleston. Targeting a record of 761 kicks set by Tricia George at the 1995 World Footbag Championships, a rate of 2.57 kicks per second garnered her a new mark totaling 769.
The recent past shows a women's speed consecutives record that's been creeping skyward a handful of kicks at a time for a few years now. If this continues, and we have every reason to expect that it will, Ida won't find much time to rest if she's to retain her new title for any duration.
The last issue of Footbag World reported on a thwarted attempt at breaking the record for the world's largest circle (See Vol. 12, No. 2, Like a Broken Record). Well, clear skies prevailed this time around and, subsequently, so did the students and staff of St. Patrick's High School.
The Guinness world record for the largest footbag circle, set in 1986, in
Ft. Collins, Colorado, was surpassed by 70 participants.
To cap off the 135th anniversary of the school's founding, 932 Guinness-book wannabees circled the school and kicked footbag for roughly 2 hours. Although I think the rules on this one are a tad flexible, they managed to outnumber the long-standing record of 862 established in 1986 at Colorado State University and now enjoy world record holder status. That is until the next mob of hungry, young upstarts comes along for a piece of the pie.
[Ed. Note: most world record information is updated and available on the Current World Records page at http://www.footbag.org/.]
