Advise and Consent


	by Brent Welch

ince 1983, when the first meeting was held at some picnic tables in Blue Lake Park, Portland, Oregon, the International Footbag Advisory Board (IFAB) has been dedicated to promoting the sport of footbag and stimulating thinking about new games and hot topics. Informal rules have evolved into a written rule book that continues to be updated and improved. The course of footbag's official rules is piloted by IFAB members sincerely interested in the advancement of the game.

The 1996 meeting of the International Footbag Advisory Board (IFAB) was held August 12 in Montreal, Quebec. As in past years, this annual pow-wow of the powers that be was combined with the World Footbag Championships. This year the board spent more time on general issues facing footbag as a sport, and relatively little time on rule changes.
NEW MEMBER JOINS ON

This year's meeting kicked off by welcoming a new member to the board, Steve Goldberg. Steve has been quite active on the footbag scene. He is the "web master" of www.footbag.org, our home page on the World Wide Web. You can find great photos, video, news of upcoming events and a copy of the Official Rules of Footbag at this awesome site. He founded the Stanford University Footbag Club, and he played a key role in the organization of the two World Footbag Championships held in the Bay Area. With his partner, Ed LaMacchia, Steve has been a fixture in the final round of the doubles freestyle competition. Steve will be a real asset to the board.
MY DEAR FELLOW

The IFAB established a new role, "IFAB Fellow," to honor long time devotees to footbag's promotions. All IFAB Fellows will be honorary IFAB members and will not be required to attend the annual meeting in order to retain their voting status.
Five footbag greats were voted in as the first IFAB Fellows:

John Stalberger, "Mr. Hacky Sack," invented the Hacky Sack footbag over 25 years ago and is still actively promoting footbag.
Greg Cortopassi was a co-founder of the World Footbag Association in 1983 and he continues to be an active footbag enthusiast.
Mag Hughes holds several National and World titles in footbag, and hosts an excellent footbag net training camp each year.
Dan Roddick has been instrumental in sheparding both footbag and flying disc from his positions held with Wham-O and now with Mattel Sports.
Reed Gray was one of the original founders of Flying Clipper footbags and he has helped to create the foundation for the freestyle judging system which is in place today.

SANCTIONING FEE WITH RULE BOOKS

The IFAB unanimously agreed to charge WFA-sanctioned events a sanctioning fee based on the estimated number of entrants expected. The fee will be $1.00 per expected entrant, and each sanctioned event will receive the Official Rules of Footbag to provide to each competitor at no charge.
For example an event expecting 20 competitors will pay a sanctioning fee of $20.00 and will receive 20 rule books for distribution to their competitors. This will ensure that all players involved in competitive events are up-to-date with the current rules.
This new development was spurred on by Dan Roddick, with Mattel Sports, who volunteered to sponsor the 1997 print run of IFAB rule books.
STATS OF THE PAST

The IFAB plans to issue a "Footbag Stats" book in honor of the 25th anniversary of footbag. Along with the Official Rules of Footbag, this will be a "must" item for all avid footbag fanatics. This is the brainchild of Kenny Shults, John Stalberger and James Harley. Footbag fans will be able to chart the careers of their favorite stars, and up-and-coming competitors can look forward to having their names "carved in stone" in footbag's first stat book.
For the stats book to be a success, the IFAB needs the help of footbag event directors everywhere. Start by getting your event sanctioned by the World Footbag Association. Contact the WFA for sanctioning instructions. You must be sanctioned if you want your results to be official. By being sanctioned you also will be receiving rule books for your competitors, free event listings and access to low-cost mailing through the WFA.
At the conclusion of your events, all sanctioned tournaments must provide the IFAB with entire events results. Appoint someone to guard the results so they don't get lost in the late-night cleanup at the end of your event! The IFAB needs game scores from all rounds, even the pool play, so we can maintain statistics like lifetime head-to-head records between players. Send your results to IFAB statistician James Harley, 1300 S. Pleasant Valley Road, Apt. 241, Austin Texas 78741-1823.
One more note about tournaments: Directors are encouraged to offer a variety of player divisions at their event to encourage participation. The Masters Division is for players 35 and older, and the Advanced Division can be used to fill the gap between seasoned professionals and the Intermediate Division. Women's categories are always welcome, and there have even been Women's Intermediate Divisions offered. Introducing additional divisions can help your event run more smoothly because the size of each bracket is smaller. It also makes for more winners! The various player divisions are listed in the IFAB rule book, which is available for purchase from the World Footbag Association.
RULES RULES RULES

The IFAB made a number of minor rule changes and clarifications:

There have been several footbags recently introduced on the market that have sand filling as opposed to the normal plastic pellets. Consequently the IFAB updated the definition of a footbag to read "...loose filling of any material."
In footbag net there is now an allowance for one injury time out per team, per match. The time limit is to be set by the tournament director or an event official.
When flipping the coin to determine the start of the first game in footbag net, the top seed now makes the first coin toss call. If the match goes to three games, the other team gets to make the call.
There is now an official one second pause between the calling of the score and the start of the service motion.
The net stanchions are out of play. The net stanchions should be set up just outside the sideline boundaries. If a footbag contacts a stanchion and ricochets in bounds, it is a dead footbag because it contacted an object outside of the court.
The IFAB introduced a carding system for visible warnings and ejections based on unsportsmanlike conduct. This follows the tradition in other sports like soccer and volleyball. The use of the cards is at the discretion of the tournament director. The purpose of the yellow card is to visibly warn the offending player and the rest of the competitors that unacceptable behavior has occurred. A red card signals ejection from the tournament.
In footbag freestyle there has been a minor adjustment to the scoring system. Accidental upper body contact, known as slops, no longer count as half a drop. Instead, slops are to be considered by the presentation judges in the "General Form" category.
The team freestyle event has been official renamed to "Doubles Freestyle" to acknowledge that only pairs are allowed. Times for freestyle events--two minutes for singles and three minutes for team--still include any "fluff" time that a team uses at the beginning of the routine. The time starts with the music or the first kick, which ever comes first.

THINGS TO KICK AROUND

A few interesting new ideas were proposed, but were not voted in as rules. All players are encouraged to should think about these and provide feedback to their local IFAB members.
The first has to do with limiting the number of add contacts in doubles freestyle before a pass is made to the other partner.
The goal of this rule would be to limit the effect of "individual shred" and encourage more co-op. By analogy, ice dancing requires the partners to be in contact virtually the whole routine; only two separations of at most a few seconds are allowed. In doubles freestyle, you could imagine a limit of four add contacts before a pass, with one or two exceptions allowed.
In footbag net, two ideas were floated. The first is to eliminate let serves (one that hits the net and goes over). In volleyball, for example, a let serve is an immediate side-out. Currently in footbag you are allowed another attempt. Eliminating let serves discourages risky serves.
The other idea is to fix the service rotation before the first serve of a game. Currently the second team to serve still has the choice of who serves, regardless of who received the first serve. This breaks the natural service rotation in which a team always switches courts before serving. In other words, if you received the first serve, your partner would rotate into the service position on your first serve.
JOIN IFAB

If you would like to join the IFAB, contact one of its members. You will need to prepare a statement and get supporting signatures from five or more board members before the annual meeting. Look for these details outlined in the IFAB's Official Rules of Footbag available for purchase in the catalog.

[Ed. Note: You can access the IFAB website at <http://ifab.footbag.org/>.]

On-Line Edition by Steven L. Goldberg, January, 1997.