Bear Feet: Cornell Footbag Club

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 05 Oct 2006 11:54

I am definitely not complaining.

Oh no. After 4 years of unsuccessfully trying to create a footbag scene in undergrad, I am overjoyed at the rapid growth and success of the club here at Cornell. I arrived in Ithaca barely 6 weeks ago, and in that short amount of time, I've been lucky enough to be part of the explosion of a legit footbag scene. There is now an official footbag club at Cornell, with bi-weekly meetings that attract usually 6-10 members, who are all picking up the basics and in some cases already buying footbag shoes. Oh, and did I mention we are HOSTING A TOURNAMENT IN 5 WEEKS? Well we are. 6 weeks ago it seemed there was only 3 serious players on campus, and we didn't even know each other. Now, we're building an army.

So what's this talk of complaints? Well, at the risk of making complaints similar to "I can't fit all these gold bars in my mansion!" or "my stamina isn't good enough for 3 orgies a day," the happy "complaint" I've had in my head these last couple weeks was: "I can't remember all the highlights of the other club members, and its taking up lots of space in my blog to write them all out." And to address this "problem," I decided to create a new blog for the club.

The birth of the Cornell Footblog. BAM! Here it is. You may (fairly) be asking yourself: "really, does modified need another space where Ken can practice his typing skills (my fingers aren't bleeding yet, hence I cannot say I am close to finishing this post) and wear down the scroll-wheel on my mouse?" Like I said: fair question. But to your relief, you will hopefully find that this blog will NOT just be an extension of my own verbose 'Zine. The purpose of this blog will be:

1. To hype the awesomeness of the upcoming Cornell Footbag Tournament, which is going down (awesomely) on the weekend of November 10th-12th in Ithaca, NY.

2. To provide a place for the members of Bear Feet to post about our sessions.

3. Hopefully to provide exclusive footbag videos to the modified community, which won't be posted in the video section.

4. To discuss the merits of Kanye West's classic folk-anthem: "Golddiggers."

Did I mention the tournament? 4 square and circle comp? Convenient central location (Ithaca is like 5 hours away from every major city in the Northeast. I'm looking at YOU Montreal, Rochester, Kingston, NYC, Bostown, Maryland, etc.). Hmm... I smell post detailing housing and more tourney details coming soon...

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 06 Oct 2006 10:49

Sweet, we now have a blog. So here is the most important info about our club:

Cornell Juggling Fest/Footbag Jam: November 10-12
See http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?t=14310 AND http://www.rso.cornell.edu/cjc/festival/ for more info!

Plus, our regular meeting times are as follows:
Wednesdays, 9pm-11pm in Barton Hall.
Fridays, 3:30pm-5:30ish outside Goldwyn Smith Hall. Once the weather gets bad, we will move these sessions to Barton Hall.

In addition, there is usually a last minute Sunday or Monday session because no-one can go from Friday to Wednesday without playing.

Jdigges · Post by **Jdigges** » 06 Oct 2006 14:46

that looks like a sick competition. i just got more stoked to go

Zeb Jackson · Post by **Zeb Jackson** » 06 Oct 2006 15:17

wow i just watched that video, and it looks like that is going to be an awesome event, to bad i live in idaho i would come to this if it wasnt so far for me =(

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 07 Oct 2006 10:05

Club meeting yesterday kicked off a good day for me. Fall break began yesterday, so most people had already left for NYC or home. But footbaggers are hardcore, so a couple members delayed their departures just to play 4square and shred. All told we only had 5 members at yesterday's session, but I think we will return to full strength after prelims wrap up for everybody, and the world returns to normality.

The thing that made me happiest at yesterday's shred, was to see that Nick bought a pair of Lavers!

I love seeing that, cause that's such a big step towards fully committing to footbag. Apparently he picked them up for $30, which is pretty savvy. I noticed that the toe boxes were cut out already, and when i asked him who helped him, it made my day to hear his reply: Brett. I have very high hopes for the club.

In other good footbag news, my ankle is making good progress on the road to recovery. When I'm warmed up, I can use that clipper lightly with little pain: a big improvement from last week. Wow, I guess I injured myself exactly a week ago. I'm hoping I can be near 100% by next week., which would give me about a month to get ready for the Cornell Tourney. Pretty excited...

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 07 Oct 2006 11:22

Yeah, yesterday's session was pretty fun, but I feel like I barely shredded. This is probably a good thing because my lower calf muscles were in pain. I'm going to take it easy for a few days to give them time to rest. The two biggest things I think I learned yesterday are

1. My body needs rest days. I play either hockey or footbag almost every day of the week, and my legs are constantly sore from both.

2. My lavers are dead. Last night I had some bruising on the bottom of my feet where the sole has worn thin. It's a good thing my new G-units are in the mail. I hope I get them by Wednesday... and that they fit.

On another note, I did manage to hit datw from in to out on my strong side. It was kind of out of nowhere, but now I can at least do it both ways on my strong side. All that remains is to school that flipside...

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 08 Oct 2006 14:12

Tell Luis I said hi and that that he needs to get a modified account. I want to see what he's hitting these days.

Really glad to see that you guys have a club up and running at Cornell. Sounds like it's really taking off. You wouldn't expect it at any Ivy League school, most people don't want to spend their time on anything that wouldn't help them build their resume. That's cool, great job guys.

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 08 Oct 2006 20:26

Thanks Ben, I'll tell Luis and really try to convince him to get on modified, especially now that we have this blog, and since he's met alot of people on here at KICKASS.

Ken and I had a session today down on the commons. Everyone else in the club is gone for fall break, but that wasn't going to stop us given how beautiful the weather was. Basically, it was just a joy to be outside today. On top of that I actually managed to hit a few strings that were longer than my usual ones. I think I had two that were between 15-20 of tiltless, mostly unique contacts, and several more that were more than 10.

I really want to keep working on string length, though I'm not sure exactly when I'll be satisfied. Will it take an average of 15 contacts? 20 contacts? Who knows.

I brought my juggling stuff and we juggled during our breaks, and finally near the end of our session we got enough interest from people walking by to put together a game of four square, which was a welcome break for me from shredding in the heat.

Also, I thought of a cool t-shirt idea for the Cornell Jam, and Ken and I did a little research today to see how possible it would be to get them printed locally. Nothing official yet, so I won't elaborate, but I'm excited about it.

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 08 Oct 2006 20:31

I keep talking about string length, but it looks like my post length is also going up. Still need to do some work to catch up to Ken, in terms of both string length and post length.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Oct 2006 06:19

Iron Clad Ben wrote: You wouldn't expect it at any Ivy League school, .

Actually, UPENN in the mid-90s had a pretty strong club with Ethan Klein, Chris Park, Vijay ?, and some guy called Sunil something or other. Chris Park invented and named a trick called "parkwalk," I think "magellan" was invented and named at Penn, Ethan was borderline BAP in 98 before injuries took him out the game, and we all know what happened with Sunil.

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 09 Oct 2006 07:20

C-Fan wrote:
Iron Clad Ben wrote: You wouldn't expect it at any Ivy League school, .
Actually, UPENN in the mid-90s had a pretty strong club with Ethan Klein, Chris Park, Vijay ?, and some guy called Sunil something or other. Chris Park invented and named a trick called "parkwalk," I think "magellan" was invented and named at Penn, Ethan was borderline BAP in 98 before injuries took him out the game, and we all know what happened with Sunil.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Sounds like I missed quite a big boat. I was at Penn '99-'03. No one played. Even hack circles were about as common as lunar eclipses. Oh well...

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 09 Oct 2006 20:13

Wow, another session today with just Ken and I, and after playing and hour and a half of squash this morning. My legs were pretty tired, tomorrow will have to be a self-prescribed rest day.

Highlights:
whirl bsos
somewhere between 18 and 24 contacts of atw in>atw out>legover
spinning osis
a variety of dlo's

I footed spinning butterfly a few times, so I feel that's coming along. Each session I get ever so slightly better at spinning. I just hope that if I stop playing for a week I'll be able to start where I left off.

Ken said something about energy meters today that really made sense to me and I think it will help improve my string length. If every move takes 10% of my energy, then I am going to be out of energy after 10 moves and my string length is capped at 10. So, besides the obvious conclusion of trying to make every move take less energy, he pointed out that I can actually regain some energy doing easy (typically strong side) moves. In the extreme case, I could regain it by doing a bunch of toe stalls, but more realistically, if I hit a move that's very easy for me such as mirage in the middle of my string, then I can regain some engergy to use for harder moves. So in summary, this is probably obvious to everyone, but I had never thought about it that way, and I'm going to start organizing my runs better (i.e. not starting with all my easy tricks and then trying all my hard tricks). I wrote all this out so that I'd remember it, because once I eventually get better, the same philosophy will apply, it's just that the moves that will let me regain energy and catch my breath will be harder.

My g-units were stuck in Ohio over the long weekend. Hopefully DHL starts moving them again tomorrow, so that there's a chance I get them before our next session on Wednesday.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 10 Oct 2006 17:28

Pascal's G-Unots arrived today. They are forrest green, a color I had never seen before. They were also structurally slightly different from all my G-Units, despite being G6s. In between the leather and the inner mesh, there was another layer; some kind of white foam thing. It made modding them take longer, but also ensured I wouldn't cut through the leather and damage the inner material. I think I did a spectacular job of cutting up the shoes, and they look real cool since the material below the green leather (the areas where you stall) are black. Hopefully Pascal can post some pictures soon. I'm also excited for Pascal, because I think the Gs will better support his weight, and be overall better for his leg health in the long run.

Shred tomorrow night, I hope everybody got better over break!

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 11 Oct 2006 09:33

Pictures of aforementioned shoes:

http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.ph ... 985#274985

Can't wait to take them for a spin tonight (pun intended).

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 12 Oct 2006 11:26

We had a session last night where I tried my g-units. We played a lot of foresquare which was pretty epic, but I felt like I only had time to get in a few good runs shredding.

The g-units felt great. I definitely enjoy the wider sole, because my custom orthotics don't stick out the side any more. I actually have a flat clipper surface now. One adjustment I have to make is to ensure I don't catch the bag on the "rail" when setting the bag from clipper. I also initially thought that the g-units were heavier and that this would prevent me from doing tricks where I need to move my legs quickly, but after explaining this to Luis and Brett I hit datw (out to in) -> datw (in to out), which was a first. So basically I don't think it's a factor. Lastly, I didn't like the way the lacing scheme I was using shaped the toe box, so i re-laced them when I got home. Hopefully this will be more to my liking.

Next wednesday I am going to try arriving earlier to fit more shred in. Also, at our friday session, I am going to try playing in my new contact lenses!

slapdash21 · Post by **slapdash21** » 12 Oct 2006 17:25

hey man props on all that shiz. your enthusiasm kicks ass, you'll get really good fast. and most importantly, i just got contacts recently as well, and my game has improved noticably just from that. see you at cornell,

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 12 Oct 2006 19:41

Hey Pete, thanks for the encouragement, I'm happy to see other people posting in the blog. I *really* want to get Luis posting in this too, so it's not just me. Last time he said he was going to sign up, he just couldn't think of a good login name.

So, today I didn't think I was going to play footbag because I had ice hockey class this afternoon, but after playing brutally in that, and then losing in the quarterfinals of the department ping pong tournament, I felt like I needed some sort of stress release. So after working at school until 7:30 (which was actually really productive) I felt like playing footbag. Ken was...'unavailable'...so I called Luis, who didn't really get to play yesterday.

We played in the Ramin room, which is where the Cornell Juggling Fest is being held. The floor surface is green astro-turf, so it's slightly cushioned, but not too much. We warmed up a bit and then the co-ed club field hockey team came in and started playing some friendly games. About half of them were playing at a time while the rest were sitting by where we were playing. I think the audience motivated Luis and I to play well, which we did.

Luis hit some of the best strings I've ever seen him hit, and I gave him a tip on his flip butterfly (actually I just repeated the tip that Ken gave me for my flip butterfly!) that seemed to help. I also hit some of my longest strings. I had 20 contacts in one string before I had to stop due to muscle exhaustion, but it felt cool having such a long string end without a drop. Actually, by the end of the session, I could really feel the burn in my legs on my longer strings, which is unusual, because usually I run out of breath before my legs start to feel heavy. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I played hockey earlier. Anyways, I was really happy about my string length today, but I am still going to work hard on it.

On top of that I hit strong side atom smasher, flip side ripwalk, and something completely new: spinning clipper->spinning clipper->spinning drop.

Lastly, the verdict on my G-units are that they rule, and that I hope I never have to play in lavers again.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 13 Oct 2006 08:26

Pascal wrote: Ken was...'unavailable'....

I believe the phrase I used was: "I'm getting CRUNK!"

Try to catch me riding dir-ty....

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » 15 Oct 2006 20:08

Our club had a session on friday in the cold, but just played four square.

Sunday evening Ken, Luis and I had another session in the Ramin room. There were still lots of lots of people there waiting in line for hockey tickets (from the night before, fortunately they gave the grad student's theirs at 1am, so I could go home and sleep). We started with a casual warm up in pants, to see if we could recruit any new members, but didn't get too much interest.

My highlights for the night were some 15-25 contact strings. There was one string that Ken said was about 11 or 12 contacts, which surprised me, but then Luis said he counted 18 (or some other much higher number), which seemed much more reasonable. Now I know Ken's answer to my question of "Can you count for me?" It's really too bad Brett wasn't there, because he's very good at counting (and not just for footbag!).

I also hit, for the first time
Tapdown (strong side)
Legbeater (strong side)
butterfly>dlo>same butterfly>dlo
diving clipper > whirl (strong side)
New infinity record: 9 (up from 5, but I plan to smash the new one soon too)

I almost had sidewalk flipside, but my flip stepping set was slurry. This usually happens when I try to set the bag towards me, instead of straight up. I should really practice getting this right (setting the bag straight up and moving my leg over it) because I really like stepping set.

After the 2.5 hour session we went to Wings over Ithaca, which was really tasty and lots of fun. I recommend that place for those planning on attending the Cornell Juggling Fest.

Luis · Post by **Luis** » 15 Oct 2006 21:36

ya,
so friday, after ken and pascal, left early to do some planning with the juggling club, i went down to west with nick, had dinner and played some kill for the first time with some of his friends who like to kick a little bit but said they were too busy to come to the club, it was fun though

today, sunday, i spent the whole day at the library working on one assignment, but then at 7pm i met up with ken and pascal, had a good session to start the week out

i hit one or two ducking that ive been trying out and mirage>legover>mirage>legover, not sure how to write that

>-- !!!Cornell Jugglefest/ Footbag Tournament !!!!--<

I think pascal posted links with hotel info, but when we checked, lots of those were full/expensive/not close, if you want a hotel you should be able to find one from that info but,

if you arnt too picky, i live in a house with lots of space, 6-10 couches, plenty of floor space, and anyone is welcome to stay,
if you'd like crash space, let me know, just so i can get a rough count

some suggestions just ahead of time, in case you do want to stay here

i dont know, how well the heating is in like the big living room and stuff but i'd definatly bring sleeping bags or blankets cause it'll probably be cold by november

shower sandals, if you want to shower

and i guess, my place isnt the closest too where stuff will be happening but if you drive down theres parking at my place and there should be some be the event location

if your coming in groups, let me know group sizes/how many cars your bringing

this is my first post, kinda long, couldnt figure out how to format layout and i was unsure of what to include but tried to get some club highlights and jugglefest info,

let me know if there's any questions about jugglefest/footbag tournament in genral or for housing too[/list]