ah what tha hell... seeing how everyone of my football fsers friends have already gone home and left me behind
, I will take this opportunity to write out the first part of my journey to the US Freestyle Soccer competition this year.
Needless to say, this is definitely not a footbag only experience, and if anyone of you guys don't care about fs football at all (
), it's completely fine to ignore the next couple entries altogether
. However, if anyone of you guys still want to read this, I will provided to you the background (in fs football) as I write so that you guys will hopefully understand and enjoy the things I'm about to jot down. But still, if I happen to miss anything an this become an incomprehensible mess, please feel free to ask a lot of questions so that I will be able to provide you guys with all the necessary details!
OK, here goes...
1. Thursday, 07/10/2014
After finishing lab, I immediately came home and get all my things together. I got to the airport at 5:00 P.M, just 20 minutes before boarding. After a very quick check in, I got into the plane from State College to Philadelphia, and it finally took off.
On the plane, I reviewed the list of things I know about the comp:
1/ It will take place in the International District in Seattle
2/ Two judges flying from Europe will judge: Soufiane Bencok and Pawel Skora.
* Time out! Before going any further I have to explain why # 2 is sooooo significant:
In contrast with freestyle footbag, which is fairly straightforward with people standing up and dexing from clipper and toe stalls, freestyle footballl actually have 4 different categories of tricks:
1. Lowers (or "Airmoves", "Air combos" etc): are the tricks that are done with one's legs while standing up. Yes! These are actually footbag tricks done with a ball, except that we haven't explored to the maximum limit the clipper tricks yet. Most of the lower tricks in freestyle football are toe tricks, and unsurprisingly, there are some tricks that bear great similarity to footbag tricks. I will definitely explain more to any of you guys who are still interested, but for the purpose of this post, let's move on.
Lowers is the most popular category of freestyle, with people practicing it as the main style far exceeds the 3 other categories, which are:
2. Uppers: tricks done with the upper parts of the body: head, neck, shoulders, chest, sidehead, eyes, lip... these involve stalls with the upper parts of the body. Very hard to do with a bag because the bag does not roll very well, making the transition between each stalls incredible difficult. I tried doing uppers with a bag once, and let's just say it did not really work out.
3. Sitdowns: tricks done while lying down. Involve a wide variety of dexes done while the practitioner is sitting down. There is also a subcategory of this style called "sole tricks" which involve stalls using the sole of the foot while lying down.
4. Ground moves: this is sometimes not considered a real freestyle category because it relates more to street soccer. Basically it's dribbling the ball using movements that confuse an opponent and left them vulnerable for what called a "panna" aka. the ball goes between the opponent's legs from one side to the other, which is considered the worst form of humiliation in street soccer.
So why am I telling you all this?
Because Pawel Skora, one of the judges, is the absolute master of the lower style. He released this video called "Skora Air Moves 1" back in 2005-2006 and absolutely owned everyone at that particular style because of how hard the moves displayed in it were. Sounds familiar? Yep! Vasek did the same thing with footbag a while back. In fact, these guys are so similar that I consider Skora the "Vasek Klouda of freestyle football".
Also, Soufiane Bencok, the other judge, is the absolute master of ground moves, and street soccer for that matter. The things that he can pull out on the ground is just crazy, and he is an absolute beast at giving people panna. In fact, he won the whole panna competition in a major freestyle competition.
So now could you imagine how excited I was?
Besides that, I will be 3/ meeting a lot of football freestylers, people that I haven't met in ages, alongside people who I would meet for the first time at this meeting. Needless to say the plane ride, even though it was only 1 hr from SC to Philly, was a torturously long experience for me.
After getting to Philly, I practiced some light freestyle moves in the airport to "warm up" for the competition and to get my conditions ready for it. I didn't go for anything too crazy, but it definitely felt good because it released a lot of the anxiety I had.
1 hr and a half later, I began to board the plane from Philly to Seattle, and if it's like what's scheduled, I would be arriving in Seattle at 11:31 P.M on Thursday.
Needless to say, something had to go horribly wrong.
After 2 hrs of the plane taxiing and me waiting for the plane to take off (which felt like 2 centuries in my perspective), the captain finally announced that due to a weather condition, the flight has been delayed and the plane had to be brought back to the terminal to be refueled.
On hearing that, I literally yelled: "F......." (don't worry it was in Vietnamese and nobody seemed to know what it meant
) so loud I startled the guy beside me (needless to say I apologized to him afterwards). I only had 4 days in Seattle, I told myself, and now God was going to take some of that time away from me too. I didn't know how long the next flight was going to be scheduled, and by the way this is going, I might even miss a chunk of time on Friday that I could be meeting my friends. I was dissapointed and tired at the same time, and had to resort to buy a tuna sandwich and gulped it down before thinking anything else.
However, after that, the situation improved. The announcer said that it might be possible that the plane would take off later that night, so even if I missed being in Seattle on Thursday night, I would be there early Friday morning. Needless to say I was very glad to hear that, because that was the next best thing that could have happened. So I texted Noah Garrabrant, my football freestyler friend in Seattle, to tell him the situation, and it sure felt good to have someone to share the news with.
In the time of waiting, I did some basic juggling the ball. It sure felt good to finally got some control over the ball again after so long a period of stagnation due to my juggling problem.
* Clarification: I had been having this annoying juggling problem in which my left leg decided to curve inward every time it touches the ball, messing up the juggling rhythm and severely damaging my lowers ability. In January of this year, I could not juggle past 10! However, with perseverance, the problem seemed to have mitigated somewhat, but I won't rest until I got this completely under control.
So, finally, after 2 hrs of waiting, the boarding began again, and this time the plane took off, and headed for its destination. I closed my eyes for my much needed rest, and awaited my waking up... in Seattle.