Sole Purpose welcomes two new players;
Jarret Brown
Tony Skrivanek
Jarret has been kicking with the group for a few months, but of recent has stepped up his game and is hammering out his fundamentals (twos essentially).
Tony recently moved to Portland, and is actually from another footbag posse, the Cloud 9 group from Minnesota. This was a crew that consisted of one of my favorite players from that day; Juan Rangel. According to Tony, that group slowly dissipated (sadly Juan no longer plays), thus Tony became rusty, but is now pretty excited there are people for him to kick with again. Our first two sessions were good, he could still hit whirls, swirls, spinning butterflies, butterfly swirls, drifters, and all sorts of dragon moves. A good addition for sure. We welcome both players to the group!
On the flip side, two of our star players are injured, both in unpredicted ways. First, after shredding hard all week in Idaho, Nick Landes returned to Portland only to randomly roll his ankle walking down the street. If that wasn't strange enough, Jake Wren's story certainly trumps it.
We were all supposed to meet up last Weds. to kick as usual. Jake did not show up, so we figured he simply could not make it out and thought no more about it. I received a call two days later telling me he had been in an accident and had gone to the emergency room. Apparently, Jake had to skate across one of the bridges to get to our session downtown. While long boarding down the declining part of the bridge, Jake spotted a pedestrian walking several yards in front of him. The sidewalk on that bridge isn't too wide, thus Jake yelled to the person to look out essentially. Instead of moving aside, while Jake was skating by, the person pushed him, knocking him off his board and into the street. Jake had been moving pretty fast, thus the force of hitting the pavement knocked him unconscious. His girlfriend behind him witnessed the event, the paramedics were called, and he was taken to the hospital where he spend the day and night. He was released with four staples in his head, along with his face, arm, and shoulder ripped up. I still haven't heard what the outcome of the pedestrian was, he did not stay at the scene and as of a day ago has not been found yet. This was an unfortunate incident, especially in light of the fact Jake was on his way to kick, and that the perpetrator got away.
One thing I can say about Jake, his toughness matches his demeanor. He showed up at our session five days later and kicked, just to prove a point it seemed. He didn't remember much about what happened for about 16 hours after the accident, probably better that way. The staples did not look that bad actually, but again, the side of his face, arm and shoulder were gashed pretty badly. With repeat inquiries from the group, his answer mainly remained "it happens, let's play". He then went on to bsos fusion in a run, along with quite a few other things. So hats off to Jake Wren, one f'in tough freestyler.
. When looking into grad school, I'll definitely have to consider proximity to sole purpose when I make my decision. Sorry I can't make it to U.S. Open or folklife this year, but sometimes it's like that. The Sole Purpose website it killer, btw. Can't wait to see new developments.
