footbag-vienna's footblog

[verena]

the most stressing university year has ended!
i haven't played a lot footbag this year and haven't played in two weeks, but i've got holidays now. just had my last exam and got a 1 (best mark in austria). if everything goes well, i'll get my masters in law in a year. pretty cool. i'm still 20 (soon 21 though). however. now i have to go and party, get a life and have to get back in a good footbag-shape again. euros are coming up, haven't practised my routine yet and have to practise with alex for a TV-show called "it's showtime". holidays! finally! no studying for 2 1/2 months! yeah!


also. my sister came back from the US (she was an exchange student there). she's into lacrosse now. have to convince her that footbag is better. also, she can speak english very well now. almost no accent. i really envy her since my english is no good anymore. i was an exchange student in canada in 2002/03. lost my good pronunciation.

[dp]

Lacrosse is a really fun sport. Not as fun as footbag, but close. Does your sister play footbag? And are there any lacrosse leagues in Europe?

[verena]

Lacrosse is a really fun sport. Not as fun as footbag, but close. Does your sister play footbag? And are there any lacrosse leagues in Europe?

1. yes, there are some lacrosse leagues in europe (don't know much about lacrosse though).
2. yes, my sister plays footbag (a bit). she's not very motivated though, because she's not progressing that fast. it's a kind of vicious circle since she always plays for a few weeks and then takes a long break again.
3. thanks for reading my blog, pirate man.


.
.
had a nice footbag-session yesterday. didn't play very well, but also not bad and it was a lot of fun. also, i maybe found a new footbag-player. it's a twelve-year-old-cute-little-girl. i told her i'm gonna teach her how to play. i don't know if she's really gonna start to play, but she was super interested, watched me and alex play for like two hours and also tried some inside and toe kicks.
today i wasn't motivated to play footbag, but i just went running for like 45 minutes. felt really good, plus i was in a surprisingly good shape. :O
feels so good to have a life again.

[PegLegHolly]

wow, best score in austria!!! go verena!!!

you have a life now??
<--- jealous

[Asmus]

Welcome back to life..

Looking forward to see you soon! YEAH!

[verena]

the european footbag championships 2007 are over!
that was very exhausting. i slept like 5 hours per night (well last night not that much). competing and organizing is pretty hard. it's fine though, because every year another footbag-club has to do this work. this year it was our turn.
i feel a bit bad right now, because we got a lot of positive feedback, but also a lot of negative feedback, which really sucks, since i know that people have different point of views about the perfect footbag tournament, but it's still really hard to accept that, when you know that 30 people worked their ass off and people don't like the turnout.
during the whole tournament i shredded for ~20 minutes on thursday and didn't talk to a lot of people, so for me this tournament was a lot different than others.
i got 2nd place in routines! i'm really happy with that result, because i aimed to get 2nd and succeeded. also, i'm really happy that the level of women's freestyle was very high!
i feel that in future i maybe can be a half decent routine player. in qualifications i had 4 drops, in finals i had three drops (my routine song is 1:45). the cool thing about finals was that i played dropless for 1:20! then at this point my legs were so shaky (well, i told you i hadn't slept a lot the last few days) that i dropped the bag three times in a row and couldn't do the end part of my routine well, which sucked, because it's the best part. however, i'm happy with my performance.
i fucked up shred30 though. in finals i started with ~13 unique contacts and then just couldn't hit anything but three contacts for the 15 seconds left anymore. i hit motion as last trick, but ended up with a very low score of course.
euros really motivated me to play footbag more serious!

women's freestyle results:
1. tina
2. verena
3. oxana

open results:
1. vasek
2. honza
3. wiktor

[PegLegHolly]

props on 2nd verena!

[MrMeebles]

More props on taking second Verena. I was standing right at the edge of the stage and I thought you easily could have been first. I don't know what the final score was, but I imagine it was quite close.

Props again to you, Mr. Alex, Ali and everyone else who made this happen. A tournament this size a few things will always go wrong and some people will always complain, it doesn't mean they don't apreciate your effort. I will say that the water runners on the first two days probably saved some net players' lives. Cheers,

-Andrew

[Asmus]

Hey Verena

It was very nice seeing you again, too bad we didn't hang out more.
When are you coming to Denmark.. Hopefully I will see you soon.
Props for taking 2nd, I was very impressed.

[dazza]

Danke für alles, definitiv ein Tounier zum liebhaben ! Die locations waren
masser, viel Wasser, noch mehr Spass

vielen, vielen Dank für euern Einsatz, i loved every minute of it !

[verena]

i think i need to make a post again.
thanks holly, anrdew, asmus and daryl for your comments. they are really appreciated.

also, thanks a lot for your long post in the journies to tournies section, andrew. i liked it a lot, because it's constructive criticism and that's what we all need to make better footbag-tournaments, right?

i just hate that people are writing in their blogs "the organization of euros sucked". what the fuck?
if you want to criticize, no problem, but please state the things you didn't like, and also state the things you liked. it's impossible that you think that the whole tournaments sucked. i mean we all want to improve and make better tournaments in the future and this doesn't help at all, but just hurts some people's feelings. i think i can judge pretty well how good/bad that tournament was since i wasn't the main organizer, but still worked a lot, but also was competing in routine, shred30 and doubles. i played under the same conditions as you did and surely didn't get more sleep. as you i've never been to the porgy & bess and "am himmel" (final location) before.
i'd say that friday night sucked. it really did. it was planned to be a big thing (and very expensive by the way), i myself handed out ~1000 flyers, went to TV, etc. and thought that a lot of people would come. they didn't, it was very hot, no place to warm up and the competition was way too late. like many of you, i fucked up my shred30, even though i started well. i'm still surprised that so many of you played one of their worst shred30s in their lives. it wasn't the first time i played under such bad circumstances, which is no excuse though.
i think many of you didn't forgive us that friday night and still were pissed on saturday. i don't understand why some people were so unhappy with that location. i don't want to talk for such a long time about saturday, because i'm already getting tired, but i think it was okay. remember, i played routines as well. the place for warming up was too small and too dark. the stage was very nice though. we started at ~22:15 which is late, but we had 600 spectators and they cheered a lot!
it was too bad that many of you didn't want to come to the after-party. the white chapel and its visuals were one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen.

i just wanna say that go ahead and criticize, but state the reasons why you didn't like that tournament. i think footbag-vienna earned that much respect from you.

thank you and peace.

[verena]

the european footbag camp in berlin was a lot of fun! thanks a lot to yves!

i don't want to write a report about the camp, because i'm very short on time. actually i should be packing my backpack right now... :S

i played in quantums for the first time. good-bye g-units! i was sick of always having to glue the insides, since my shoes were literally falling apart.
the switch was/is very hard though. the g-units are so very different! the first two days i couldn't hit anything at all! i was so embarrassed!

after two or three days i managed to hit some half-decent runs.

i didn't hit anything special in berlin. just two things were good:

i footed pixie double legover>pixie double legover twice. damn it. why didn't i seal it? would have been my first 3 dex>3 dex.

i hit fear>ss fear>fear>ss fear>fairy ss legover>fairy legover>fairy ss legover>fairy legover>smear>magellan>ss smear>smear>ss smear>pixie whirl.
unfortunately i forgot to do flip magellan (not 100 % sure about it) and pixie legover>pixie legover. damn it.


i wanted to shred today, but didn't find any time.
tomorrow morning i'll leave to go to burma and thailand for 5 weeks. can't wait! yahoo!!

hope i find some time to play a little bit of footbag at least. it's gonna be hard, i know.

good-bye, modified!

[ThisIsFate]

Hey, how ya doing. I was the guy who mistakenly thought u are the 40 years old carol lol. Anyway, I just drop by and say hi, and I would like to see more of ur video. My favorite are Burggarten.avi and last shred 2006.wmv .

[verena]

hello!

for about a week (to be exact 9 days) i'm back from my holidays. feels longer though, the world i was travelling in is pretty far away. it's crazy that places like burma and our western world exist at the very same time. i loved travelling in burma, i loved the country and its awesome people, i loved chinlone. actually pretty shitty to be back. however, i'm sure that next year i'll be travelling again. i'm already saving some money and hope that maybe next year i can travel a bit longer. i've already got itchy feet.
i didn't play footbag while i was travelling (except for one time in mandalay and a few times i put a footbag on my foot to pose in front of the camera). the result is of course, that after not playing for six weeks, i'm in a horrible footbag shape. i've already played three times in vienna, but i'm taking it easy. unfortunately my motivation is not very high. instead once, two days ago, i went to the park and played a bit of chinlone by myself. i was challenged to hit 100 alternating kicks (right-left) and felt so excited when i finally hit 132 kicks. with footbag i didn't have this excitment in a long time. well, the last months i didn't really progress. my problem is that i feel quite responsible to play footbag. i know that it's not only me that plays footbag in austria, but i know that i'm one important part of the scene there (like i also teach a footbag class at university and stuff like that) and then i'm still somehow enough ambitious to play footbag. want to get better, show that there's more female players besides tina who can play at a high level. i'm afraid though that at some point i just stop playing. okay, no worries, not right now. i'm still pissed off that i can't play well anymore, so i'm working on getting back to my old level. also, for once, i'd love to get better again. i was progressing really fast in my second year of footbag, but now after having played footbag for almost five years, there's hardly any progress. well, i also haven't played a lot last year, so it's like a vicious circle.

i originally wanted to write a long report about chinlone, but i'm too lazy right now. it's amazing though how similar chinlone and footbag circle kicking is. only that chinlone is far, far more advanced. there's a spirit of the circle and the ball, like in footbag, but more.
it's really a wonderful sport.
here's a link to my chinlone-footbag-gallery: http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e23/f ... n/chinlone

[dasreen]

my problem is that i feel quite responsible to play footbag.

Matthias said something similiar during euros. There're no young footbag players (nachwuchs) in Berlin, so he doesn't retire from footbag even if he feels to do so. There is also so much footbag exposure to the public in Berlin (just thing of the Berlin Footbag Jam..) but still no one who seems to be interested in beginning to shred.

rene

[DoctorJay]

Hi Verena,

good to hear that you are back from Burma.

If you like to get better at footbag but you have no motivation to shred, try to improve other things like raising your leg speed or your endurance.
So you don't play footbag, but work on it - maybe you will get the element which stops you from getting better.

Have fun.

[janis]

Chinlone is really cool, I've had a go at it too and really enjoyed it, please tell us more

[verena]

thanks for the comments, guys! feels really good to know that somebody is reading my blog.

today the weekly footbag-course for university students went really well. each semester, i've gotta find at least 14 people who are interested in footbag, register and pay the money. i'm teaching now for the fifth time (since october 2005). pretty cool. this semester i've got 15 people so far. most of them already attended the course the previous semesters.


the last two weeks i played footbag four times a week. was getting pretty good again, working on my stepping set and double legovers.
unfortunately, i got shin splints again. footbag is not made for me. i just can't stand the bad cushioning of the shoes. i tried everything, stretches, insoles, etc. but the shin splints always come back. that really sucks since it really stops me from getting good. like for two weeks my legs felt really good and i could jump and stuff. now, i've gotta take it very easy again. didn't play today and will only play twice a week this week (sucks though, because i need to play more so that i can progress). bought some anti-inflammatory-stuff in the pharmacy, maybe this will help.

apart from that my university year has started. lots of work to do.
booked my flight to copenhagen. 22 €. 31st of january. will stay there for four or five months (as an erasmus student). i'm studying danish now. haha. yesterday, i had my first lesson. i can already say, "is this a house?" and answer "no, it's a flower". very important stuff you know.
hej-hej.

[Asmus]

Er det et hus?

Im stoked on you moving up here to the cold north.
Teaching footbag sounds awesome. I wanna get something like that started.

FOOTBAG!

[Fkystyl]

hi Verena

I would like to know a bit more about Chinlone. Who did u meet? and play with? Is Chilone just a group of people or is it a sport? i am fond of this. as you may know i have been playing more with a football than with a footbag these past two years, so i feel quite close to chinlone since with the freestyle football we also play in circle and the dimension of the pass is much bigger than with the footbag players.

by the way your pictures are great

what was the reaction of the chinlone players when seeing you play footbag and then chinlone?

Tschuss