Jeremy Mirken's Footbag Blog

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 05 May 2008 22:12

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/showset/Cruz

Then click on "dope ass gangsta shit" at the bottom. My latest footbag accomplishment.

acxel22 · Post by **acxel22** » 06 May 2008 02:58

So when are you getting in montreal and for how long?

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 06 May 2008 05:50

wow.

that looked pretty sick.

Must have looked pretty funny from one of the windows.
Grown man doing back flips while kicking leaves.

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 14 May 2008 22:06

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKt8BjgpE0[/youtube]

This vid was also posted in the videos section. It is some gangsta-ass footage of me hitting some sweet spikes during a practice session. 1 minute long, good song. Enjoy it!

And thanks for the previous comment about my other footage Asmus.

acxel22 · Post by **acxel22** » 17 May 2008 17:18

Wow, Jeremy. When we first got the chance to kick, it was like, well, in between 2 of your net matches, and, we really didn't have all that much time because your runs are so long. I remember you hit like 250 contacts and then had to go play net again. I only got to touch the bag once, but boy was that 3 trick run marvelous, or maybe I'm remembering your run. Anyhow, you're the epitome of style and class, and humble humility. If it wasn't for you I pronbably wouldn't even have been born or something. That's how important to me.

But seriously, when are you arriving in Montreal?!?!?!?

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 17 May 2008 17:48

i'll be flying from Portland straight to Montreal I believe, and if I remember the US open in Portland is around the 12th-13th of July, so I'll be there the whole week after that event, maybe a few days longer.

ted · Post by **ted** » 17 May 2008 18:59

Crazy. I liked the spike back into the net; I presume thats an automatic point? Ever pull that in a match?

Possibly more esoteric than freestyle footbag...

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 27 May 2008 08:36

Green Cup- Quick write up

-Green Cup was a very successful tourney.

-Freestyle turn out was smaller than I expected, but fair for the first year of an event. Thanks to Dave and the Oregonians for making it out.

-Largest Green Cup in terms of participants in singles and doubles net events. Amazing to know that the most dominant teams and players EVER from years past were at our event, coming out of retirement to honor the Green Cup.

-Highest level of competition in net I have ever witnessed. Better matches than worlds, more strong teams, more intensity, more beer and margaritas.

-I placed 17th of 32 in singles, not as high as I hoped. I guess I can't expect more though seeing as how I do not regularly train my singles game.

-I placed 9th in Open Doubles with my partner Ken Hamrick. That was quite a feat. We beat our seed by 4 places, and we were already seeded quite highly in my opinion. Thus, in my own estimation, we played extremely well. Throughout the weekend, I set very well, and spiked pretty consistently, although I was not the primary offensive player. My service reception was excellent and my defense was stellar in most of our matches. It paid off! 9th at the biggest tourney in N.A. Baby!

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 27 May 2008 09:04

Props mang. Will you go to worlds to compete this year?

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 01 Jun 2008 21:48

In response to Ken's question, I am posting my tentative footbag-related travel plans for this Summer:

June 13th-18th- Compete in Windy City Cup in Chicago, IL (330.50)
(fly back to CA)
July 12-13- Compete in US Open in Portland, OR (111.50)
(fly from Or to Mtl)
July 18-20- Compete in Prokicker Montreal Footbag Championships, Quebec (340.81)
(fly from Mtl to London to Helsinki Finland)
July 26-27- Compete in 9th Annual Turku Open, Finland (979.00)
(fly/drive down to Frankfurt for week of training pre-Worlds)
(fly from Frankfurt to Prague)
August 10-17- Compete at Worlds in Prague, Czech Rep.
Aug 18/19 fly back to CA (1070.70)

I hope to do all this traveling for less than 4,000 dollars, but I don't really have a budget

. So far I've spent 2,832.32, which gets me to Chicago and back, to Portland, to Montreal, and to Finland, and then from Czech Republic back to CA. I still haven't arranged for travel from Finland to Czech Republic yet . . .

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 08 Jun 2008 21:10

Emily found my camera after a 10 month period of hibernation!

I played an errorless game of net today- all serves, returns, sets, spikes, and dig opportunities were successfully completed. That's only happened once or twice i believe, the first one confirmed.

Played 13 hrs of net in 2 days, don't even feel sore!

Traveling to Chicago on Thursday night for a sweet net event, will be ther for 5 days or so, but Tom will be outta town. That makes me a sad panda. At least I'll hang with Reile and Zeke an the rest of the crew!

School year complete in T minus 98 hours!

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 16 Jun 2008 09:07

After a fun Friday of pick up net games in the park, I, along with several Chaos and non-Chaos buddies, descended into the Wrigleyville area of downtown Chicago for partying. Stupidly, I wore open-toes sandals. This is not a good idea if you plan to drink and walk around. In my desperate need to relieve myself, Wiley assured me we should walk to a close friend's house where we could take a piss and likely find ourselves in the midst of some partying ladies in their early 20s.

Upon seeing, the house and the people outside hanging on the patio area, I promptly stubbed my right big toe on a cement parking block. Within a few seconds, my big toe was throbbing and bloody. When I got to the house, instead of asking for a bathroom, I had to ask for medical aid- wet paper towels, pain killer, neosporin, and a band-aid. Mission accomplished- handled the bleeding and got to take a piss. Limping, I trodded along further until my pain prohibited me from walking further. I walked home with Wiley's gf Michelle a few blocks. Slept at Wiley's house on the couch.

Woke up, couldn't bend my big toe, found a nice sized, U-shaped cut on the tip of my big toe, and a partially chipped toe nail, with slightly skinned 2nd and 3rd toes. Took a shower, got dressed and prepped for the day of net ahead of me I didn't even know if I'd be able to participate in. Got to the park late, but in time, and promptly took 3 more painkiller. Ate a sandwich, and attempted to power kick (1 touch back and forth kicking). Realized I couldn't move forward very well, but could backpedal alright.
Had very limited mobility, and stopping-starting would be challenging.

Seeding and pools of teams were announced. Pools of 3, top 2 teams would advance. My partner and I were seeded 4th, putting us in the pool with the 3rd seed and the 8th or 9th seed. A fairly easy road to advancing to the quarterfinals. We won one of our pool matches, but lost to the 3rd seed. They tried to take advantage of my limited mobility, but by that time the painkiller had kicked in and my foot basically felt numb. I felt pain while walking between points, but during the points, I wasn't even thinking about it, so it wasn't too bothersome.

Somewhat as expected, we made it to the quarters, where we met the team from Memphis, TN- the MFers Walt and Ben. In that match, my partner and I played very consistently and made few to no mistakes. The MFers didn't play their best, and we were able to beat them handily. Onto the semis!

The top 4 teams, as expected, moved onto the Semis:
1) PT Lovern/Yvez Archambeault
2) Gilles De Mers/JF Lemieux
3) John Leys/Jack Harris
4) Kenneth Hamric/Jeremy Mirken

Finals Sunday! My second semi ever. Had to face the number 1 seed. Yvez and PT. Took more painkiller, more neosporin. We played fairly well, good enough to beat most teams at our level, gave the crowd something to cheer for and something to be excited about, but we were handled fairly easily. 15-7, 15-5, or something like that.

The most exciting part of the match was when PT hit a killer toe flip and looked right at me afterwards. In between games, I talked with him, saying " Man, I can't wait until I get MY toe flip set!" to which he responsed: "Why? I'm going to duck, and it's going to fly out of bounds." I laughed. Half way through the next game, I got the perfect set, lined up for it, and crushed the shit out of a toe flip, which landed right in front of his feet! My momentum carried me from 2 feet above the net down to the ground, ending with a hard ground slap with my right hand and a ferocious yell directed at PT. He laughed, and said "Oh shit! I'm gunna hear about that one for weeks!" I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face for a good point or two.

For the third place match, we had to face John Leys/Jack Harris, who lost to the Montrealers, Gilles and JF. Due to potentially hazardous weather, we cut our match short to one game to 15. Unfortunately, we gave up an early lead of 6-1, and ended up losing something like 15-9 or 15-10. We played well, it was a very competitive game, but our defense was not as strong as it needed to be and we couldn't get the side outs when we needed them. Also, I was setting on 1 too much, and although my partner was crushing sweeps with about 80% consistency, his dinks were not as effective as we hoped. Ultimately, because I was setting on 1 so much, I didn't get as many sets back to me for spikes as we should have to keep our offense even.

Nonetheless, we held our seed and played very well. It was very fun to play in front of a crowd, even if the crowd was not huge. The venue was beautiful, with the backdrop being the skyline of downtown Chicago. the tourney was run very well and the weather, which was in question all three days, held up perfectly. We had mostly sunshine, with some cloud cover, and btwn. 40-80% humidity.

In the finals, an upset of sorts was seen. The Montrealers, Gilles and JF beat PT and Yvez in an unbelieveably well played match. So many spikes and digs, saves, and long rallies. Great play all around and every second was amazing to watch.

I'll likely upload some pictures over the next few days, but right now, I have to prepare to fly back to California!

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 16 Jun 2008 10:11

Way to be a warrior. Thanks for the write-up, it sounded thrilling.

Zeke · Post by **Zeke** » 20 Jun 2008 17:50

Thanks for helping us judge. It was great to see you play and always cool to hang out with you.

More photos in my Events gallery

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 23 Jun 2008 12:06

Images from a recent net session in Santa Cruz. Enjoy:

net foul?

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 23 Jun 2008 12:19

Loved the net foul photo.

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 24 Jun 2008 23:27

Today I went up to Oakland with EJ and Angel for a session with three members of the Chaos crew: Jack, PT, and Eric. Santa Cruz got there early to stretch, power, and warm up, and to get some playing in before the intensity level rose to epic proportions. We got in about 45 minutes of warm up and 2 practice games before the big guns arrived.

The 4-some on the main court was Jack, PT, me and Eric. EJ and Angel were watching or playing singles during our games. PT and I teamed up against Eric and Jack. We won 4 games and lost 2 against a team that is definitely top 10 in the world quality. I played really well today with PT for the first time, and promise for a future partnership is definitely there, even if it is only for a handful of events next season.

This was one of the most intense sessions I've ever had, with tons of raw, emotional swings. There were a couple of points where the action was just unexplainable: scrambling, saving and recovering, killing and amazing digging, perfect setting and some shanking, and some incredible toe flip spikes.

One of the coolest things about playing with PT now, besides the fact that he is one of 3 footbag mentors in my life, is the fact that I've taken his best, or one of his best, spikes and learned to hit it. Today when we were playing we both knew exactly what to set and how to set it, and we'd go for that acrobatic spike even when the set wasn't perfect. And because of the nature of the spike, anytime you try it, the shot is either a spectacular kill or a shameful bomb. We had more of the kills today, and each one was like we were trying to show each other up by hitting it harder or from a more difficult set. After I crushed one, PT raised his hands, we high-fived, and he said jokingly, "If I had a son, he'd look like you- he'd have glasses!" We laughed about that one.

Today I dug Eric's roll spike twice in one match. I'll repeat that: roll spike dig twice in one match! He said he doesn't think that's ever happened to him before. People have dug it before, yes, but never twice within the same short period of time. After the first dig, while the point was still going, I screamed out "yeah bitch!" in excitement, but my dig was an "over" and they ended up winning the point on a miscommunication by PT and I later in that rally. At the end of the point, Eric taunted me with "Keep your digs on YOUR side of the net!" In the second game of the match, which was only about 10 points later actually, I got a second roll spike dig, but this one went straight up about 10 feet in the air, and stayed on our side of the net, for an eventual kill. The feeling was AMAZING, and I told Eric that I was his roll spike daddy. That was the best defense I have probably ever played. In that series, I also dug about 2 or 3 of Jacks very powerful (but flat) sweeps and PT had about 7 or 8 amazing digs as well. We took both of those games in come from behind fashion.

In other news, I might be moving to Oakland to train for 3 months when I get back from my European-Worlds vacation. Psyched about that possibility.

Zeke · Post by **Zeke** » 27 Jun 2008 09:00

TWICE!?!?!??!?!!?!!?!!?

Holy shit!

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 29 Jun 2008 18:38

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/14480

Footage of a move I'm working on, trying to invert a toe flip. Similar to a roll spike but without the scissor pump. Still to scared to commit to that one.

I went up to Oakland on Thursday to train some footbag and takraw. Played footbag net Thursday, Takraw on Friday, and footbag net and Takraw on Saturday. Drove down to Santa Cruz Sunday morning for the Sunday net session in Santa Cruz.

Starting work on a new stretching regimen. I realize that in order to hit footbags hard I need to be more flexible. That being said, I can already hit *some* shots hard, but I can learn to hit them twice as fast if my flexibility improves.

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 10 Jul 2008 11:06

life updates

-moving from Santa Cruz to Oakland next year to train footbag net with Chaos; will be moving in with pt and taking a spare bedroom.

-moved out of my townhome in Aptos, CA last Monday, put all of my stuff in storage, and have been house-hopping for 3 days.

-been offered 3 positions at 3 different school districts in the Oakland area (San leandro, San lorenzo, emeryville)

-Starting my epic footbag summer vacation today at 6PM!

-Must decide which job to take by today or tomorrow

-epic 6 weeks of packing condensed into two carry-on sized bags and one camel-back

-Now have partners for Montreal Summer tourney and turku Open, still keeping options open for worlds.

-recently have tried to freestyle for fitness, but nagging foot and toe injuries are not allowing me this luxury.