Day 2 - Saturday April 5th, 2014 (continued)
After a while, everybody began to flood into South Gym. Only in 20 minutes the number of people in there has increased from 5 to about more than 20, and even more are going in. "This was insane!" I told myself. I took off my soccer shoes, put on my incredibly worn down Lavers, and began to warm up. After a while, Anton B. was getting himself there as well, so I gave him the picture of Goku in Super Saiyan 3 form that I drew the other night because I knew he was a fan of Dragonball Z. Unknown to him, at the back of that picture I also drew a sketch of the New 52 Superman, because in another topic we discussed with each other on Facebook, Anton was saying how Goku can beat Superman easily and stuff, so I decided to do that just to troll him a little bit!
Dante Diotallevi was also there, and I suprised him by walking to him and ID him exactly first try. He turned out to be a very cool guy and even invited me into a circle with him. Wow! This was why footbag and freestyle football are so awesome, I thought! A complete pro could ask you to be in a circle with him even when you had like 1/100 of his skill, and you both would have a good time even that. That was why I loved this sport way more than any organized sport out there, and I thought it would be best if it stayed this way forever!
The number of people had become easily 30 after this happened, and thus I warmed up along side Dante and Goerge Hayward (a friend of me at PSU) with basic strings: Mirage - Legovers, Clipper - Clipper, Butterfly - Mirage BS, Butterfly - Paradox Mirage BS, alongside with my Pixies, which is always my weapon of choice, and Eclipses. I suprised even myself when I pulled off a string ending with Pixie Eclipse so perfectly. "Yep! Today would be my day!" I thought to myself...
I couldn't be more wrong.
After switching circles a couple times and meeting a lot of cool people (including - but not limited to - Ianek R., Cassy T. - regretably not for long, which was quite a shame for me
, Alex from Toronto...) I sat down on the ground to steady myself for the circle competitions. From the corner of my eye I spotted someone small doing butterfly, and I insinctively looked over. It was a small dude that I immediately recognized, but the thing I did not expect was how consistent he was. The computer in my head was going: "Nathan Bonslaver, Nick P.'s student, last video shown he was a good Tiltless player, even managed to pull out a Ripwalk at the end. No record on his level after that, even though on Facebook he had been updating the drills he was doing, one of which looked pretty cool. Caution! There were only 3 other people you knew who was like that: Vasek Klouda, Jim Penske and Tom Folan (*), and you knew what each of them could do in competitions, even at that age!". I was trying to ignore it completely, but I could not help noticing the guy pulling out Butter - Same Butter - Far Butter - Same Butter strings so flawlessly, and in my head, believe it or not, I subconciously developed a fear of the little man! What if he would be placed in a circle with me, and he did that? I can't do that, not even close. I can do Pixies, but even if that was the case, that was 4 3 adds in a row, and he was doing it so flawlessly it looks like he wasn't even trying. I could either do 4 infinities (which was like asking me to do Alpine Nemesis... yep I'm that bad that Infinities!) or 4 Pixie tricks to equalize that. Even then, as I was trying to shake the irrational phobia out of my head, I could feel it creeping in, making me less sure of myself, making me consider taking more risks, more than I could ever afford to take...
That was when Ivan announced the start of the Intermediate Circles competition.
The first circle was Ben, Mark, and April. April had been improving significantly lately, she had master Osis in such a short time it was very impressive. She also mastered a lot of the basics, able to do legovers and ATWs very consistenly, as well as insides and clippers. The thing she could do with her ankle crank was incredible! I mean Dragon wrap to Doof... who the heck did that? (except Nick Landes the Yoga Master that is!) However, as impressive as those were, I didn't think she would beat either Mark or Ben. "Poor April!" I thought... this was her first competition. I wished she would not be discouraged with competitions no matter what happened up there! She had a great future ahead of her.
As I predicted, even though Ben started off a bit shaky, he managed to gain a foothold right away in the second round. Mark was doing his routine with very long strings containing Butters and Osii, and April was doing very well as well, at one point almost pulling out a Dragon wrap to Doof, which received a huge reaction from the crowd. However, as the round was ending, I immediately knew in my head: Ben and Mark would be the ones qualifying!
Next circle came, and it was:
Nathan, Kat, and Khoa! My heart almost stopped... "No... This couldn't be possible! Anyone but that guy! Okay Khoa... you gotta keep this together... you were doing perfect Pixies in warm up, and any of his 4 add he could pull, you can always equalize that with Pixie Eclipse, a 4 add more impressive looking than any of the conventional ones, so even if he pulled a Ripwalk up there, you can always get a Pixie Eclipse to win!"
Thinking that, and I stepped up. After doing a couple of warm up runs, I felt a bit warmer, even though my legs had previously became all cold because of the first round sitting there doing next to nothing. So first string was on me. I started off with the simplest strings: Mirage - Legover, and began to get my first 10 safe moves. After that, I did my first Pixie Legover and, feeling strong, pulled out at least one Butter - Pdx Mir, and another Pixie trick I believe. I had to bail to toe stall one time, but I finished up the string almost getting a Whirl. It was a good long string, and I felt very strong and good when I finally passed it off to Kat. She did one of her strings, and ending with some toe tricks, which I thought was quite impressive, because she had to really worked hard at those tricks and I knew it first hand, so it was awesome when she hit these tricks. Then it was Nathan turn. He actually trip this turn with like a 5 tricks run or something, so I thought to myself: "May be it might not be as severe as I thought anymore". However, when he was doing his string, I was running the computer in my head to find out what I would do next. "Okay..." it said "You have exhausted your normal repetoir of tricks in your first round, may be you should go for a Pixie Eclipse just to solidify it, because if you go for anything else it would feel repetitive!". Good idea, I thought, because I could always get that pass back and tried something else if that went wrong! Besides, what could be wrong with that? I had done this trick to END STRINGS! It should be as easy as breathing for me now! And the bag was passed to me after that. I went for Pixie Eclipse... and dropped it immediately after that! I could not believe it. I got to the Eclipse part, but for some reason the bag did not fly up even remotely close to straight. It flew off to the side! "How? How did that happen... This doesn't make sense... How could I fail it, it should be so easy..." These thought kept running on my mind as I received the pass back from Kat. "Okay" the computer said "Tone it down! Do something you know you can get easily! Do an Eclipse - it would still be cooler than most 3 adds, and you have string this tricks like 1000 times, you have string 2 of them! You have done 3 Eclipses! You have done this trick WITH A FREAKING BALL! What could possibly go wrong?" I thought. I tried Eclipse.
The trick went perfectly, but after the bag left my foot, I could sense that it would go to the side again. "HOW? No matter, retrieve it. Keep the bag at all cost!" but it was too late. It had already landed about 4 feet on my left side. A mere 4 feet... that was the distance between success and failure. Suddenly my blood ran cold, my heart beat became so slow I thought it would stop at any moment. "I have flunked it!" I thought "I have forfeited this round... out of sheer stupidity and dumb luck!".
I could not recall the moment I passed the bag up to Kat, but watching her next string made my heart went even slower. As if fueled by my recent failure, both Kat and Nathan upped their game and did amazingly in the 2nd round! Kat did a close to 20 contact string containing a whole bunch of Butterflies and Pdx Mirages, and Nathan did the thing I knew he would destroy me with: Butter - same Butter - far Butter - same Butter. At that point, I could not think rationally anymore. The third round for me went by like a blur, but I think I could still make out that I did a close to 10 contact strings contained mostly Tiltless stuff. I passed it off to Kat again and she and Nathan both did mediocrily in this round. I remember Nathan failing a Blur... "Yes!" the computer told me "Now if you can pull off a 4 add to begin a Tiltless string, you WILL get through this round. You can't do Pixie Eclispe, so what else can you do? Dimwalk? YES! Dimwalk. Relatively safe trick to do. You hit this midstring. You hit it to END STRINGS! You end your freaking Pixie Bronze with it! DO IT!" I obeyed.
However, as the set was going up I knew it would be impossible for me to hit the full trick! The set was way too high! I needed it to be enough to get the butterfly, NOT TO FREAKING DUCK IT! No matter, just do the butterfly! I did... and failed it because the dex was too low, it hit the bag when it was coming down, and send it flying to the side. As Kat passed me back the bag I made the last ditch attempt to get a decent string out of this round. I started off with what should have been easy for me: Butterfly - Far Legover. However, as if on some kind of sick joke, after doing the legover the bag was unstable on the toe stall and I ended up dropping it, again! On a butterly - far legover... I knew right then that it was over... That I have lost... lost because I failed the tricks I was always training to do, which turned out to be turncoats when I needed them the most. I would be the one to go out in this circle. Nathan subsequently did a perfect Blur, which was like salt in the wound for me... At my most needed moment, the tricks I have been doing for so long had abandoned me, and now it was over.
It was funny... Even as Ivan announced who went to the next round, I was still hoping I might have a chance. Even though I missed 2 rounds, the length of the first and the third might save me, and I would end up advancing, and be better in the next round. And my hope, as small as a candle in a Pacific storm, was completely snuffed out when the final result was announced.
I lost... It was over...
Next: Recovery and Camera work!
Note: (*) Tom Folan: a very young freestyle football player (or used to be - he's growing up now, and fast too) you did some crazy freestyle combos, even when he was 14,15.
Dimwalk - DLO - Eclipse
