Edit, i guess top post should have pic. so here is my cool doggy rocky:
Yeah, go girl!!! Please don't change, or not too much if you do Oh nevermind, do what ever you want.
Good to hear watching my spinning has helped, and gotta love those rake highlight drills.
Keep on shredding hard, i expect some new tricks at east coasts.
I think the key part of all that that applies to footbag, is that we must be careful to not apply double standards. If somebody finds it weird that a female shredder has multiple partners, they should feel free to call them out on it...but they should also be calling out male shredders who sleep around too. In my years in footbag, I've definitely met a LOT of male shredders who were very promiscuous. I never called them out on it, but I also never called out female shredders for that either. I think the key is consistency, and I know it's easy to fall into sexist/racist patterns because we're frankly surrounded by these patterns every day.
Personally, I think footbag could stand to have more diversity in general. I think we should all make an effort to encourage this diversity by being mindful to treat everybody equally.
Just wanted to drop a few lines and say that I think it's totally great that you have so much dedication and try to push the sport!
On another more personal note I always hated myself when female players were judged by different standards (e.g. in my first routine competitions a different interpretation of artistic merit was applied to women (competing in the women's division) than to men, where it was expected that girls did more of a show since they were not believed to be able to play on a high technical level)... fortunately this changed with a new generation of female players approaching like Tina, Lise, Oxana, Hania or myself.
I agree what you said about (female) role models which are definitely lacking... I think we all managed to motivate each other in this period (it is a pity that some of the mentioned players have stopped).
Even though I still play, I unfortunately do not have the drive anymore to get much better or compete (even though I still care about maintaining my level of play and being a technical player)... so I think it's just great that you have all the drive and motivation and keep pushing the (female) level! Keep going!
Verena - Thank you SO MUCH for your support! It’s so awesome to hear from you!! I look forward to shredding with you some day
I had a decently productive session today! The last couple days have been hot and humid so I played indoors. Today was a perfect, cloudy day for footbag outdoors so I took advantage. Mostly drilling and working on the same old stuff.
100 tiltless > handcatch! Finally I’ve been wanting this for a while. 50 BOPs > handcatch
Ripwalk x10 > handcatch
Toe Whirl>Blur rpt. to end my session.
I’ve been drilling swirls a bit lately and decided to try some Ripsteins today. They felt SUPER easy! I got BSOS like, second try. It’s gonna be so fun when I can bust those midstring no probs.
Copenhagen is gonna be SO FREAKING BADASS. And thanks! I was so tired by the end of that 100..
Today was my fourth training session this week! It feels good to get back to just straight up training hard to get better. It was also my first full length (1.5 hour) session this week and essentially pain-free. It’s cool that I managed to fix my back without taking a break. I did this primarily with a lot of stretching. They finally seem to have fixed the sauna in the women's change room at school. This has been really great because I stretch immediately after my session as usual, then I go relax in the sauna and stretch even more, focusing more on problem areas. It helps a bunch!
My sessions have been pretty focused on just a few concepts lately. Today was good because I was able to spend time on a much wider range of tricks. I don’t really have any specific highlights but I am definitely making progress. I am finally starting to feel confident with my flipside ducking which has been brutal for just far too long.
No footbag plans at all this weekend! Weird. I think I’m going to stay in Oshawa for once and just have a couple more solo drill sessions. I also really need a haircut so maybe I’ll make that happen.
I feel like I have other things to say but words aren’t really happening.
I love footbag. I love this community. Thanks to those incredible people (and there are so many of you!) that accept me for who I am and openly embrace the love that exists within this sport.
Just read your 7/22 post and I wanna give you major props for your well-written and assertive manifesto - it showed serious class, and really got to the heart of the issue. I am all about freedom to be and do what feels right, while respecting the rights of others to do the same. You totally nailed it, Cass Taylor. <3
100 tiltless is a lot! congratulations, pretty sure I never done that many contacts besides with juggling 2 bags
I've read a some of your last posts and one thing that stood out for me is so true, we can't make people play footbag, it has to come from themselves since it's so demanding, most people quit if we try to force it anyways.
I put so much effort into organizing sessions for a lot of players, and when I moved out, everything stopped and the non serious players pretty much disappeared from the earth.
Thanks Mathieu!! It's so true unfortunately. This is why I spend my energy trying to get established players stoked about footbag all over again. There is a much better success rate with that in my experience. Looking forward to shredding with you again soon! Oh and props on the crazy shred streak, you are a machine!
This has been a weird week. Thankfully I'm in a pretty calm place now. I've needed to work harder than usual to stay positive lately. I've basically had this song on repeat this week. It never fails to pick me up!
I chose to respond to Kevin's post here because I'm not interested in muddying up Nicks blog any further.
I’m not sure why it’s necessary for people to keep bringing up this topic after the conflict has concluded. It's really just getting frustrating. You want the negativity to stop? STOP BRINGING UP THE SUBJECT.
Yes. What I said was out of line and I’m sorry. I said things out of frustration that I didn’t mean, and unfortunately Nick ended up being the target of that frustration. I apologize for that.
If I’m being honest, the reason I said these things in the first place is because he can be kind of a downer.. the stuff he writes in his blog and just his general energy at events. Mind you, not always. Nick is also super positive a lot of the time, but the negativity is definitely there. People keep saying how we need more positive vibes and yet somehow I’m being blamed for all the negativity. Prior to the past few days you will be hard pressed to find much negativity in my blog. If you ever attend events that I go to you know that I am almost always one of the most stoked, positive, happy people there.
I still feel that I was unfairly targeted. I’m not sure how you can call Nick freethinking and good spirited when he is so quick to judge another person. Especially considering he knows so little about the situation and really just has no business in it whatsoever.
Cass wrote:
I’m not sure why it’s necessary for people to keep bringing up this topic after the conflict has concluded. It's really just getting frustrating. You want the negativity to stop? STOP BRINGING UP THE SUBJECT.
Can we please just stop talking about this?..
It kind of reminds me of The Game, in that every time it comes up we all automatically lose. And yet it keeps coming up. And we all keep losing.
You guys are both wonderful people who should feel proud of your accomplishments and contributions to the community. You're continually an inspiration to me & others to get out there and shred, so don't stop doing what you're doing, and just know--even when you're fighting--you're all good with us
Today I let recent discussion on a hacky sack forum negatively affect my footbag session. Kind of unfortunate and a little ironic. I was a bit down all day but I forced myself to play anyways because I knew I would be glad I did. It was a pretty distracted session and I wasn’t really as into it as I usually am. I did get a few highlights though.
Ducking Clipper>Whirl rpt 17 contacts sealed xbdy Rake>Legover rpt 34 contacts Drifter x6>handcatch two times. I think I can get much higher than this soon. Can’t quite compete with the big boys yet
I found peace for the first time today in the sauna. So relaxing.
Starting to feel better about the situation now. I just hope I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
I had a 2.5 hour solo session! I can’t remember the last time I played alone for so long
It was mostly chasing silly stuff like shuffle and badges. This was exhausting but felt good also.
30 contacts guiltless with bs Ripwalk, Blur, Blizzard, Stepping op Legover, Stepping op Pickup Stepping will be mine.. 90 tiltless Heavy on more difficult tiltless tricks like Illusion and Guay. This is exciting because I’m starting to drop because of my endurance and not because of my consistency. This was also almost immediately after I smoked which probably didn’t help with the endurance.
I worked on Drifters a bunch more. I seem to be able to get 5-10 pretty easy but it’s tough to get much more than that so far. Really gotta focus on a good clipper stall and keeping that back straight.
I really want to get a shuffle run with bs Pixie, Fairy, Stepping and Atomic. I’m not quite there yet but making progress. I think this might be my new shuffle record:
I think I got a some more badges but I’m not 100% sure if I met the requirements. I think pushing for these new concepts helped my game a lot regardless.
Played solo again today for almost two hours. My body is starting to feel it but I’m still glad I played. Definitely need a few rest days this week.
I worked on shuffle a lot. Mostly incorporating atomics into my pixie shuffle. Making pretty good progress with that and I think this session did really good things for my pixie game. I want to go for the pixie gold badge soon. Watch out Fairies, I’m coming for you next
Here is my best shuffle from today. Record is now 12.
I watched Davids Drifter tutorial last night. It was really helpful and I tried to apply his tips. I already had the right idea but it gave me a good idea of what to focus on.
A guy came up with his young daughter and started watching me play for a bit. I treated it like a routine and was able to go for a really long time with lots of showy tricks and stuff. It felt awesome! They were nice.
Oh nevermind, do what ever you want.
