WOW... what an incredible time!
i went in to this jam (it being only my 2nd) to not be nervous and kick with as many people as i could. i accomplished both of those!
my first jam was jamps last april. i was so nervous and timid. i had only been kicking for 4 months at that time and could barely hit clipper. i was so intimidated by everyone and wasn't myself. this go around, i can hit clipper and a few other tricks and felt more confident. i really bounced around from circle to circle to meet as many people as i could. it was cool to see so many different styles.
i also competed for the first time in intermediate circle. my pool consisted of me, khoa, david moutard (who ended up winning it) and christian. i played ok but i wasn't nervous at all! i just had fun. i ended up placing 3rd in my pool.
i won't go into every detail about the whole weekend but i'll hit a few moments.
anton picked me up from the airport. kyle cook and matt kemmer also arrived around the same time so we all road with anton back to his house. we stayed there a little while and then drove to ann arbor to go have a session at the chemistry building. the students were still on break from the holidays but anton said that the building has been open in the past during breaks. well wouldn't you know it, it wasn't open this time. we tried multiple doors to no avail. we then tried the library since we saw it was open. there were a bunch of us that were like, there is no way they are gonna let 25 or so footbaggers kick in a library. anton eventually talked to someone and said we could try this one area of the library. we ended up going through small hallways with tons of books everywhere. i thought it was just comical. we went up and down stairs and finally ended up in a hallway with a broken elevator. there really wasn't room for all of us to shred here and we were all starving at this point anyway so we ditched the sesh and went to eat.
this was a cool graffiti alley on our way to the chemical building.
and here's us going through the many areas ofthe library looking for a shred spot. haha!
so the main reason i went to this jam was to meet my mentor and online friend paul gressett (metzelrio, ott boggly). my wife surprised me with a christmas present to go. i texted paul when i finally got to the hotel friday night. we were staying in the same hotel. i had asked him earlier if ott boggly was coming to the jam and he said maybe. so i get a knock at the door and when i opened it, none other than fucking ott boggly was standing there. he said are you brown rice (since he can't remember or say people's names correctly). i lost my shit and started laughing. we hugged and then had a short sesh in my hotel room with his son sabastian.
it was incredible to finally meet paul. he has been awesome with me and my game. i fell in love with his wife and family. i think that me and his littlest child praxias hit it off. he kept coming up to me at the jam and hugging my leg.
me and paul (metzelrio)
as far as highlights... i don't think i hit anything that i haven't hit before. they had a workshops on sunday which i thought was awesome! i think every jam should have workshops like this. we told them what we wanted to work on. i wanted to work on rakes and nick polini had a workshop on that and spinning. it was great to finally get some help on these and see where the set actually goes to. we did rakes from ss clipper and far toe. i eventually started hitting them pretty frequently from far toe. i just think rakes are so styley and i'm excited to incorporate those into my game.
the next workshop i did was on osis. i have tried these a little bit. matt kemmer gave me a nice tutorial write up on these a while back. i haven't fucked with them much but did before the jam. they split us up into 3 groups. ianek was our teacher. he is incredible!!! he's a god in footbag but loves teaching as well. he gave us some tips and then wanted to see all us do an osis. i don't know what happened at this moment. THIS IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE JAM FOR ME!!!!
i dropped the bag to my clipper, set it and then hit my osis. ianek looked at me and said, well, there is nothing i can teach you about osis and then went onto ryan. i was like, WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!!! that was the best osis i had ever done! and it wasn't a fluke either. i kept hitting them strongside. weakside does need some work but ianek said that my form was very good and i just needed to nail them down. i think it's crazy that i can hit osis but can't hit a fucking legover. pretty funny!!!
that's really about it. i had a blast and met a ton of people. it was awesome to meet some of my idols: nick landes, scott davidson, nathan pipenburg, brian sherrill and evan gatesman! what an open circles final it was with evan, nathan and nick! fucking incredible!!!
not sure when i'll get to another jam but this one was by far the funnest i've been to yet. big thanks to anton, zach and adam for putting a great jam together!!
mirage bsos x2
keep it up
