NYFA write-up continued
Here's a video John Goode made of the NYFA jam, including parts of circle finals:
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypR3sbVp8iM[/youtube]
After circle ended, I felt better. While I screwed up routines, at least I performed well in the other marquee event. Watching John's vid, I wasn't thrilled to see so many paradox mirages, but it was in competition and given my routine disaster, my desire to play it safe was understandable. Overall I was happy with how I played in Circle.
The next event up was Sick 3. To tell the truth, this was the event I was least interested in doing, but I wanted to stay warm for request comp, and I also viewed it as another chance to redeem myself in front of the crowd. I hadn't prepared any Sick 3s ahead of time, but I figured I could pull something off with something ending in dlo to something big starting with pixie. I wanted to do something new though, so on the sidelines I practiced ewalk-blurry whirl-mullet, which was a combo I'd never hit before. The way the comp was run, we were allowed to try three combos, which we announced before we did them, and had three tries for each combo. So the shortest turn for a competitor would be three tries, and the longest would be nine. That's too many tries, in my opinion, but we were able to build and hold some big spectator crowds, so I guess the audience didn't mind.
I snuck a few peeks at other people's combos before it was my turn to go up. I saw Nate trying for vertigo-void-pdx torque, which I thought was crazy. I saw Pete hit surge-smoke-pdx torque (which ended up winning second place). For the most part though I focused on practicing my combos and staying warm. When I got up, I announced my first combo was ewalk-blw-mullet, and I ended up hitting it first or second try. With the pressure off, I announced my second combo would be fog-darkwalk-blurry torque. I wasn't able to hit it in 3 tries, which really surprised me. I therefore decided to make my third combo similar, but more interesting, by going for flurry-darkwalk-blurry torque. I ended up getting it on my second or third try, which was good for building up tension in the crowd. I was just happy that I hit two pretty cool Sick 3s in competition.
The final event was request contest. Other than routines, this was the event I was most excited about. I first saw request at Worlds last year, and thought it was super cool. I competed in it at NYJ, but I got knocked out early because my zooming and fairy sets were unreliable then. This time I was determined to do better than at NYJ. By this point in the afternoon, it was around 4 pm, which meant I had been competing for over four hours. That's both physically and mentally draining. As competition began, I told myself that I only had a little bit more to go before comp was over, and that I only needed to hit two tricks at a time. I also thought about my routine, and the thought of it gave me a surge of energy and determination to crush request.
We got some of our best crowds of the afternoon with request contest. It was an easy concept for the crowd to grasp: everybody has to hit the same combo every round, or be knocked out. Two tries. The very first combo announced was ATW-spinning toe, or flying clipper-squeeze. I was surprised by how many people got knocked out by this one. Most people chose the first option, but I guess toe-spinning threw them off. Flying clipper to squeeze probably intimidated some, because fliers are so rare these days, as are squeezes.
For most of the rounds, I tried to either hit the combo as a drill, or link both options into a single combo. So in the first round I hit ATW-spinning toe-flying clipper-squeeze. In the next round, the combo was legover to drifter, so I hit that repeat. Same with blizzard-paradon. On a couple occasions I needed my second try to hit a combo, which was exciting. Spinning clipper-reverse swirl was one, and spinning osis-inspinning osis was the other. I ended up winning on something like barfly-pdx egg, but we had such a good crowd going at that point, I decided to hit a couple more rounds. The next was fog-legbeater or blw-psw. I hit blw-psw first try, then I hit fog-leg-blw and had the psw off my foot. The next round though was two combos I suck at. The one I tried was sumo-smog, and to my credit I did hit sumo, but couldn't smog out. I took a bow and waved to the crowd, then called it a day in terms of shred. I hadn't been this exhausted playing footbag since NYJ.
I threw on some shorts and changed to skate shoes, which was a relief for my feet. I sat around for a while and watched people play, and then I joined in on some foursquare games. It was a real treat to play against Daryl again. Foursquare was a blast. I didn't play strategically (ie, getting people out in front of me and scoring points), but instead just tried to get people out with random snakes, psych outs, etc. It didn't matter if they were in squares below or above me, I just wanted to mess with people. After foursquare I watched some net, and then eventually went back to Bruce's place. A shower and a beer later, and I felt human again.
The players party was at Barrett's place, which would have been fine except the L was broken, so it was a pain to get there. When we got there I found out that I swept all four events, which meant I made some money and got first pick of the prizes. The prizes were pretty sweet, so thank you again to everybody who sponsored. I ended up picking:
*A green, mesh kolo shirt
*A heavy footfighter bag that I like already
*Three juggling balls from FreedomFootbags (I won three last year too, so now I have a set of six)
*A shirt from last year's event. I loved my one from last year, but it shrunk a bit and had a stain I couldn't get off. So this year I picked a size bigger.
I liked this year's trophies too. Vince ended up taking them back to DC for me, but when I get them back I'll make a video of them. They kind of reminded me of bento boxes.
After awards we just chilled out.
I'm excited to go to NYC this weekend with less stress now. If my other issue gets resolved before I leave, this weekend is going to feel like a reward for successfully making it through a very stressful time in my life.
Between the hecticness of my move, the money I'm dropping on Worlds, and coordinating vacation time it just wasn't in the cards. As it is I feel lucky that I'm even able to make it to Worlds.