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Special
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W "nesday, May 1, 1985
Emerald Sports Supplement
Enthusiasm spreads
for this ‘friendly’ sport
^Since its introduction in 1972, foot
bagging has evolved from an obscure
pastime played by a handful of
Americans to a nationally recognized
sport involving millions of dedicated
players.
The sport’s popularity spread with the
production of the original Hacky Sack
footbag, which brought enthusiastic
responses from new players around the
globe and eventually led to the formation
of the World Footbag Association in May
of 1983.
The WFA has become a major resource
for novice and professional players
alike and has been instrumental in
stimulating interest in footbag games
promoting, educating and
and competitions.
The most recent extension
of footbagging’s ever
increasing popularity
developed just this year
with the introduction
of the 1985 First
Annual National
Collegiate Hacky
Sack Champion
ships, sponsored
by the
Association of
College
Unions Inter
national and
Wham-O
Mfg. Co
manufac
turers of the
Hacky Sack
footbag.
Held at the Il
linois Institute of
Technology in
Chicago April 18-20, the
competition featured 16
of the best collegiate
footbaggers in the nation — in
cluding the University’s own
Fred Barnum.
f The sport of footbagging is
nothing new to Barnum, who says
he's been kicking a Hacky Sack for
six years. Barnum began playing the
sport with friends at Southern Oregon
State College, and it wasn’t long before
he was hooked. He eventually found his
way to the University campus, which
seemed to be a great footbagging
environment.
“When I moved to Eugene a year ago, I
found a high enthusiasm for footbagging in
the area,’’ Barnum says.
Competing in a national tournament
came quite suddenly for the sophomore
business major. “I was really lucky. I found
out about the competition the day before it
happened.”
Nevertheless, Barnum got a strong start in
the preliminary tournaments as he took first
at the local University level and placed a
close second at the regional competition in
Seattle.
Barnum left for Chicago the morning of
April 18 to meet with the best collegiate
competitors from Illinois, Florida, Oregon,
California, Washington, Iowa, Wisconson,
Michigan, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Pen
nsylvania and Nebraska.
The all-expenses-paid trip included
round-trip air fare, meals, three nights in a
motel and a complete athletic outfit for each
competitor. After an opening dinner with
ITT and tournament officials, the athletes
got some practice in before starting the two
day competition the next morning.
The championships included three dif
ferent footbag games: footbag net, where
players pass the footbag to one another
across a five-foot net; freestyle footbagging,
where scoring is based on originality and
style of a competitor’s routine; and con
secutive rootbagging, which involves con
tinuously keeping the footbag airborne us
ing the lower portion of the body.
Barnum says the competition in each of
these categories was pretty tough. “We all
knew we were the best in the country, but
we didn’t know how close in skill we
were,” Barnum says. “That was the most
exciting thing of the tournament. You
didn’t know whether you were going to be
first or 16th.”
Even though the competition was fierce
at times, Barnum is quick to point out that
footbagging in general never gets out of
hand the way some competitive sports do.
“Footbagging is social to a friendly end —
not a competitive end,” Barnum says. “We
compete against ourselves to get better.”
After a weekend of intense footbagging,
Barnum emerged from the pack of com
petitors with a third-place finish in the con
secutive category and earned fifth in both
net and freestyle. Bamum's 3,643 con
secutive kicks in the championship event
Story and Photos by Ross Marti;
Continued on Page 3B
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