Fanzine

[boyle]

You can really read the disappointment in the words, which is sad. I think Erik is on the money, look at all those achievements, and that's not even mentioning the thriving scene in Japan which is mainly on the back of your work.

It also wouldn't surprise me to see another US Worlds in the reasonably near future. Seemed there was a pretty good turnout for this one and it also seems to have inspired some people who have stopped kicking for a while to get back into it. I also think you'd be a good chance getting into finals for another few years still, even if you don't train so regularly.

[C-Fan]

Thanks for the nice posts Erik and Dan. I do want to emphasize that my goal in writing about my experience at Worlds is to seek catharsis. I'm not fishing for compliments on my career, or seeking pity. I'm just seeking some peace and closure, and I think the only way I can get there is by being completely honest about how I feel, what my expectations were, and where I want to go now.

As you see this as potentially the close of your professional game, maybe it would help to re-frame your achievements.

Maybe. I think a time will come where I will look back on my achievements, and find some comfort in them. Right now though, I wonder if I should do the exact opposite, and try to re-frame my goals for the future. Specifically with footbag, if I am now operating under the assumption that I won't be able to train as hard for competition as I have in the past, what should my goals be? Do I stop competing entirely? Do I enter competitions to round out numbers for tournaments, knowing I won't be showing my best? Do I go to tournaments with the goal of being a knowledgable judge who plays sidelines when I'm not helping? I honestly don't know yet. But maybe picking a future path will help me close the door on the competitive chapter of my career.

I've been having stress dreams about Worlds most nights since returning.

I've been a bit surprised how often I've been having these; I do think it's indicative of how hard Worlds hit me. To clarify a bit, these dreams aren't exactly nightmares and none of them that I remember have directly been about competition. I haven't had the dream where I'm up on stage reliving all the drops. Instead, my dreams have largely fallen into two categories. In some dreams, I'm at Worlds and I can sense that competition has ended and I did badly. I feel disappointed and sad in the dream, but I'm usually doing some activity in the dream to distract myself, usually with other footbaggers. In other dreams I'm at Worlds and I can sense that Finals have not happened yet. I don't have the same sense of dread as in the other dreams...rather I have this sense of optimism like I know I have a second chance to do my routine, and I know it can't possibly go worse than it did in reality. Then I wake up and realize it was just a dream, and that I don't get a second chance to re-do my Finals. And that's pretty crushing.

USO was announced for mid-December in Vegas. My first thought was that I should go, because I spent so much time prepping my routine for Worlds and I want to perform it well in comp just once. Almost like the routine deserves to be done well once when it counts. I think that'd be somewhat cathartic. But what's my best case outcome at USO? I do my routine justice and I win USO? That doesn't change my Worlds outcome. That doesn't make me World Champion. Don't get me wrong; it'd be nice to win another US championship. But it still wouldn't magically change how I feel about my Worlds debacle. Also, given that USO is almost a full 4 months away, what would be my training plan? I don't want to spend pretty much 7 months in a row of my life working the same routine. I don't even know that I'd have much training opportunities, so would I just be setting myself up for another failure? One of the main reasons I prepared for this year's Worlds as my last competitive one, is because I knew I'd have less time for training now that I'm a parent. That isn't changing before USO. So would my best case scenario be to generally stay in shape, go to USO, do an easier version of my Worlds routine, and hope it leaves a better taste in my mouth? That sounds like a weak plan. Maybe it will all become clear to me once I finish processing Worlds.

On a related note, I haven't played any footbag at all since Worlds. Given that I barely played at Worlds, it feels like I haven't played in close to a month. And when I think how my sessions before Worlds were completely focused on routines, that means I haven't had just a normal session in several months. I'm going to try and play this weekend, and just see where it takes me. Maybe that'll help me feel better about where I'm at. Just getting lost in a combo, or surprising myself with a link, maybe that'll help me sort things out. The eclipse passed over Denver earlier this week, and I thought it could be cool to go for the record. Maybe I try that out this weekend.

Here's an old video, just so I don't get in the habit of video-less posts.

[Cass]

Hi Ken! I like you a lot and I'm sorry that you didn't get the result you were hoping for in competition. Routines are so difficult. 5th place is really good still.. I really enjoyed watching your semi final routine. The choreography was awesome.

Have you considered changing the direction of your priorities for future events? Maybe forget about competition all together and go with a goal of having fun? Footbag events are SUPER FUN if don't worry too much about competing

I feel like we barely saw each other at worlds! Hope we can kick next time we cross paths.

[boyle]

I remember having my own Worlds visions in my dreams post-Oakland which I have written about in my blog. Obviously the results are not the same, but the idea was the same - had some pretty grand goals which were probably if everything went perfectly. Instead, nothing went perfectly. It really put a downer over my whole experience of the particular tournament, and aside from money, time off etc, going to a tournament in a convention centre still gave me some second thoughts to really push to try and go.

I think you are a strong competitor though, I also think all the training you've done in the last few years will put you in pretty good stead even if you don't put in the same amount of hours into training - like Cass said, maybe try and focus more on the fun part, bring the family along, etc. How about this for a challenge at USO - up to Worlds you were really putting in the hard yards staying of alcohol and doing all the right things. What about a dropless routines after 5-10 beers? That would be an achievement in itself

[C-Fan]

Have you considered changing the direction of your priorities for future events? Maybe forget about competition all together and go with a goal of having fun?

Absolutely. This may even be my front runner option. Your comment made me realize something interesting though. This year marked my 20th anniversary of playing footbag, and as Erik Chan pointed out in his blog, not a lot of people who started when I did are still in the sport. What's interesting about that, is that my career with footbag can be split very neatly down the middle almost exactly at the 10 year mark. Up through Worlds 2007 I wasn't super focused on competition, and if I happened to do well it was more through luck than any kind of preparation. For that first half of my footbag career, I was really good about playing for fun at tournaments. The next ten years, I decided to push a lot harder on competition and really put in time and effort into training. Not coincidentally, that half of my career is when I achieved my best results in comp. Also not coincidentally, I also played a lot less casual shred at tournaments during this time. What's interesting to me, is that most people who are still in the sport only know the competitive Ken from the second half of my career, and not the more shreddy and less competitive Ken from the first half.

I feel like we barely saw each other at worlds! Hope we can kick next time we cross paths.

I agree. I thought a lot about this after Worlds actually. Because of how focused I was on competition, I barely played with anybody. I'm pretty sure I only did one circle all week, and it was to warm up for semis. So other than those 15 minutes with Kemmer and Larry Workman, I didn't play with anybody. I did try and compensate for this a bit by making efforts to be social, but even on that front I feel I didn't get to see as many people as I wanted. Like, I was super stoked to hang out with Derek, and I feel like I saw him for 10 minutes at the toy store party and it was so loud we barely talked. Same with Kyle Cook...I saw him like 20 minutes total all week, and in a context where it was too loud to hear. Then there was another night where I made an effort to hang out with a crew, but half of them were so stoned that I doubt they even remember it. Or another night where I hung out with the PSU crew at Ground Kontrol. It was fun, but again it was so loud it was pretty much impossible to talk.

On a positive note, I've started outlining some of the more memorable moments of the week. My hope is to flesh out the outline into blog entries and pepper them with photos I took, so hopefully I can get this done in the next week or so and share some more positive moments from the week, and not just my general angst at having done badly.

[C-Fan]

This weekend I got in a short session. It was my first since Worlds and my first non-routine shred probably in a couple months. I didn't feel too rusty, but I also didn't feel too motivated. I did manage to hit a new trick which was fun, but other than that it was kind of meh. Not the cathartic confirmation that I love the sport. Also not a dispiriting session that convinced me to retire completely either. I may just need to take some time away from playing until I really feel the fire to play again.

The other new development is that USO made the following announcement: "Routines will be 90 seconds firm, going over the time limit will not be counted and going under will be penalized."

This was disappointing to see. I'm in favor of experimenting with new formats, but I don't see why we couldn't ease into this with a less harsh "routines are 90-120 seconds; penalties apply to routines going under or over this range." The way the announcement is written, if your big finale trick for your routine happens at the 91 second mark are judges supposed to ignore it? From a purely selfish and self-centered standpoint, this change in format really decreases my chances of going to USO. I can't do my Worlds routine since it's too long, but I also don't have time to re-design and learn a new routine. It still kills me how much time and effort I put into my Worlds routine and that I never did it justice. Ultimately that's on me, but if USO had any appeal for me it was that it offered a chance to redeem that routine. Now that appears off the table.

Anyway, here's my first stab at blogging some of Worlds:

Sunday
I scheduled my trip to be as short as possible, since Haley was going to be alone with baby the whole time I was gone. This meant I left Denver on a Sunday, and flew back Saturday afternoon. I took the light rail to and from the airport to reduce the burden on the family, and it was nice as I got to listen to music and get into a competition mindset. With every Worlds, it's a fun game to me to see who is the first footbagger I bump into. This year, I expected it'd be Kemmer or Ivan, since I was doing an Air BNB with them. Instead, it happened as I walked through the Denver airport to my gate. Sunil Jani! Sunil had moved to Colorado a few years ago, but due to our locations and schedules (he's a doctor with 2 kids) we hadn't crossed paths. I ask him if he's on the same flight as me, but it turns out he was returning to Colorado, and wasn't heading out to Worlds until later in the week. We catch up for a few minutes, then I head to my gate. I take our chance meeting as a good omen, since Sunil was one of my favorite players in the early 2000s. Evidence here:


I sleep through the flight, and wake up as we're descending through a smoky haze into Portland. I had read that forest fires in BC were making the heatwave in Portland even worse, but it was different seeing it in person. I get on the light rail with no problem, and use my phone to navigate the walk to the Air BNB. The neighborhood was a bit more run down than I expected, and my mind wasn't put at ease when 2 women in a car harassed me at a stoplight. "Did you vote for Trump or something?" I couldn't tell if they were heckling me or flirting, but they were terrible at either. When I finally got into my AirBNB it was a relief to just dump my stuff and be out of the heat. I talked to the Air BNB host in person a bit, to build a bit of a personal connection in case we need any leeway with anything during the stay. I thought I did a good job forging a human connection, but it didn't really pay off as she was kind of a bitch nagging us for payment for additional guests through the week. Like, we paid over 90% of the total months ahead of time, did she really need to be on our case for additional guest fees from day 1? Other than that, the Air BNB was pretty nice and provided a good base for the week.


Ivan and Kemmer become the first shredders I see for the week, when they arrive at Air BNB. The first minute of seeing footbag friends you haven't seen in a while is always so jarring, how your mind starts scraping the banks to remember the last time you saw them, and also adjusts to everything that's different than you remembered (people being taller, skinnier, facial hair, etc.). I purposely chose an Air BNB away from the site, with quiet roommates as part of my strategy. That actually did work out as planned and it was cool to spend so much quality time with them.

One really cool thing the Worlds team did was secure weeklong unlimited metro passes for competitors. Ivan and Matt brought me mine, courtesy of Chris Dean. That was really awesome. Only saved me like $20, but that's still like a meal. We metroed downtown to get better dinner options and Yelped a mexican place that was pretty central. I got a lamb mole which was really good. As we were catching up over food, I see Brian Bear stroll across the room and can't stop myself from yelling across a crowded restaurant: "Brian Fucking BEAR!" I go over and say hey, and invite him to join us. He's at a table outside with a lady friend though, so I wait til we're done eating and then go join him and his lady afterwards to catch up a bit.


We walk less than a block before I get my bearings. We're right by Ground Kontrol, a cool barcade. We go in and have fun playing Turtles in Time and a few other games.



We call it a night fairly early, since it was a travel day. Back at the Air BNB Kemmer and I play a game where he reads me the names of everybody in the Footbag HOF, and I have to say if I know them, and if I know anything about them, and if I think they should be in the/a HOF. We should have recorded this game and just released it as a pod, because it ended up being pretty funny. Pretty much after the first night I realized that Kemmer and Ivan just enjoyed getting me to rant on random topics, but even with that knowledge I was still happy to oblige them.

[Asmus]

Yes! The C-Fan Write-up! The original, the legendary! Oh, I know this is gonna be half pleasure / half torture from not being there!

Pretty much after the first night I realized that Kemmer and Ivan just enjoyed getting me to rant on random topics, but even with that knowledge I was still happy to oblige them.

We all enjoy this. You have a good skill there.

I felt like your routine was the best at Worlds if you had hit it. I don't know if that makes you feel better, but I would love to see you really hit it at a competition in the future.

[boyle]

yeah, would love to see that routine in full flight. Probably no solace to you, but it would have been a great chance for a medal without the early drops.

I like that even though you're an adult now, 20 years into your career, family man, public servant, that you will see a footbagger in a crowded restaurant and yell out to them. Excellent.

I'm sure they had their material prepared as well, knowing the reactions that were coming. Look forward to seeing what else they got out of you over the week.

[C-Fan]

I felt like your routine was the best at Worlds if you had hit it. I don't know if that makes you feel better,

Thanks Asmus. That's the feedback I got from a lot of people. On one hand its cool to hear that people appreciated how I planned the routine, since I wasn't sure if people would embrace it for how different it was or write it off as gimicky. On the other hand, knowing that my routine had a decent chance to medal/win makes it all the harsher that I didn't execute. Like, if I had a mediocre routine and it went badly and I finished 5th, I wouldn't feel like I blew a once-in-a-lifetime chance. This does.

yeah, would love to see that routine in full flight.

I was clearing out space on my computer last night, and it was pretty brutal seeing how many dropless runthroughs I had on video. Even in full costume and everything. Really hammered home how hard I prepared, and how strong I felt going in. I'll go into greater detail later on as to why I think comps went so badly for me (TLDR: the carpet was weird and I failed to adjust to it), but seeing all my dropless practices was pretty brutal. Maybe I'll post one for posterity at some point.

I like that even though you're an adult now, 20 years into your career, family man, public servant, that you will see a footbagger in a crowded restaurant and yell out to them.

You know who probably doesn't like that? The embarrassed footbaggers I yell at across a crowded restaurant. Bear definitely had a little: "may I help you sir?" look when I did that.

Back to Worlds:

Monday

Monday my plan was to do tourism with Evan so I didn't even plan to go to the site. When I woke up though, I got the sense from Evan's texts that he might have a late start so I lightrail downtown to grab breakfast with Ivan and Kemmer. We kind of just walked into a random breakfast place, but the food was good and portable so it ended up being a regular stop for us during the week. We went there I think 4 of the days I was in town. Just coffee and breakfast sandwiches, but it was nice to develop something of a routine for the week. We get our food to go and lightrail to the park where comp is happening.

Here's a photo of a train we passed on the way to the park on Monday. I'm assuming they wouldn't have made a sign, if it wasn't a serious problem in Portland:


I decide to go to the site with them to kill time instead of checking out the OMSI museum. This ends up being a good idea as I'm able to say hello to everybody on a day I'm not competing, instead of showing up the next day and getting greetings done as I'm warming up to compete. As always, the first time on site seeing everybody is a bit overwhelming so I adopt the strategy of commandeering a lawnchair and doing the greetings in a trickle as people walk past and I heckle them. My favorite of these interactions is with Johnny Breakdown. While I've known Johnny since 2014 (NOLA Jam), I hadn't met his girlfriend Brandy yet. Despite this, I had forged a bond with Brandy over Facebook by joining her campaign to get Johnny to buy them a dog. She'd post cute photos of hounds, and I'd chime in encouraging Johnny to cave in already and just get one. When I saw Johnny at the park, I opened by referencing this campaign:

Me: Where's your dog?
Johnny: She's flying in tomorrow on a later flight.
Me: Really? Wow.
Johnny (confused): Wait what? I thought you said "where's your girl?"
Me: I said "where's your dog"
Johnny:


Turns out 11 people got byes for first round of Circle. Had I known they would do byes in circle I might have competed, as my main reason for scratching Circle was I didn't want to compete so many days in a row. I might still have scratched semis just to preserve my legs for routine finals, but I do wonder if I had done circle semis if that extra time playing on the carpet would have helped me adjust to that surface for routines. Like, skipping Circle definitely preserved my legs for Friday, but at the same time I wonder if competing in Circle would have helped me adjust to the competition carpet better, which might have helped my routines.

Evan and his gf Evangel arrive on site, and we go get lunch. Evangel is from Portland, so she knew good places to eat and also how to get there. Since I didn't have to navigate, I DJed our rides which was fun. We got lunch at a Cuban place called Pam Biche where she used to work, and it was super good. Definitely one of the best meals of the trip. I stuff myself, but since its one of the only days of the week I'm not competing I don't feel guilty about it.


After eating we go to the Rose gardens. I'd been there a few years ago when USO was in Portland, and Haley and I really enjoyed it. I have a good time smelling all the flowers and taking pictures. One funny highlight was when an old Japanese tourist asked me to take her picture, and I scared the hell out of her by responding in Japanese. Overall it was just real nice to be offsite and doing something touristy, as I knew the week would move fast and I didn't want it to end with me spending the whole time inside a convention center.



After the garden we decide to go swim at the hotel pool. None of us have our swim gear, so we drive to Red's sister's house where they're staying so they can get their stuff and then to my place to get mine. While we're at Red's sisters place, I get a photo of their super friendly cat. I later post this to Facebook with the caption: "Red Husted's cat likes me." He responded with "wait, when did this happen?!?" LOL

The video contest is this night, but I don't feel like making the hike all the way out there. In the group chat on FB messenger I see that Nathan Bonslaver can't get into the site, and that some of the PSU/Boston guys are gonna eat somewhere. I decide to be social and meet up with them, rather than just go home. I walk over to their hotel and we go to a pizza place. I treat Boats to dinner because his Worlds comics are so awesome. The most entertaining part of dinner for me though is when we're about to leave, and Bonslaver can't find one of his shoes. Apparently Polini hid it under the grating of some tree, but it was entertaining to see both how Bonslaver reacted to adversity and how Polini tried to play innocent.

After eating I get some ice cream, and then Crowley uses his phone to navigate us back to the hotel. Except something is wrong with his phone, or his sense of direction. After about 45 minutes of walking, we realize we're headed in the wrong direction. It takes us another 45 minutes to get back to the hotel, and then I have another 40 minutes of lightrail/tram/walking to get back to my AirBNB through a sketchy neighborhood. I had to laugh at myself, as I did so well through the day resting my legs, only to close it out with a 90 minute unplanned walk at the end of the day. I navigate the light rail to my stop, get a bit lost in the neighborhood because it looks so different in the dark, but eventually get home. Kemmer and Ivan tell me some funny stories about how they spent their night at the site helping set up net courts and hang flags, and then I drift off to sleep.

[boyle]

Was it the carpet that was from the convention centre causing the problems, or was it something laid on top of it? In that legends panel they were talking about how at 97 Worlds at the same place they had shred mats laid down, which might have been a good idea. Too bad about that extra walk, sometimes those touring days can end up being harder on the legs than planned. Was the video contest earlier in the week than usual? The Worlds I have been to the video contest is usually sometime midway through rather than the first couple of days.

[C-Fan]

As with most of my tournament recaps, there's a decent chance my chronology of events is slightly off. That said, it does look like the video contest happened on Monday based on the schedule: http://www.footbag.org/worlds2017/world ... al-events/

I'll get more into playing surfaces in this entry.

Tuesday
Woke up early due to excitement for competition finally. Forced myself to half sleep for a bit until everybody else wakes up. We hit the breakfast place (Rudy's?) on the way to the site. The site itself looks pretty good. It's a bit cooler than I'd like inside, but not to a degree that I think would mess up my warm up. Still, I'm glad I decided to only do routines, as I could see myself struggling with warming up and cooling down multiple times in a day in those temps. The lighting is great. Bright enough to see, and even when you look up at the ceiling (say for fliers) you don't get crazy glare or anything.

There are basically 3 different surfaces to play on as well. The first is the hallways surrounding and leading into the convention center. At times during the tournament, they even roped off areas in the hallways for us to play so people wouldn't walk through circles, which was nice. These areas were a little warmer than inside the main space, and less public, which made them the defacto warm up space for competitors. The surface itself was actually pretty good. Good grip, decent cushion, OK visibility. Like, it wasn't totally crazy patterns like you see in some hotels.

The second surface was the default floor inside the convention center space. It wasn't carpeted, and just looking at it you'd worry it would be slippery. In actuality, it gripped pretty well! That plus the fact it had no pattern on it made it a good playing surface. If you asked me which was a better playing surface between it and the one in the hallways, I'd have said it was a coin flip. The hallway surface was less uniform visually and therefore a bit more distracting, but it also had slightly better cushion.

The third surface was the competition carpet. This was a carpet donated by some sponsor, that they laid over the convention center bare floors. I think they taped it down somehow, and it was big enough that I think the carpet itself wasn't moving on the surface which is good. What was less good, is that the carpet itself felt thicker/deeper than a normal carpet, and also didn't feel uniform in all parts of it. There'd be some areas of the carpet where I could push off normally and it'd react how I'd expect. But then 1 foot to the right the carpet would have a lot more give to it. I think if it were consistent in either way, it would have been a lot easier to adjust to. But knowing that you could come out of a fliers/juggle/travel section of your routine and be at a different part of the carpet that behaves differently...that's really hard to adjust to.

The other problematic aspect of the competition carpet was that it was only in the competition area. You couldn't warm up on a similar surface anywhere else, and if you warmed up in the hallway or the default convention center surface, your only chance to acclimate yourself to the competition carpet would be while you were walking out on stage. If you were the bottom seed in the first pool, you could warm up on the actual competition carpet before your event started, but if you had a high seed or were in a later pool, you couldn't warm up on that surface since it was actively being used for comp. Ideally, the competition surface shouldn't be so different from all other surfaces in the tournament. But if you have to use a different surface for comp, it'd be nice to have the same surface available elsewhere in the building so people could warm up on it and get used to it.

With all that said, I understand that we all competed on the same surface. I also get that adjusting to new circumstances is part of being a good competitor, and you could argue that the people who did the best routines at Worlds were also the people who adjusted the best. Hell, 2 people I distinctly remember complaining to me (unprompted) about the surface were Paloma and Taishi. And they had 2 of the best performances of the entire week. That said, I do think players with less difficult routines had an easier time adjusting to the playing surface than others. Like, Taishi's routine only had two 5 add tricks in it, and it was the same PS whirl twice. My routine had a blurriest, bedwetter, fog, PS whirl, tomahawk, and paradox torque in it. I'd maintain that it's harder to adjust a routine like mine on the fly, than a routine with 2 downtime fives.

One last thought on playing surfaces. I know some sports use different surfaces at different events, like the French Open in tennis is on clay while Wimbledon is on grass. Or how PBA bowling events have different oil patterns at different events. But in all those cases, the surface is announced or known well in advance so players can adjust their training (and in some cases their strategies). I accept that I didn't adjust well to the playing surface at Worlds, while some other competitors did. It's just tough though, to have spent so much time and effort preparing a high difficulty, tightly choreographed routine, and then arriving on site and finding that the surface isn't friendly to hard routines, but now you only have a couple days to try and adjust down the difficulty.

On a lighter note, I snap my best photo of the week this day:


Back to competition. I get on site, and check the pools for seeding. I am flattered and pleasantly surprised to find I am seeded as the 3rd highest routine player in the tournament. This means I don't have to beat Vasek in the first round, and decreases my chances of facing him in semis as well. My goal for first round is to win my pool and hold my seed for the tournament. I can't recall very well who was in my pool for the first round. That's actually a good thing though. In past years, I would overthink/worry about who else was in my pool. One thing I did a good job of in Portland, was really only focusing on my own routine and not paying attention to who else was in my pool or if anybody had gone dropless or any other external details. Worrying about stuff like that never helped me in the past; I'm pretty sure it only got in my head. So at least that's one improvement in how I competed this year.

Before comps began, I walked around a bit on the competion carpet and noted it moved a little weird under my feet. Given my seed though, I didn't want to start warming up until the second pool was wrapping up. Of course, once I started warming up, the competition carpet was off limits, so I warmed up on the convention center floor surface. When it was time for me to get up and do my routine, I was basically playing on that surface for the first time. Somehow, I still felt confident I'd do well. Probably based on how hard I had trained before the tournament. I don't remember my first round routine very well at all, though I'm pretty sure I had 3 drops. When I walked off stage, I felt shook. My worst run throughs at home leading up to the tournament were 2 drops max, so 3 really surprised me. I walked off feeling disappointed in myself, but even at that moment I had the presence of mind to realize that I'd still make it into semis, probably still with a decent seed. A few people come up to tell me they really liked the choreo of my routine, and I basically promise them all that I'll hit the routine better for the rest of the tournament. I make a mental note to get more practice time on the comp carpet the next day.

I shake off the routine by leaving the convention center to get a frozen coffee with Jim and Lon.


Back on site, I distract myself by watching a bunch of net matches. The best is when I can get Danny Greer or Jeremy Mirken to watch with me, as I always learn a ton about strategy by listening to their running commentary and asking questions. At one point, there is a casual match happening on the takraw court, which has a proper judges chair. I take advantage and go sit in the chair and watch Manu Bouchard and Sebastien Duschesne play against Luc Legault and Wiktor Debski. Cool that Manu and Wiktor used to be freestylers and both got so good at net. Here's my view from the chair:


And here's how it looked to others.



It's my dad's birthday, so I give him a call from the site. They ask how competition is going, and it helps me to say out loud: "today went poorly, but I only have to wait a day before I get a chance to redeem myself. Tomorrow I won't even remember that today felt bad." Saying it out loud, I realize it's true. Calling my dad from Worlds also gives me a flashback to 2007 Worlds. 07 Worlds my routine went spectacularly bad (I lost control of the bag, and it went under some bleachers for a good 20 seconds of my routine before I borrowed another bag to close it out) and I remember being so distraught I called my Dad and told him I was contemplating quitting competition. I don't remember the details of that conversation super well, but I do remember saying something out loud and in doing so realizing it wasn't true. I said something along the lines of "I've tried my hardest, and its not good enough." As soon as I said it out loud, I realized that it was a lie. I hadn't tried my hardest. Saying it out loud and realizing that, basically set me on a completely different track for the next 10 years. I left 07 Worlds with the mindset that I had to actually train and try my hardest before I could quit. That led to my first dropless routine in 08, my first dropless at Worlds in 09, and my first East Coast champs in 09 and 10. This year's Worlds was definitely crushing for me, but if I had quit after 07 I would have been so much more disappointed in myself and my career. Hell, if I had quit after 2012 (another tough Worlds), I never would have won USOs in Circle or Routines, or ever made Finals at Worlds. So maybe that's one of the takeaways that helps me process this Worlds. Yeah, 2017 isn't a great note to end on. But had I quit 10 or even 5 years ago, I would have left with a lot fewer achievements and a lot more doubts about what I could have done.

[C-Fan]

Tuesday night:

After my phone call with my folks, there aren't many people left at the site. I go get my stuff as I head out to find food, and am completely surprised to bump into Doug Tank! I had no idea he was coming. I meet his girlfriend Emily, and we decide to head out to find food. Our phones indicate there's a good burger place nearby, so we walk over to the Douglas Fir. Because Doug. I snap a photo outside:


We lucked out, as it turns out it was burger week in Portland. A bunch of restaurants were competing with each other for who makes the best $5 burger, so we all end up getting burgers. I also get a blueberry shake, which is awesome. It's nice to catch up with Doug, and kind of fill him in on both what's been happening in the footbag community over the past few years, as well as where I'm at with the sport. Catching up with Doug makes me feel simultaneously lucky and also weird that I've stayed in the sport as long as I have. So many people play and are hardcore into the sport for a few years, then drop out. But its great that they still love it enough to show up randomly to say hi. Not sure what it says about me that I've never left

After dinner I head back to the site to meet up with Justin. I volunteered to help count Shred30, and we decided it'd be easiest and most relaxing to do it at my Air BNB. We pick up some beers (even though I'm not drinking until after Finals) and head home. Rounding out the Shred30 team is Kemmer. He had developed a really slick program to calculate Shred30s, so it really became a transcription exercise.


Justin would pull up the clip on his phone, cut it at exactly 30 seconds, then play it at 30% speed while I would call out the tricks watching the video. Justin would transcribe them, then send that list to Matt who'd plug it in his program. Using this system, we burned through all the entries in surprisingly good time. Our speed and efficiency also enabled us to spend more time making determinations on move cleanliness, as well as determining if moves were started in the 30 second time frame or not. Both of these details sound minor, but in Finals they can be the difference between gold and silver medals.



I also recall Ivan editing and uploading as much video as possible in the evenings. He asked me if I wanted my routine from that day uploaded, and I told him "no" since I was unhappy with it and expected to hit it better.

At some point in the evening I did look at the routine scores from the day which made me feel a little better about how I did. While I was disappointed with my routine, I still managed to win my pool. In terms of overall seeding for the tournament, I dropped to the 4th seed from 3rd. So while I was unhappy with my performance, it didn't really cost me much in terms of seeding or strategy. I do some back of the envelope counting and figure out my pool the next day should consist of me (top seed), Taishi, Wiktor, Pete Bowler, plus one other player. I like my chances of making Finals out of that pool, but more importantly I am excited to redeem my routine.

Here's video of the new trick I hit after Worlds, that I alluded to in an earlier post:

[Muffinman]

Oh man. Can't wait to sit down and read the Worlds write-up in chunks. Thanks for posting pictures!
Props on the atomic ducking drifter! That's a huge trick :O

[C-Fan]

The pictures have really helped me...a lot of times I struggled to remember what I did on a given day, but looking at the photos or my texts has helped me fill in the blanks. I'm linking to my Facebook album for these, so hopefully they don't disappear after a while. If they do I have the originals still, but I don't know how to upload photos to modified anymore.

Let's keep pushing through the week, shall we?

Wednesday

Like the day before, I woke up early due to excitement for competition. This time though it was tinged with a desire to redeem myself. I spend an hour waiting for everybody else to wake up, alternating between surfing the web on my phone and trying to sleep. Once Kemmer and Ivan wake up, we head out to our breakfast spot. I feel like I'm locked in and in the zone, but apparently I'm just borderline manic and repeating myself over and over again. I eventually catch on to the fact that I've been saying variants of the same 3 things over and over again. They are:

1. "I just want to redeem my routine, and show everybody what it should be. I've trained too hard not to show what it can be."
2. "I still haven't picked up my players pack. I should get that."
3. "Have they posted pools for routines yet?"

This becomes something of a running joke for us for the rest of the tournament.

When we arrive at the site, I'm operating under the assumption that I'm the top seed in the 4th pool. I'm actually happy about this, as it means I can warm up on the competition carpet before my pool begins, and then I just have to stay warm for like 4 routines before I'm up. I warm up on the carpet before my pool starts, and I feel good. I don't realize it at the time, but this ends up being the longest time I spend all week playing on the carpet. Maybe its not a coincidence that this also ends up being my best showing in competition as well. This warm up is also notable, as it is the only time all week I freestyle with anybody at all. It's probably 15 minutes total, with Kemmer and Larry Workman. Kind of insane that I spent a week at Worlds and only freestyled with 2 other players, for less than 20 minutes.

At some point towards the end of my warmup, they announce a shakeup in the routine pools. For some reason, the decision is made to have only 2 pools instead of 4. The news throws me for a bit, as this means I will be competing probably 20 minutes later than I expected. It ends up not mattering too much, and I feel I adjusted pretty well. Just as I did the day before, I did very well ignoring how the other people in my pool did before me. I am vaguely aware that Bevier went dropless, but when I go onstage I am focused on my routine and haven't psyched myself out or anything. This ends up being pretty key, as it turns out my pool was way harder than the other pool. Like, both pools were pretty balanced seeding wise, but some people stepped up unexpectedly in my pool (Bevier dropless, Bear and Taishi with very strong routines) while the other pool saw both Finns have bad routines (4-6 drops) and Landes scratch mid-routine due to injury. While I beat myself up pretty badly for having a 5 drop finals routine, in a way I was lucky that didn't happen to me in semis. I'm not sure I would have made it out of my semis pool if I had dropped that much.

Here's my routine from semis. At the time I was disappointed with it, since 2 drops was more than I averaged in practices. As it turned out though, this was my best moment at Worlds and the closest I'd come to performing what I prepped so hard for:



Watching it now, I'm still surprised I dropped on tomahawk and a squeeze. In practice, my most common drops were on the lap catches, but those went off without a hitch. While I didn't feel amazing about my routine, I did feel worlds better about it than I did my first rounder. I definitely felt like I got the monkey off my back. I get a lot of compliments on the routine afterwards, and I thank everybody for their nice words. I also tell half of them I can do better, and half of them I will do better. In retrospect, I only lied to half of them.

Once I got off stage, I cooled down by playing some 4 Square, then went back to watch some of the shows and the second pool of semis. Bruce Li does a show with a shuttlecock, and I find myself screaming like a little child at some of his tricks. The consecutive blind behind-the-back sole kicks in particular blow my mind.


Second pool of semis routines is very weird. The Finns drop a lot, which I immediately wonder if its due to the carpet. Landes' routine starts off normal, but then halfway through he appears to cramp up. It's a scary moment, and when he hobbles off stage I run over to check on him. I bring him water and some snacks, and seeing his symptoms I assume he's having a bout of dehydration. I'm no doctor though, so who knows what happened. Between the Finns drop-heavy routines and Landes dropping out, the door is wide open in that pool for others to make it into Finals for their first time. Nobody could have predicted that, but that's why you can't assume anything with competition.

Once comp is done, I rally a group of CIC and Gatesman to get dinner. I'm in good spirits, as I feel a lot better than I did the previous day about how comp went. I know I'm going to Finals, I know I'll have a decent seed, and while my routine in semis wasn't perfect, it was a lot better than first round. I lobby for Pok Pok for dinner, and happily everybody seems on board. The wait at Pok Pok is really bad, but Tom KO notices that you can get take out, so we do that and find a food truck eating area to eat. While we're waiting for our food, Evan tells a story about a Pizza Hut and I immediately get this awful earworm stuck in my head:


Just one of many instances during the week when I got awful music stuck in my head. The food is good, and its nice to hang out with CIC. I just feel really comfortable with that crew. Here's the wings I got, plus CIC:






After food, we go to the players party at Dave Hillis' toy store. The main space is an empty store, with concrete floors and walls. You kind of take for granted the sound absorption of carpet and walls and furniture...it was impossible to hear anything in that room. I don't drink at all, but the next morning I woke up with a pounding headache. Kinda neat that I could rule out a booze hangover, and be completely sure it was due to the insane noise in that space. There were so many people at the party I really wanted to catch up with, but I had trouble making conversation because of the noise. I played one game of chess against Derek L, and that was the extent of our interaction for the week. Same with Kyle Cook. I was so excited to catch up with him, and instead I ended up saying like 20 words to him all week. Here's a photo of me looking antsy and ready to go home. Good representation of what I was like for the whole party:


Evan gives me a ride home, which is awesome of him. On the drive back, one of my other friends in the van is super drunk and asks me if I want to hear a funny story. Sure.

Drunk friend: The day I arrived I was just walking around downtown Portland, and I saw some Chinese dude from behind. And I totally thought it was you! I walked up to him and was like "hey Ken!" But it was some random Chinese tourist. Isn't that funny?"

I didn't think it was funny.

But in a way it made me feel less bad about my limited interactions with Derek and Kyle and countless others. Yeah, I didn't get to talk as much as I wanted to with friends I don't get to see enough of. But at least with most of them my limited interaction wasn't them being casually racist to me.

Non-Worlds update: I'm gonna try and play this weekend and film. I'd like to give the Worlds request contest a try. I think I can get pretty far on it, though of course I've seen the combos, so it's not the fairest thing in the world. I do want to play at least once a week for the rest of the summer. We'll see how the motivation holds up.

[boyle]

You are the Master of the Worlds writeup. I think I saw Bruce doing the shuttlecock show on the stream but that might have been after finals, those multiple back kicks without looking are just incredible - he kicks it way up in the air as well.

I was very surprised seeing the results going through from the semis to finals - great that it gave some different names a place in the final.

[C-Fan]

Thanks for the nice words Danny. When I got back from Worlds I wasn't even sure I'd do a writeup, since work/life was so busy and my Finals was so disappointing. But when it became clear that I was struggling to process what happened, I figured it might be cathartic to write about the week and see if that'd help me make sense of it all. Jury's still out on that, but I'm also not done blogging it either.

Thursday

I woke up with a pounding headache. It felt like the worst hangover ever, except that I didn't drink at all the night before. I can only imagine how awful everybody else at the party must be feeling that morning. I meet Ivan's girlfriend Kat, who is staying in the AirBNB for the rest of the week. We decide to go someplace new and nicer for breakfast since I'm not competing in anything that day. We go to a nice little diner and I feel better once I have coffee and Advil. After brunch, we hop on the lightrail. Ivan and Matt are helping at the site, but since I have no comps I decide to go do tourist stuff with Kat. Even though we just met like 2 hours earlier we hit it off as tourism buddies. We go to Powell's bookstore, which I had been to on past trips to Portland but was still high on my tourism to-do list. I find some nice gifts for the family, then sit in the cafeteria and read art books over coffee for a while.

After Powell's, we head to the light rail to go back to the site, but we pass Voodoo Donuts on the way. Even though we have one in Denver, I decide to be a good tourist and grab one with Kat.



After donuts we head back to the site to drop our loot off. We thought Antiques Roadshow was doing their event already, so we were going to check that out. Once we got to the Convention Center though we realized it actually started the next day. I drop my stuff off and grab lunch with Kevin Crowley, then go back to the site to watch some request/Sick 1/etc.

Note the beer name.

Request strikes me as really poorly done. My ideal request contest should increase slowly in difficulty in each round, so beginners have a chance to participate for a few rounds before dropping out, then intermediates, and so on. I also like seeing each round have a variety of concepts, as its more fun for spectators and also gives participants more chances to stay alive. This year's setup did none of that. First round, both combos involved mirage. So if you couldn't do mirage, you were doomed from the start. Then the second round both combos involved stepping set. First off, stepping set is a big jump in difficulty from round 1, but again it had the same problem: if you couldn't stepping set you couldn't do either combo. So I thought this year's request was unfairly hard against beginners and also not very interesting from a variety standpoint. I also thought it kind of plateaued for several rounds in the middle where difficulty didn't seem to go up round to round. I still want to give it a try at some point. I was hoping to play over the labor day weekend, but Griffin has been battling an ear infection so I haven't had much opportunity to footbag lately.

Throughout the week I have a few good conversations about BAP. In one case, a member of BAP came up to me and unprompted brought up the topic. It was interesting to hear his particular views on consistency and creativity and form, and how those play into his evaluation. I also had some good conversations with non-BAP about their views on how BAP hopefuls are evaluated. I got a lot of the "I know it when I see it" responses, which I understand but also find unsatisfying. The variant on this that I came up with was: "if you are in my pool in Circle comp or just a casual shred circle, am I intimidated by you?" I've found this to be a generally good barometer for BAP, but at its heart it's also ultimately subjective. What came out and the end of the week that surprised me, is how loose the BAP vote is. It appears there's no rules on quorum (i.e. the minimum number of BAP needed to make a vote official), no scheduled time for the vote, and no clear criteria on how players are evaluated. Like, during the week 2 of the stronger members of BAP told me they thought Polini was a year away from being BAP level, but then they weren't even included in the vote. On the flip of it, my understanding is that if an old school BAP member who has been out of the scene for a while shows up to the meeting, their vote counts the same as everybody else's. Just seems very loosey goosey and inconsistent.

I think I watched a good amount of net matches and played some 4Square as well. I definitely won one super fun 4Square game with Daryl Genz and a bunch of CIC members. That ended up being one of the more fun moments of the tournament for me. But yeah, a lot of Thursday felt like killing time on site. Eventually I head out to dinner, with the sole goal of finding a salad. Tomorrow is the big day of comp, and I want to go into it with at least one healthy meal for the week. On the way out of the site I grab Kemmer, Khoa, and Ryan Morris. We find a salad place which is pretty good, and have some fun dinner conversation about what language and what it means to be "fluent" in another language. We cap it off with some ice cream afterwards, then I go to PSU's hotel as we wait to go to Ground Kontrol again. While we're waiting there to head out, Christian Britting asks me if I want to go on a hike the next morning. "Yeah, and then maybe I can run a half marathon too before heading to the comp site." It takes him a moment to realize I'm joking.

Ground Kontrol with PSU is fun, but again I feel like noisiness impedes my efforts to be social. Like, it was fun playing games with them, but it was just so hard to talk over the noise. The best highlight of the gaming for me is when I'm playing some lightgun shooting game with Babyak, and then "Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta" by the Geto Boys comes on.


Without missing a beat, I tilt my lightgun to the side and shoot the remainder of the level like this:


After gaming, I try and meet up with Justin Dale so we can count the Shred30 Finals and get results posted that night. The light rail is jammed up though, so eventually Justin has to come pick me up. While I'm waiting, I propose to Babyak that we try and shoot the cover of the hottest rap mixtape to come out in 1995. Here's the result:


Back at the Air BNB we make record time counting the Shred30. There are a few tricks from players that we deem "the" and penalize accordingly. I feel really good about the accuracy of our counts.

I go to bed feeling good about my chances the next day. Yeah, my first two rounds of routines didn't go ideally, but semis had me trending in the right direction. I made it to Finals, I had a decent seed, and I was excited to unveil the full costume and presentation that I'd been holding back the first two rounds. After months of training and hard work, I was excited that in less than 24 hours I'd be at the finish line.

Closing out with a video from right before Worlds. I had a few sessions where I practiced playing in shades, since I knew the first 10 seconds of my routine would use them. I basically concluded that I could hit anything in shades except for spins.

[C-Fan]

Only one day left in the Worlds recap, and I fully intend to close that out. In the meantime, here's a quick update on a few non-Worlds things I'm juggling right now.

Griffin picked up an ear infection at day care a couple weeks ago. We just got that diagnosed this week, and I'm relieved we have him on antibiotics now. Griffin's illness got Haley sick for about a week, and thankfully I was able to fight it off for a bit so we weren't all sick at once. The good news is that Haley has turned the corner but the bad news is that I'm getting hit with it finally. While it's never fun being sick, I do feel really lucky that this hit us all after Worlds. Being away from the family for a week was tough, but if I knew they were sick while I was gone I don't think I could do that. Or if I was this sick during the week when I had to compete that also would have been awful. So yeah, the silver lining with all our colds is that at least their timing was pretty good.

On a related note, I took an exam yesterday to get a professional certification for work...and I passed! So I guess the timing of me getting sick wasn't completely ideal, since I had to take the test while battling a massive head cold. What's important though is I passed. The test is pretty hard... lots of random knowledge of things like fire code and industrial hygiene, combined with some basic finance and math. It has a pretty high fail rate so I studied hard for it which apparently paid off. Workwise this doesn't have any immediate impact; its not like I get a raise or anything for passing my CSP. Though now I am qualified for my boss' job, so when he retires I can at least apply for it. It also makes it easier for me to apply for jobs elsewhere both inside and outside of government. It never hurts to have that added flexibility careerwise. Beyond any work implications though, it was just important to my confidence and sense of self to pass the exam. I've worked in the same field for almost 10 years now and failing this exam less than a month after failing at Worlds would have been a crushing blow to my self confidence. All that said, if somebody offered to take off 2 drops from my Finals routine in exchange for me failing the CSP, I'd do that deal in a heartbeat.

While its hard to think about footbag while I'm coughing up a lungful of phlegm, USO in December has re-appeared on my radar. As a Federal employee, my job is funded by Congress passing a budget each year. When they can't/won't/don't, the government shuts down and people like me don't go to work until they pass a budget (historically they've paid back government workers for the time they were shut down). Normally Congress avoids this by passing what's known as a "continuing resolution" which is basically a stopgap funding bill that kicks the can a few months until a real budget is approved, and they normally pass something with the time that buys. But due to various issues and politics (basically Trump demanding there be money in the budget to build a wall with Mexico) it looked very likely the government would shut down at the end of this month. Then Hurricane Harvey happened, and the Republicans decided it would be a bad look to shut down the government in the middle of an emergency disaster response, when the value of the government is most apparent to everybody. So they passed a continuing resolution today that runs through December 8th. Now, a lot can happen between now and then, but there's a strong possibility December will roll around and the issues that made a shutdown likely will still be there (border wall funding, debt ceiling, etc.). If that's the case and the government shuts down, I'll likely have 2-3 weeks away from work. That opens the door to potentially doing USO, though at this stage I still don't even know how I'm approaching footbag tournaments.

Closeout with a video from an old work trip I did to Utah. Hopefully I can film some new stuff once I beat this cold.

[boyle]

Way to leave us on a cliffhanger for the final day, when disaster strikes...Of course I imagine you're not that keen to share that less than fun experience.

[C-Fan]

Oof. I apologize for the long delay between entries, especially so close to the finish line. Part of that's definitely attributable to this persistent cold I've been fighting for the past week. But you are definitely right that a very large part of it is that it's hard for me to revisit that day, given how it ended up for me. Given that the main reason for me blogging about the week was to seek closure and catharsis, I probably should suck it up and finish this huh?

Friday

Most mornings at Worlds I woke up early due to nervous excitement, and had to force myself to stay in bed until others awoke. I fully expected that to be the case Friday morning too, as it was the biggest day of the tournament. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to wake up refreshed and relaxed. I had my best night of sleep on the day when I needed it most.

Similarly, I'm also pleasantly surprised by my mindset all day leading up to competition. I was worried I'd spend the whole day obsessing over comp, being manic and not being able to relax. Instead, I'm calm for the entire day except for a short 10 minute window when I worried I was headed the wrong way to catch a light rail. On one hand, I'm proud that I was able to stay calm and in a good mindset for the whole day leading up to comp. I think that shows some growth and progress as a competitor. On the other hand, it also makes my Finals performance that much more crushing. I was in great shape physically, mentally, and training wise...and still.

Anyway, taking this chronologically. I wake up feeling refreshed and ready on Friday. I check Facebook on my phone as I get dressed, and see this message from the family in Denver:


We need to take Ivan's beautiful Circle comp trophies to the site, but we decide to take some photos of them first. Kemmer, Kat, and I all grab one at random and get ready to pose. I decide to lock mine on my wrist, except that I don't realize how fragile a position this is. Sure enough, I start to feel it sliding off my wrist as we're taking the photo, and I bobble it multiple times as I try and catch it. I fail, and I watch in slow-mo horror as it crashes to the ground. I'm mortified, but even through the shock of it I can hear Ivan asking: "was that the first place trophy?!?" Of course it was. Thankfully, the trophy didn't take any real damage, and we re-take the photo... with me behind the camera.



And yes, the irony is not lost on me that two times in a single day I had a 1st place Worlds trophy within my grasp, only to see it slip through my fingers and crash at my feet.

We head out to breakfast at Rudy's, and I feel a mixture of excitement and sadness that the week is coming to an end. Mostly I'm excited that the day has finally arrived that I've trained so long and so hard for, and that I'm in a good position mentally, physically, and seeding wise to do well. We eat, then head to the site to kill time. I watch bits and pieces of some net matches. One of the highlights of the week for me was watching matches while seated next to either Mirken or Danny Greer, as I learn so much from their commentary.

When it's about 3 hours out from showtime, I decide to head back to the AirBNB so I can shower and get my gear. I have a brief flash of panic when I learn that Kat has the only key...and she's not on site. I shove the panic down, reminding myself I have plenty of time. I text her, she gets back pretty soon, and then I head out. I have my second momentary wave of panic when I leave the site and start walking the long way to the light rail, but again I calm myself down and get on the train. I listen to the routine a few times on the way back, but also mix it up and listen to other tracks to keep myself relaxed.

Back at the AirBNB I shower and shave, then methodically pack up. It's hot enough outside that I don't want to sweat in/through my competition gear before getting to the site, but I also don't want to forget any parts of my costume. I triple check everything, then head back out to the site. I'm early enough that I kill time watching people freestyle for a bit. As I do, Kemmer pulls a chair up and we chat a bit. He casually mentions that he isn't judging Finals, which strikes me as bad news for me strategically since he struck me as a judge who values choreo over technical (which would help me). We watch some shred and I focus on conserving physical and mental energy by staying seated. In retrospect, this was a tactical mistake. Given my struggles on the carpet surface during the first two rounds, I should have spent this time walking around on the carpet in my G-Units, to get more familiar with how the material moved under my feet. At the time though, I didn't even consider this, and instead tried to stay rested instead.

To the tournament's credit, the events began on time and ran on schedule. This helped me time my warmup. I ended up doing my warmup in the hallway outside the main convention center hall for two reasons. First, it was warmer out there than in the main hall. Second, I had a Blues Brothers themed costume for my routine, and I didn't want to ruin the surprise by being seen in it before going up. My warm up goes well, but the carpet in the hallway is radically different to the carpet in the competition area. I really wish they would have had a practice area with the same surface, so competitors could warm up on the same surface they'd compete on.

My name is called, and I walk into the competition area:



I take a few moments after taking the stage and the applause subsides, partially to build drama but also partially to adjust to the lighting. I'm wearing sunglasses as part of my costume, with a planned cue to whip them off 10 seconds into the routine. I had practiced this extensively at home, but in retrospect it was a tactical mistake to do so in routine Finals. Given how much I struggled with the carpet surface in the first two rounds, voluntarily introducing an extra variable into the mix was a mistake. Afterwards Matt asked why I didn't just walk out in full costume, throw the shades off, THEN start the routine. My honest answer was that it never occurred to me. So instead I went out there with the shades on, planning on doing the full choreo I had practiced so hard in Denver.

And without further ado, here's the most painful 2 minutes of my life:



Wow. A month later, and it's not any less painful to watch. Man this is hard to relive. I'll do a proper breakdown of the video in my next post and what was going on in my head, but for now I need to stop. I do hope this eventually leads to some closure for me, but at the moment it just feels like I'm tearing a scab off and re-opening a wound.

[boyle]

I think the family support message is awesome. The trophy story is also hilarious - were you holding it in exactly the same position the other three were in the photo? Or more like balancing on top of your wrist?

I think what's most impressive in your routine, is that despite the drops and everything that would have put a big negative on your mood, you've gone through the remainder of the routine, hit your cues, and still finished with a pretty big trick. Unfortunately I imagine you'll be kicking yourself for a fair while after this one though, but you can see even with that how much training went into it. Personally if I got to that point I would have gone of the plan (maybe just gone off the stage as well).

Also, I think your competitive career is not over just yet...there's still time for a medal.