but I currently live upstate now
Hmm, "upstate" -- that covers a pretty big area --- there was a time not so long ago when I could direct you to some clubs and individuals in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Gouveneur, Rome, Binghamton, etc. etc. Now, just this past Sunday my friend Matt and I looked back and realize how good the footbag scene was a few years back compared to today. We both agreed we didn't know how good we had it... Some kickers from NYC (me and Drew and maybe one or two others) still head upstate in the summer to kick it at some music festivals upstate, like the Catskill Chill Fest, or the GrassRoots fest near Ithica, or the Great Blue Heron festival way out in Sherman. But otherwise, there's just not too much footbag freestyle to be found in upstate that I'm aware of. (There is a surprisingly large concentration of hacky-sackers in Buffalo still, to the best of my knowledge, and you can find alot of kicking in the summer at the "Thursdays in the Square" weekly music shows, but I'm not really in touch with those guys lately).
I also go to Boston quite a bit.
Boston has also seen some better days, but there are still a few very good shredders up there, and I'm pretty sure that those Boston guys are more in touch with a few shredders from New Hampshire and maybe even with the players from Maine. But the scene is surely not as solid as it used to be. None-the-less, there is a good likelihood of a modest Jam in Boston soon -- around the 1st of April --- the details are very vague still, but you can read about it on this same forum in this topic :
http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23238
As you can see, some guys from New York City may drive up to Boston for it, and even some guys from out in central Pennsylvania might show up too. We always have a good time in Boston.
The biggest news of all, though, is that the World Footbag Championships will be in Montreal this summer ::
http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23245
There's not too much to say about the event yet, but the basics of it is that its running from the last weekend of July until the 1st weekend of August, that there will be approximately two hundred kickers of various types from all over the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and possibly Australia and New Zealand, and that everybody in the New York state area is counting themselves lucky that Worlds is so near-by this year (it was in Poland last year -- that was an interesting but expensive trip).
I suppose I'm terribly intimidated by the skills of everyone here (and in person) as well. I feel too old to be starting, there aren't many women and well sometimes I just don't seem to have the time (life gets in the way unfortunately). But that aside, I mainly just want to have fun and my goal is to get better. I'm hoping a lot of practice and encouragement will help get me there.
Now, it is completely understandable that you would feel very intimidated to show-up at the World Championships "new and out of the blue" like you are now, but Worlds is the best, and Worlds so near-by is a rare opportunity, so now is a very good time to REALLY try to take this game seriously --- you'd have just enough time to learn some worthy skills so you wouldn't feel completely out-of-place by then (you don't have to go to Worlds for the entire week, and you don't have to compete -- lots of people just show-up for a few days to kick and party). Also, World Championships is easily the best opportunity to meet other girls that play. FYI -- one of the best women freestylers playing currently, Hanna Mickiewicz from Poland, is currently living in Montreal, so she'll definitely be there, as will multi-time women's Net champions Geneviève Bousquet and Marilyn Demuy, who are both from Montreal. I can think of at least ten more women of various skills who are likely to be there.
Will hopefully be getting some better shoes VERY soon. I see a lot of resources here for 'starting out' so I best get to it.
Try not to be too intimidated -- there is no doubt that most of the people on this forum are much better than you, but they all began as a newb too at some point. As for me, I also had an on-and-off background of hacky-sack before I began to really learn Freestyle at the age of 19. And now ,19 years later, I'm largely over-the-hill, but I had a few good years in there somewhere, and I'm still occasionally finding some new transcendant moments of excellent play that I'd never experienced before... 19 is actually a pretty good time to start, because footbag can be a sort of a passport into a small but welcoming world-wide social-scene, almost an extended family, and that passport gets you friends and places to stay and reasons to visit all kinds of places around the US and Europe and a few places further afield too, and its only as an adult that you'll begin to be able to (gradually, and a little at a time) use that passport. I've been welcomed onto spare beds in Paris and Madrid and Colombia, and I've seen my friends in NYC host players from Finland and Germany, etc.
One last bit of advice --- there certainly are some very good resources on this forum to help your game, but I can guarantee 100% that the best possible thing you can do for your game is to meet up with really experienced players and learn some stuff in-person. The New York City players and players pretty much everywhere else are happy to teach newbs --- everybody that is any good in this game and has been serious about playing and improving has been helped by older players, so they pretty much all pay-it-forward in the same way. Thats just how this game works.
Take it easy, and I'll see ya out there...
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