Newb

For the new people coming into the sport, you can ask your questions in here.
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lilshred
Circle Kicker
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Feb 2013 12:24
Location: New York

Newb

Post by lilshred » 18 Feb 2013 13:18

:oops: :oops: :oops:
Hello everyone,
I'm lilshred:
19, F, New York

Been interested in footbag for as long as I can remember, but never really invested much time into it. Well now is the time to start I suppose. I have some experience in a circle with friends. It has always been quite casual.
My current goal is to get in awesome shape, have fun and become better at footbag!

Currently I am using a 'dirtbag', they seem quite the upgrade from my crocheted POS. I have some relatively flat skate shoes and they seem to work all right, but I will invest in some Lavers soon enough (am excited to do that).
Here are where my skills stand:

I can do approximately 30-60 consecutive kicks depending on the day. I can do all of the basic kicks (sometimes dropping it, but not always). I can do many of the basic stalls (toe, inner foot, outer foot, knee). My left foot control is 'weaker' than my right. I apologize if I'm not up on the terminology (please correct :))
I can also do a clipper kick, flying clipper, a clipper stall, around-the-world kicks provided I throw it first, walk-over. Some other 'moves' like forehead stall, lap stall, behind the knee stall. The best thing I've landed is a butterfly but I can't do it consistently and wouldn't say it's part of my repertoire.
My skills, in other words, are sloppy.

I usually try to shred about an hour a day to some hip-hop or metal. With friends or solo.
Glad to meet you all and hope I can get better with you!
Last edited by lilshred on 19 Feb 2013 04:29, edited 1 time in total.

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Outsider
Ayatollah of Rock n' Rollah
Posts: 1373
Joined: 21 May 2003 21:30
Location: Bridgewater, New Jersey

Re: Newb

Post by Outsider » 18 Feb 2013 14:09

Hi lil,

Welcome to the real place for footbag. You're come to the right place, and your timing is pretty good too.

You say you're from NYC... I hope you mean New York City.

New York City just happens to host a particularly excellet footbag club --- I should know, because I've been proud to be part of this club for more than ten years. We are NYFA -- the New York Footbag Association. We try to get together as a club and play in Manhattan or Brooklyn once per week. In the summer we may play more than that -- in winter, well, its cold out, so we chip-in to rent a little dance-studio space. We just had a pretty good get-together yesterday at the PMT Dance Studio at 69 West 14th Street, and enough of us showed up so that it only cost us each $5 bucks to cover the cost of two hours of kicking. In the warmer months it doesn't cost us anything to play outside -- we usually meet in Washington Square Park in Manhattan or, sometimes, in McCarren Park in Brooklyn, and we'll play for much more than two hours at a time.

The club has seen better days, and we've been a little lazy this winter, but a friend from out of town, Camille Surovy, was in the city for a visit, and this has gotten the club up off of our collective butts, and I think most of us are eager to start playing more again. Thanks Camilleon -- we needed that!

You can get in on our regular weekly plans by visiting our web-site ---- its not really a stand-alone web-site, its a sort of pre-fab web-site through Yahoo Groups ---- its kind of corny that you need to sign-up through Yahoo to really get full access to the web-site, but it has been so easy to use and maintain that it has reall kept the club together for so many years now, so we're not likely to change it soon. When you sign-up for the web-site, any message you post on the web-site will be sent by e-mail to other people signed-up. So, really, we don't even visit the web-site much --- you just sign-up and the web-site acts like a kind of e-mail distribution list --- we trade 4 or 5 e-mails each week just to decide when and where to meet-up, and the rest is all just kickin' and stallin' and fun.

Anyway, here's the web-address:

http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/nyfootbag/

Don't be shy -- we take all comers, we represent many different skill levels, we can surely help you take your game to higher levels, and we have a pretty good time too. Hope to see you soon.

PS -- its good etiquette on this forum to put your real name in your signature.
"The time has come to convert the unbelievers..."

Jonathan Schneider --- sometimes showers with his Lavers on (to clean them)
The Ministry of Silly Walks
NYFA
BAP

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lilshred
Circle Kicker
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Feb 2013 12:24
Location: New York

Re: Newb

Post by lilshred » 19 Feb 2013 04:44

Ah thank you outsider, that was a very nice welcome and very informative, thank you! My name is Christi.

I grew UP in NYC (Queens) but I currently live upstate now (my sister lives in the city so coming to check it out would definitely be possible). I also go to Boston quite a bit.

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.

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.

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Outsider
Ayatollah of Rock n' Rollah
Posts: 1373
Joined: 21 May 2003 21:30
Location: Bridgewater, New Jersey

Re: Newb

Post by Outsider » 19 Feb 2013 18:05

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...
"The time has come to convert the unbelievers..."

Jonathan Schneider --- sometimes showers with his Lavers on (to clean them)
The Ministry of Silly Walks
NYFA
BAP

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C-Fan
Rekordy Polski
Posts: 11366
Joined: 23 Jan 2003 23:51
Location: Denver
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Re: Newb

Post by C-Fan » 26 Feb 2013 09:46

Christi: welcome to footbag.

Jon: Super props on such a thorough, on-point response.

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