Over this past weekend, my son Ryan and I competed together in the New England Indoor Freestyle Championships, and managed to take 4th place. Ryan is 19, soon to be 20, and he played exceptionally well. Unfortunately, I played only so-so, otherwise I think we could have placed higher. This was only our second tournament together.
If you're not familiar with frisbee freestyle, or, more generally, flying disc freestyle, it's somewhat hard to explain verbally or in written form. A picture or video (Windows Media format) really is worth a thousand words in this case. Freestyle, or "jamming" as we call it, is basically throw-and-catch, but the players stand only 10-20 feet apart and throw the disc with as much spin as possible. The spin allows the catcher to "delay" the disc by spinning it on his or her fingernail. The delayed disc can be manipulated by passing it under the legs, pulling it around the body, tipping it, turning it over, rolling it across the chest or back, or an endless variety of combinations of all these moves and more, all leading to an eventual catch. I've been involved in sports all my life, and this one is by far the most challenging one I know of. In competition, players are judged by their peers on difficulty, execution, variety, and presentation. Dropping the disc results in deductions.
The winners of the tournament were Carlos "Pipo" Lopez, from Carolina, Puerto Rico, who's currently ranked 14th in the world, and Toddy Brodeur, from Bellingham, MA, currently ranked 18th.
We had a blast, basically jamming almost non-stop from 10:30am until 6pm. Many thanks to Rick Williams for putting the whole tournament together.