Freestyle Players Association
December 1997
By Arthur Coddington, 1997 FPA World Co-Op Champion
This
year's World Junior Frisbee® disc Championships were held
in Dallas at the State Fair of Texas in front of a very appreciative
audience of several hundred fairgoers.
Sixteen US players and one competitor from Mexico vied for under-16 age group titles in overall and six of the seven US Open events. Even though the overall winners get big savings bonds and huge trophies and offers of displays at the All-Star Cafe, everyone who's anyone knows that freestyle's the juniors title to win.
The format is pairs at the juniors. Each boy plays with the same pro (called a thrower), and each girl plays with another pro. Judges score the jammers on their individual performance, so if the thrower shreds or flails it doesn't upset the final standings.
Being the thrower means competing in the format of the future - freestyle ultra-marathon. Imagine putting together eight separate routines with only twenty minutes of preparation time per routine and virtually no practice.
Now imagine performing those eight, three minute routines all in a row separated only by the time the judges take to mark down their scores. Now imagine that every competitor's hopes and dreams rest on you remembering
their routine and being full of energy and focus for them. It's a tough assignment, and if you can stay conscious it's one of the best freestyle experiences around.
I was the thrower for the girls this year because frankly, the girls division was where it's at. Nothing against the boys, but girl jammers rock. There's no getting around it. This year's girls competitors were very strong. About half the girls had a chance to win the event. The other half probably wouldn't win but were very evenly matched.
The first five juniors all played strong, but none really shredded enough to press the three favorites. Nikki Ross, ten year old phenom from Pennsylvania, was the first of the top seeds to perform. She brought a tightly choreographed routine with lots of co-ops and a self-set individual opening that demonstrated her wide range of catches. She played strong and clean with a great sense of fun to put on the pressure.
Lauren Soderland from Seattle was next. Her routine, played to Prodigy's "Breathe," had an entirely different feel - darker, very hardcore and ambitious. Her choice to prepare fewer co-ops and go for more improvisation nearly paid off big time, but a few drops left the door open. With roughly the same number of drops, it would be a choice between Nikki's presentation and Lauren's full-tilt diff.
Last up was Christina Burnap, the defending freestyle champion. 1997 was Christina's last year of eligibility for the juniors title, and she had all but clinched the overall title earlier in the day during accuracy. In many ways her freestyle routine was a celebration jam, the culmination of lots of hard work and near misses over the years.
The best performances sometimes come through when the pressure is off. How many of us wish we could perform the moves from our jams when we go to competitions? Christina was loose and relaxed and basically pulled off every move she wanted to pull off. She hit big, difficult co-ops, and she tossed off long, multi-move individual combos that featured flat moves, difficult rim pulls and great variety of hard catches. It was no contest.
John "Rappin'" Houck threw for the boys and did a great job tutoring a number of true novice freestylers. I am floored at how kids who have barely seen freestyle can talk to John for twenty minutes and come back delaying. How can he teach Emilio Jimenez from Mexico City to nail his patented double heel trap co-op as part of Emilio's first freestyle routine ever? He can't be that good a teacher. It's preposterous! He must be cheating somehow.
Boys freestyle was seemingly a one-man show. Art Viger is a freestyle specialist, a thirteen-year old savant learning so fast that he'll be teaching the rest of us within a year. He won freestyle in 1996 and had gotten much, much better. It was unlikely any of the other boys could keep up, as good as many of them were.
One of the promising developments was that several of the boys had moved beyond flatwork and were exploring rim sets, rim pulls and angle work. It's a big step, and several of the junior boys made it in 1997. Seattle's Evan Hanneman made the step in 1996. His brushing and angle game can be very risky, and on this day the risk did not pay off. Too many errors dropped him to fifth place, lower than he had hoped for, but he was successful in lobbying his dad for a trip to the FPA Worlds in Hawaii.
Andy Moering, also from Seattle, might be the most improved junior of the year. Last year Andy came to the juniors very new to freestyle and surprised himself with a great freestyle round and a second place in the overall. This year he had clearly worked on his game. His style is exciting and athletic, and he's a very charismatic jammer. Though he played very clean, he needs another year to hang with the top three.
An early surprise was Xtehn Titcomb, the third Seattle boy in the field. He had established that he was a solid, promising freestyler, but he had not hinted that he had such a well-planned routine. Playing to Soundgarden's "Spoonman," Xtehn delayed, set and pulled using a set of Hotchkiss School jello spoons. That and the fact that he pulled off nearly every other non-spoon move he tried made him the early leader.
By the time freestyle rolled around John Buttrey had actually clinched the juniors overall title, so he had the same opportunity for a relaxed victory jam as Christina. John pulled off lots of difficult combos, but he might have been a little too amped because he dropped more than he usually does and took third place.
Art was seeded #1 and played last. His usual breezy demeaner did not hint that anything was wrong, but when the routine started it was clear that his timing was off. The disc kept hitting his legs, his wrist, the ground.
Anything but his hand. He was doing cool stuff but it was getting derailed by small errors and drops. Halfway through the routine it seemed like he might not defend his title.
Freestylers face this moment in routines all the time. Things aren't going well. You have the chance to keep flailing, pull back and get real conservative, or go for it and trust your skills. Art took the champion's choice, went for a big crash and burn gitis, nailed it and turned his routine around. That catch won the audience back and helped Art get his bearings. He powered through the rest of the routine and finished strong.
His early mistakes left the door open for Xtehn to gain a first
place vote or two, but Art's sheer shredding skills carried the
day over the Spoonman. Congratulations to all the 1997 competitors
and to Christina and Art for winning.
1998 is the 30th World Junior Frisbee® disc Championships, and there will be lots of cool new ways to participate. Stay tuned for details. If you're interested in leading a local contest or if you're a junior who wants to participate, send your (snail) mailing info to neuroshred@loop.com.
Girls:
1. Christina Burnap
2. Nikki Ross
3. Lauren Soderland
4. Mirella Martinez
5. Miroslava Martinez
6. Molly Montes
7. Alison Cremer
8. Amber Hoffman
Boys:
1. Art Viger
2. Xtehn Titcomb
3. John Buttrey
4. Andy Moering
5. Evan Hanneman
6. Alex Pierson
7T. Tommy Hodges and Matt Oller
9. Emilio Jimenez