By Rodney Sanchez

The 28th Annual Virginia States Overall Frisbee Championships took place this past weekend. We were blessed with wonderful weather, upper 70’s on Friday and in the lower 80’s on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. 121 people entered the tournament, with around 35 taking part in the freestyle portion of the event.

As usual, Laszlo’s Wienie World rocked Shelter H with their incredible brand of Southern Hospitality. Great food and beverages all weekend long, the lounging area, live band on Sunday, smiling faces behind the counter. If you have never experienced a VA States, there is still time to make one, like next year, or the year after, or…. Suffice to say, if you have never been, or if you have and haven’t been in a while, make an effort to go. It is an experience you will not soon forget.

Freestyle took place on Sunday. The first round consisted of 13 teams broken up into two pools. There was some stellar play, with all teams spurred on by the appreciative audience. The top three teams from each pool then advanced to the finals.

The Cooksey brothers started things off with a nice routine. These guys are excellent overall players with some nice jamming chops as well.

Fifth place went to Harvey Brandt and Tom Lasher. Harve and Lash played really well in the first round, but were unable to pull together all their stuff for the finals.

In fourth place came the team of Dale Crawford, Phil Kappa and Mike Mosher. Dale and Phil have been coming to this event for years. (They won it in 1990.) This year they added Mike, who had a good chance at the overall crown. (Nice touch, guys.) Dale and Phil pulled off some their patented pairs moves, and all three of the guys did some nice indies. At the end of the day, their fourth place in freestyle vaulted Mike to the top, and he took the overall crown.

Third place went to Bill Wright and Rob Knapik. Rob has been coming to the VA States for some time. A local boy from Lexington, Virginia, he now lives in Ft. Collins, doing his graduate work at CSU. Which is good for him and Bill. Another jammer in Ft. Collins! Bill was heard to exclaim. They played well, putting together some nice co-ops to some electronic music that mixed into a nice county thing about lovely Virginia.

Coming in second was the team of Toddy Brodeur, Alan Caplin and myself. We played well, with Toddy doing some nice Toddy-esque moves and Alan busting out some turnovers and multiple spinning catches.

This day, however, belonged to the shredders from NYC, Rob Fried, Joey Hudoklin and Doug E. Fresh. As Fresh was heard to say afterwards, it took us seven years, and today we finally did it. What they did was their semi-planned spontaneous stuff without missing a beat throughout the five minutes of their routine. One continues vibe of shred. I have seen them in VA for the last three years now, and I can attest that this past weekend was indeed spectacular for them. Grooving to the slow country sounds of their song, they flowed effortlessly throughout the routine. Pulling off their upside down brushing sequence, speed flow, light z moves, mob-op brushing runs, highly technical individuals, they were on. The routine ended with Joe flying through the air doing big gitis. He crashed down to the ground, and that was that. There really wasn’t any need to tally the scores on the sheet as the outcome had been decided then and there. Stellar play, guys, an outstanding demonstration of freestyle Frisbee, controlled spontaneity, and all around a joy to watch.

Well, that’s it for this short dash off.

Really, can’t say enough about how much this tournament rocks. If you don’t go to Paganello next year, then VA States is for you. (Or vice versa!)

Keep on jamming.

Rodney