footbag.org

[Eric Windsor (wicked)]

i like to play net every once in a while, its fun. I dont think it will ever die. Ill probably take it up one day. But for now I like to freestyle.

[Matti Pohjola (mohkale)]

I think the Internet&freestyle thing is that way 'cause most of the freestyle players are quite young and are practically grown to the Internet, while most of the net players are a bit older and don't have time to hang out on the Internet all day.

I for one would drop out of school if there were that many net clips and films posted on these forums daily as there are on freestyle.

To P.T. : I'm really really waiting to see the CHAOS movie (except for one or two parts).

Matti

[Steve Goldberg (brat)]

[Jim Cobb (jimcobb)]

Wow Steve! Its been a while... how are you?

The game is played because its fun. Most circle kickers never heard of footbag.org.

Net will grow if jousting is allowed.

Its as simple as that. Jousting is fun and an unskilled young guy can try it today!

When it was taken out of the game, the game was diminished.

Yes yes, someone may be injured. The argument is weak. People who run the game decide it should not be so. The game dies. Simple as that.

peace out...

[Allan Haggett (allan)]

[Steve Goldberg (brat)]

Jim's harping on the very specific issue of the "no contact" rule that says if a player touches another player on his side of the net (over or under), that it's a foul. (Think four-square. )

But honestly what a red herring that discussion is! I mean, honestly, Jim, before you attribute the death of the sport to an issue of the rules, wouldn't it be better to focus on the lack of education, promotion, and passion on the side of the current net-playing community?

Steve

[Jim Cobb (jimcobb)]

Allan,
This may need another topic, but the gist of it is(and apologies to the old timers who have been through this before) that a number of years ago it was made illegal to contact an opponent across the net, under any circumstances.

The result of this in normal competitive play is to set only on your own side of the net, and chills attempts to poach.

The excitement of the game comes when there is a set close to the net, and both players attempt to contact the bag simultaneously. This simultaneous attack at the bag is "jousting".

Some feel that the contact rule should not be enforced if the bag is contacted first, making the player contact incidental.

My feeling is that jousting rocks! and should be encouraged rather than discouraged, and that indeed, the strict contact rule diminishes the game, decreases popularity, the attractiveness to young athletic potential net players, watchability etc, etc.

that said, Its still all good.

[Jim Cobb (jimcobb)]

Steve,
With all due respect to promotion as in organizing, my feeling is that the only true way to promote net is to get out there in a public park and play, drawing potential new bracket fodder as may be.

We drew less and less players to our fold in the years since we went to the style dictated by the no contact rule.

There just aren't enough people in the world like the current players, who apparently love the game the way they have developed it. My feeling is that we should be trying to recruit an x-games teen or 20 something person who wants an X-tremexcellent sporting experience. Not a competitive game of freestyle with (of course) NO TOUCHING.

Games are about playing. If its fun, they will come.

jump and sing...

[Ahren Gehrman (Torch)]

Why don't you make net like American Gladiators? You could have everybody padded up like football players and big buff guys running around with giant sticks, whacking the players at random. Doesn't that sound absolutely ridiculous? Honestly, most net players I know do not like jousting at all. They do not feel the need to prove how big their members are, and have enough injuries as it is with out have to deal with being kicked while they are upside down. But what do I know? I'm just a pansy freestyler. As a spectator I would also like to add that I do not enjoy watching people get hurt (unless they are stupid enough to openly subject themselves to it, in which case it's appropriate to laugh real hard).

[Allan Haggett (allan)]

[Mike Stoler (stoler)]

I agree with what many have said already. The thing that's causing net to die out is that there are more people retiring from the sport than there are people taking it up. That's a shame.

The problem is it's hard to grow new players. Experienced players don't usually want to play with newbies. It's incredibly frustrating when you give your newbie partner a perfect set, hope that they can pop the bag straight up so you get a good kill, but instead the bag flies off in some random direction or there's a big whiff and the bag hits the ground. Or they don't hustle. This can discourage the experienced player from trying too hard and the game quickly decends into one hit banging or unforced error after unforced error.

In freestyle circles, it doesn't matter nearly as much if an inexperienced player kicks with a more experienced player. Sure, the newbie is going to get shorter runs, but they are probably not in as great shape, so ultimately, they don't mind as much. Net requires people to work together. Great net requires a group of people that are at roughly the same skill level.

What to do about it? I don't know. There's only so much time you can spend running drills with a newbie who is itching to get on the court and play a game. Yet, getting the basics down is exactly what the newbie needs to do to get to the point where they are fun to play with.

What you need is a group of, oh, I don't know, say, four newbies who all join the club at the same time who are content to play most of their games together and once in a while, get to share the court with the more experienced players. The experienced players need to do drills and work with the newbies, but the newbies will somehow need to understand that this will not happen ALL the time.

Another problem is the newbie burnout syndrome. I can't tell you how many times we did our best to grow some newbie, gave them calls and invited them to our sessions and played with them and included them in it all, only to find they drop out after a short time. Were we not welcoming enough? Perhaps. Is the game frustrating? No doubt. The bottom line is that we invested a lot of our personal time, made our net sessions considerably more frustrating and less productive, and have nothing to show for it in the end. At this point, when somebody comes up to our net court and asks to play with us, we're welcoming, we play games, we teach, but there's a part of us that rolls our eyes later after they've left and we say, "we're never going to see that person again."

Pity, because I love playing net. I just don't know what to do to stop the slide, especially at this point.

Sorry for the long ramble. I don't have answers either.

Kick on,

Rex

[Farbod Rajaei (Majet76)]

Hi all,

My highschool has recently experimented with introducing Buka as another physical activity (sport) to choose from here in N.J. USA. without a problem. If you want footbag net to grow you somehow have to come up with a tangible idea of introducing the sport to kids in their schools for P.E. (Physical Education). To get a little off topic the same would apply to freestyle. But as I type another problem has popped up into my head. ATTAINING A NET. There would be little if any nets to practice on and i do believe that nets are expensive. do they go beyond a hundred USD?

[Grischa Tellenbach (grischa.tellenbach)]

We need newbies at Universities to start playing net :

a) they are young
b) they have time
c) there is a lot of them
d) Universities have gyms

Why :

a) old players are retiring,
b) peolpe out of universities have other things to do like working ;-(
c) at univercity the risk of not being able to play because you're alone is lower.
d) at least in Europe it is hard to find a gym and it's expensive too

But how to make it work ?

I tryed at my University but I never got more than some people motivated to play in a circle.

[Christopher Siebert (conan)]

Net has trouble recruiting new players because the game is so friggin hard. The "average" person has trouble just kicking a footbag using the whole body, much less digging a huge spike from 20 feet away using only the feet. Remember that the main reason that net can look bad is not the quality of the kickers but because net is the only footbag sport where you have another player actively trying to make you fail. Those sick shred strings on video wouldn't look nearly as cool if I was there blocking the first set

I don't buy the argument that net players don't recruit. I know that the majority do. It's the retention that is hard. I could name 20 players just in my area that have played a significant amount of net only to just quit.

I agree with Bob Riefer that the rules at tournaments should be changed in favor of newbies. "Old rules" - using the whole body - would be an easy way for anyone to compete, at least in novice divisions. The current rules were modified as a core group of players kept getting better, but in the process it left most of the world behind.

[Brian Johnson (gumby)]

I can't speak for any other place other than my own city. But here in Calgary net has grown really big in the last year. Shred Zero as a freestyle club has really crumbled apart, but the net scene has exploded. There must be about 10 frequent net players now, compared to about 2, only one year ago.

As I said I really don't know what's going on internationally, but locally it has really taken off.