Footbag Sports

Foot­bag has existed as a com­pet­i­tive sport in sev­eral forms since 1972. Orig­i­nat­ing in North Amer­ica, it has rapidly grown into a pop­u­lar ama­teur sport all over the world. An increas­ing num­ber of inter­na­tional foot­bag tour­na­ments and fes­ti­vals are orga­nized each year.

The most pop­u­lar com­pet­i­tive foot­bag sports are Foot­bag Net and Freestyle.

Foot­bag Net

Foot­bag net is a sin­gles or dou­bles court game where play­ers use only their feet (below knee) to kick the foot­bag over the net. The size of the court and the height of the net are the same as in bad­minton. The rules for dou­bles net are a lot like vol­ley­ball: play­ers are allowed three kicks per side, and must alter­nate kicks. In sin­gles, how­ever, play­ers are only allowed two kicks per side.

Play­ing strat­egy is much sim­i­lar to beach vol­ley. Offence is basi­cally done by set­ting the bag up and hit­ting it down to the oppo­nents’ side. Good offen­sive play­ers hit the bag hard while simul­ta­ne­ously direct­ing it with good accu­racy to an empty spot. Defence is done by either block­ing the oppo­nents’ hits over the net or mov­ing rapidly and “dig­ging” the bag up, prepar­ing for counter-attack. All of this is done with feet only!

Footbag net is a stunning display of athleticism. Arthur Ledain (FRA) spiking at the 2011 French Open. Photo © Etienne Ruggeri.

The best foot­bag net play­ers are excep­tional ath­letes. Play­ing on the high­est level requires extreme body coor­di­na­tion, quick­ness, flex­i­bil­ity, endurance, etc. And these are only the phys­i­cal require­ments. Good game read­ing skills, mind con­trol, and focus are also extremely impor­tant qualities.

Foot­bag Freestyle

Foot­bag Freestyle is a sport in which the object is to per­form tricks with the bag. It has evolved into a very tech­ni­cal com­pet­i­tive dis­ci­pline. Play­ers com­pete by chore­o­graph­ing rou­tines, per­form­ing very dif­fi­cult com­bi­na­tions of foot­bag tricks to music (not unlike in fig­ure skat­ing). Rou­tines are judged along four axes: pre­sen­ta­tion, dif­fi­culty, vari­ety, and execution.

A freestyle player performing.
Photo © Reuters Pictures.

Other forms of com­pet­i­tive and non-competitive freestyle exist, includ­ing “shred­ding” in which play­ers attempt to per­form as many tricks in a row as pos­si­ble, of a given add-value or above. They also attempt to show vari­ety in their strings, along sev­eral dimensions.

Each move or trick in freestyle foot­bag has a deter­minable dif­fi­culty rat­ing. The dif­fi­culty of each move is added, and the total is divided by the num­ber of attempted and com­peted moves in the rou­tine to deter­mine the aver­age dif­fi­culty. Dif­fi­culty is mea­sured in “adds”, which rep­re­sent addi­tional lev­els of dif­fi­culty beyond the basic moves.

Offi­cial Rules

Com­pet­i­tive foot­bag is gov­erned by the Inter­na­tional Foot­bag Play­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion, a char­i­ta­ble non-profit cor­po­ra­tion to pro­mote the sport. The rules, pub­lished by the Inter­na­tional Foot­bag Com­mit­tee, are avail­able online and trans­lated (or being trans­lated) into many languages.