Limitlessly versatile
Footbag freestyle: more than just a sport
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In footbag Freestyle, the object is to perform as many intricate tricks as possible with a soft golf-sized ball while mainly using your feet in the process. When the sport originated in the 70’s players would stand in circles and pass the footbag to each other in the most elaborate and artistic way they could think of. Since then, the game has developed considerably and there are now more than 30 000 different moves from which players choose the most spectacular to perform. Although you can still see footbag circles in parks and on beaches, enthusiasts now meet up to show off long runs of tricks rather than to keep the bags moving around the circle.
But footbag freestyle isn’t just a sport or a pastime; it’s also a design for life. Players do not in fact meet to compete against each other. Quite the opposite: they meet as a community to trade moves and thus teach and learn new tricks as they play.
Footbag freestyle has long become a recognised sport with a world-wide circuit of tournaments where players perform before a jury. In the main discipline, they choreograph two-minute routines of their most complicated tricks to music and are then scored according to the technical and artistic merit of their performances. As in figure skating, the routine that receives the highest overall score will be the one to win. Even at such competitions, footbag retains its communal atmosphere, as players don’t compete directly against each other. All they can do is give their best before the jury.
Footbag is still gaining in popularity, and young people are taking up this extraordinary sport en masse. That’s despite the fact that footbag is physically demanding, but newcomers to the game seem to be attracted by the sport’s intrinsic challenge. If gravity is both your best friend and your worst enemy, you need to be innovative as well as versatile. And there are no limits to what you can do with a footbag. How many other sports can you say that to be true of?
More information:
Reindeer Games footbag short film from Camera Man on Vimeo.