I've played a lot the first half of 2009. July starts the second half and there are still plenty of things to work on. I'm still not in the habit of warming up and stretching out. I have to get to sessions earlier to do my routine. I want to play as much as possible now that the weather is consistently warm.
Chicago Inner Circle's B-day jam will be on Saturday July 18. Hope to see you there.
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Hey Zeke, what the "Chicago Inner Circle's B-day jam"??
Chicago Inner Circle is the footbag freestyle club I started. We're celebrating 9 years of not fading into footbag obscurity on Saturday July 18. Basically its an afternoon of grilling food, hanging out and maybe a little freestyle, net and 4 square too. Several years ago we drew 35 footbaggers, most of them local. More details to come.
Practice session Thursday with Ronnie and Carrie at Welles. Ronnie and I set up at 4:30 and did the usual drills and rallies. During HTR I dinked a shot as he stood near the back line. The footbag peaked about a foot over the net and started dropping into his court when I jumped up, crossed the plane and toe jammed it into the ground! I got back up laughing and saying that it was probably the most evil thing I've ever done in net. Ronnie shook his head in disgust, lol. Carrie eventually showed up after work for some light 2v1 HTR. I returned one of Ronnie's serves with a big sole push that tattooed him as he ran up to get into position for defense. Before she left Carrie mentioned she would be free Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after work to play. Tommy should be available Wednesday, then we could play some doubles. We'll see how this works out.
Big session at Jane Addams with 6 players on the court Sunday. I got there just as Tommy rode up to the spot. The teams of Scot/Cory & Greg/Bryan were already warming up. One court was set up while the perimeter of the second was on the ground nearby. If we can fit two courts here, what use do we have for Union? Hm. The shit talking started early and it came often. Scot set the tone as he threatened to side axe me in the chest after he would take off from a big pile of dog shit we found (removed then covered up with dirt) on the court, LOL!
I played ok but I still had a lot of fun. I didn't properly warm up again and it clearly showed. Lots of shanks and whiffs. I watched (instead of attacked) a handful of good sets. I dug a few good spikes and made several digs that extended rallies leading to points or side outs
Offensively, I did a good job of serving 'in' most of the day since I didn't use my sweep serve at all and relied mostly on well timed dinks. Got a couple big toe jams today. I think the best was when I teamed with Greg and he over set on the right side. I crossed over, smashed the bag and landed clean (no net foul)! It was great because I actually got to see the bag fly past the defense and hit the ground. Hit another side axe set from the back court. Those are fun. There was one spike the got some unusual attention when Greg set me and I went up for a sole push. But instead of thrusting forward, I turned my foot inwards and pointed my toes towards my shins. Then I also swung my leg a little to the left so the bag flew down the defense's right side while they were expecting me to attack the left. I guess it was like a flying sole swat thingy kick spike. Cory said he made a mental note of it. Fuck.
Speaking of whom, Cory got into many jousts today and won most of them. Most. The play of the day came when Cory side axed a set and came crashing to the ground. Amazingly, Greg blocked the spike with a sole push at the net. The bag arced back over then dropped right on top of Cory who was still on the ground! Greg started screaming and I was so excited I actually jumped out of my seat on the sidelines after it all happened. Great fucking play. In fact, it the was the best I've seen Greg play. Scot was playing strong as well. He mentioned he got a tattoo on everybody but Cory as they teamed up the majority of the day and dominated most of their games, if not all. Bryan mentioned how fluidly they were working together. Another great session.
Short practice session with Ronnie on Tuesday. He bought a pair of Nike Air Max 90's earlier in the week and was eager to use them. Started with power kicking and immediately noticed more of his bumps going straight up than usual. He's more confident using his outsides during warm-ups but always resorts to using his right inside when we do drills requiring bumps and sets. Next we took turns throwing the bags against the wall so the other can practice bumping. The focus was to get a nice easy kick to go straight up. Then we added an extra step where the tosser could bang the bump against the wall so the partner could kick the bag straight up and the drill could repeat. We managed 3 reps while Ronnie was bumping then 4 on my turn. I would like us to be able to do 10 reps each by the end of the year. We ended the day with less structured rallying.
Practice sessions at Welles with Ronnie Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The first two days were pretty light but Saturday was a long session focusing more on serves and reception. One soccer player came over and volleyed with us for a few minutes on his way to the festival happening on the east side of Welles. Ronnie and I ended the day with a few singles games. I think it was on Thursday when I went for a left outside and the friggin' bag hit me in the open eyeball. Goddamn did that hurt! We actually stopped playing for 20 minutes because of it. Kinda outta place but I need this as a reminder of how much it sucked and to contact the bag lower.
Sunday was at Busse Woods. Ronnie woke up when I had called him. Good thing I called when I did or we would have been more than 20 minutes late. It really sucks to be late at net sessions because it takes so long to warm up and these guys don't have all afternoon to play. Scot, Ted and Greg were in the middle of a 2 on 1 when we showed up. While Ronnie and I power kicked, two girls asked if they could hack with us. The look on the one girls face was hilarious when she first kicked the net bag! They kicked with us the whole time and were then invited onto the court to volley when the 2 on 1 finished up. I immediately tattooed one of them with a Bitch Slap of all things! They stayed on the court for about half an hour while they waited for more Ultimate Frisbee players to show up and start a game. The mother of one of the girls and the mom's boyfriend were hacking nearby with Ted. The girls were having a lot of fun trying to volley and spike. One of them unexpectedly drilled the other with a serve that got a loud reaction from everyone. That was probably the most fun I've ever had watching newbs play.
They all eventually left to play Ultimate and Scot gave them one of his older footbags to play with. Not sure if any contact info was exchanged but maybe we'll see them again at Busse some time. We played games with a five man rotation. I was playing pretty good. I think I was a little better on defense than offense. I dug a bunch of Greg's spikes and Ted's bangs. Even managed a big sole push (Das Boot?) on one of Ted's serves.
I whiffed a bunch of good sets trying sole swats and just botched or shanked a bunch of side axes and toe jams. Got one really good side axe on an overset and a couple solid toe jams. I hit a Gumby while chasing a set from the back court! Then there was this weird shot where I went after a set on the left side running parallel to the net. I went up and extended like a side axe. Now the net was behind me and I either hit with an outside or a sole for a kill. My partner was like"NICE!" and the defenders were like, "WTF?"
I had one scary moment where I ran to the net to defend an overset. Ted jumped up from the other side and tried to spike then landed on my right ankle under the net. There was this sharp pain and I went down. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind not to collapse on me with all his weight. It was like a shankle or getting hit on the funny bone but a bit more intense. It felt a little sore the rest of the day but it really didn't bother me since I was not landing on it.
Ronnie was playing well but I could see the frustration on his face later in the day. He was serving in most of the time and had some nice bumps and sets in the last few games. Still has a bad habit of using the right inside kick for everything, though. After the session I went with Ronnie to Lincoln Park to walk one of his client's dogs. After the walk, he found a broken key in the outer gate leading to the townhouses. I was holding the dogs while he tried to yank the shard with some of his tools. The whole time I'm thinking, " Man, this looks suspect as hell. Our colored asses are going to jail!" He got the broken piece out soon enough, took the dogs back home then we headed to Hubs for some food. We each got 1/2 pound burgers then sat there for 30 minutes while the food slowly made its way through the digestive process. Some kid sitting behind Ronnie was talking to another kid. Quite randomly and loudly she said, "Your hand smells like peaches..." I tried not to laugh but Ronnie looked up with some serious stink eye and was like," Da fuck!?!?!" in his not so quiet Ronnie way. I was practically in tears at this point but still trying not to laugh. Fucking terrible.
We decided to hit up a nearby park to toss a disk. First I stopped by work and used the washroom to, uh... make some much needed space for that burger. We tossed a disk around for about an hour before calling it quits for the day. Frisbee at the end of any day is the best.
Practice session Monday with 'you know who' at 'you know where'. Instead of the wall ball I brought the net to set up facing the incline leading up to the wall. I figure it would make for retrieving footbags much easier after spike practice or monster. We powered for a good half hour before moving on to HTR. Tattooed Ronnie with a pretty wicked scuff. After that, we did rounds of spike practice with Ronnie trying scuffs, me trying whip (easier to type than ''scissor') sweeps then Ronnie attempting sole pushes.
One curious kid came up and asked to try some swings. We figured we would be nice, let him miss a few sets then he would go away. Nope. Next thing we know 4 other kids were all over the court wanting to play. The only way we could bring some kind of order to the chaos was to split into teams and volley. It did a spectacular job of cutting down on the random flying bags, stopped them from running around aimlessly on the court and certainly made sure that the practice was no longer fun. It just ground down to long agonizing minutes of toss, whiff and repeat. It was starting to get dark by the time most of them left. The one kid that stayed managed to kill with a jumping sweep and dug a couple shots for a respectable rally or two. He certainly had potential and showed interest but I was too discouraged at that point to give half a flying monkey fuck. After he left, Ronnie and I finished the day rallying against the wall until it got too dark to see.
It's funny to see how great newbs can be one day then see the exact opposite the day after.
Oh yeah, after that initial kid missed the first few sets he said, "This is hard. Why don't you just play soccer?"
Exactly.
I've hit the wall.
Motivation just dropped. I've had plenty of practices since my last post but no doubles games since that Busse session. Even the practices haven't been as focused and I feel like I'm just going through the motions with little to no gain. I knew this was coming. Once everyone's schedules lighten up and our free time aligns to get another 5-6 players on the court I should be back in my groove.
Ok, lets try to be positive. I do see my practice paying off and I feel like I'm at a competent level on the court (less newb-ish, that is). My skills are still streaky from one session to the next but I'm fairly confident that practice will make me more consistent and reliable. I've been using my right inside kick for setting and bumping with generally good results. I've grown more comfortable using my left outside kicks but they're still not reliable.
So I've been slowly moving away from hitting spikes as hard as I can and focusing more on getting a good hit. Standing sweeps, scuffs, bitch slaps and even pulldowns have been getting some use in recent sessions. Not much power yet but I'm getting more kills. I'm sure the power will come in time as I get more comfortable at these spikes. Those of you hoping for me to ease up on sunbacks, side axes and toe jams are shit outta luck.
I'm very pleased at how Ronnie has come along the past month. He hit his first scuff against Jake in a singles pick-up game 2 weeks ago. It was NASTY! He hit it so hard he knocked himself off his feet! Not long after he was trying standing side axes and I can see him hitting pulldown in the near future. I think he puts too much pressure on himself during doubles games and gets frustrated too easily. As much as it pisses him off, it amuses the hell out of me because I was in that spot not too long ago.
July has come and gone. It fucking sucked compared to June.
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