Manually Entered Results

The Spring Footbag Jam was a great success!  Probably the biggest 
complaint was that some people had trouble finding the church, which is on 
a back country road.  Once everyone found the church, we had a great day 
of jamming and 4 square that ended with an all you can eat spaghetti 
dinner.

A big thank you to the sponsors of SFJ:
     Freedom Footbags and the great footbags
     Kenny Shults and WFA for the TT1 and TT2 videos
     Thomas Presbyterian Church youth group (especially Jan Maser), who
          provided the venue and helped with dinner and clean up.

Special thanks go out to Caleb Abraham for a great freestyle demo for the 
novices and lots of SW PA promotional help, Caleb and Josh Benham for 
spending time with the novices to teach them some basics after the demo, 
Bob Riefer of Philly Footworks for his event planning advice and supportive 
promo via the internet, my wife Patty (for help with registration, dinner and 
her unending encouragement) and to the numerous volunteers at the 
church who helped with the logistics during the day, especially for the great 
dinner!

Here are a few pieces of info about the jam:
     We had over 60 players and over 20 spectators
     Players came from PA, OH, WV, MI, NY and DE (over 40 came from PA)
     About 1/3 of the players were intermediate or open players
     31 players said SFJ was their first footbag event
     Youngest player, 5 years old, was Caitlin Hamilton who was busting out 
          hand served inside kicks on both sides!  Yeap, that's my girl!  :-)
     Oldest player, and still getting better was Jack Lentz
     Longest distance travelled goes to Stuart Marsh and Perhansa Skallernp
          who came from NW Michigan (a 9 hour drive)
     Last one standing goes to Greg Nelson, he even skipped dinner to get
          in extra playing time.  Josh Benham would have been given top
          honors here, but he stopped to eat dinner.
     Best food was definitely the meatballs.  Kudos to Sam's Club.
     Most photogenic would have to be Scott Bevier since the local
          newspaper photographer couldn't pull herself away from him!
          Sorry Scott, but nothing has shown up in the paper yet.
     Most disappointing aspect of SFJ was being caught up in the logistics of
          the event and not gettting to meet and kick with everyone.

By far the biggest highlight for me was seeing the intermediate and open 
players playing with the novices.  Over half the players at this jam were 
seeing freestyle in person for the first time.  Many were intimidiated and and 
in awe.  But the experienced players welcomed the newbies in their circles 
and at times jumped into the novice groups.  I think the best example of 
time with the newbies goes to Kenny Shults who played four square for over 
1/2 hour with a dozen folks, mostly newbies, some of which were lucky to be 
able to kick the bag once.

Proceeds of SFJ went to the youth at Thomas Church for their summer 
mission project and to the IFPA, whose website and announce list was an 
important asset for the promotion of this event, and of course for footbag!

Thanks to all who came and made SFJ 2003 a huge success.  It was a blast 
to organize and promote it.  Stay in touch with footbag.org for upcoming 
details for SFJ 2004!
 
Bill Hamilton
SFJ 2003 Organizer