Contents [hide] 1 Footbag Hall of Fame: 2005 Inductees 1.1 56. Chris Routh 1.2 57. Derrick Fogle 1.3 58. Ted Martin 1.4 59. Tina Lewis 1.5 60. Lisa McDaniel 1.6 61. Steve Goldberg 1.7 62. Julie Symons 1.8 63. Greg Nelson

Footbag Hall of Fame: 2005 Inductees

56. Chris Routh

• When did you see your first Footbag?
• Your own personal comments and notes?
  • Unfortunately a serious injury forced his retirement from open competition, but not before he gained the respect of all net competitors who watched him to learn, as he raised the game and sport. One of the all-time great personalities that has made footbag what it is today.
• Major achievements?
  • Chris was a force of change in the game of Footbag Net. Gator’s Worlds accomplishments in Open Doubles Net include, 2nd place in 1988, 1st place in 1989, 2nd place in 1990, 1st place in 1991, 3rd place in 1992, and 2nd place in 1993. Gator’s Worlds accomplishments in Mixed Doubles Net include, 1st place in 1990, 2nd place in 1991 and 3rd place in 1992.
• The sports future?

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57. Derrick Fogle

• When did you see your first Footbag?
  • Hacky sack has been part of my life for 25 years. I first kicked a footbag in the summer of 1980. I was going to a party in the mountain community of Dillon, Colorado with my older brother. There was a circle of people outside the house kicking something around, laughing, spilling a little beer on each other, you get the idea. I asked them what the heck they were doing, and they invited me to join in. I was terrible when I first started! I might have actually kicked the bag 3 or 4 times that evening, but I had a blast and nobody ever told me I sucked or tried to get me to leave the circle. There seemed to be all levels of kickers there, and everybody cooperated to keep the bag off the ground. I was hooked. I just HAD to get better so I could hold my own in the hacky circles. There was only one kind of Hacky Sack available back then, and they were pretty expensive. At first, I kicked with the roundest smallish rocks I could find (this was the Colorado mountains). After I saved up a few bucks, I bought my first real Hacky Sack and kept trying. It took me awhile – I wasn’t very coordinated when I started – but I kept at it, eventually catching up with my brother. Then I headed back to Lawrence, KS where I went to school. I was one of the first people to ever bring a Hacky Sack into Lawrence High School. Of course I got a few of my friends hooked on it, and we hacked every day during lunch. I would kick every day after school, finding lit tennis courts at night, sneaking into the school gym during lunch in the winter, almost anything to get a chance to “Hack the Sack.”
• Your own personal comments and notes?
  • In college, I purposely set up my schedule with a couple early classes, a very long lunchtime, and a couple late classes. The middle of the day was always devoted to kicking on campus at the Johnson County Community College. In the winter, I managed to find times I could use the college gym to kick. I would kick almost anywhere, anytime. And I was getting better.
  • I’m proud to announce that as of 2005, I have been inducted into the Footbag Hall of Fame. I grew up – emotionally if not physically – in the footbag community. To be recognized by and inducted by my kicking peers (who have seen me behave incredibly childish at times) is a truly amazing experience. Any impact I have made upon the sport of footbag is insignificant compared to the impact that footbag and the footbag community has had on me.
• Major achievements?
  • I finally heard about a hacky sack tournament in Kansas City. The night before the tournament, I went to a registration party and met several people who would become part of my life for many years afterward. I was totally jazzed about the trying to win the freestyle award, and I did – with a pair of rainbow flying clippers! Boy has footbag changed since then. I saw my first “delay” that day; if the guy that could do them had pulled them off in the competition, he most likely would have won.
  • I got myself plugged into the footbag promotion scene, helping out with Hacky Sack and Frisbee festivals, helping with tournaments, eventually running my own tournaments, and competing. I made freestyle finals in several World Championship competitions and set a world record in one discipline of footbag (since broken). My wife, who picked up footbag when we started seeing each other, is still a current world record holder in the women’s 5-minute timed consecutives event.
  • Retirement from competition came about 6 years ago after my 2nd child was born. Parents know how that goes. But I still love to kick, mostly at events where there is live music. I can often be seen kicking at the Twilight Festivals – Courthouse Square, Thursdays in June, in Columbia, MO and at Speaker’s Circle on the MU Columbia Campus other evenings.

• The sports future?

58. Ted Martin

• When did you see your first Footbag?
• Your own personal comments and notes?
• Major achievements?
  • Ted took on the consecutive kick challenge. In 1997 he set the still standing world record, as written in the Guinness World Book Of Records. An unbelievable 63,326 consecutive kicks without stopping, letting the bag hit the ground, or his upper body. (no knees either) It took 8 hours, 50 minutes, and 42 seconds. Ted also set the doubles consecutive record of 100,000, which has since been broken.

• The sports future?

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59. Tina Lewis

• I saw my first footbag when I was in law school. Scott Grigsby (may he rest in peace) introduced my bf Jim McClendon and their friends. Rather than sit around when they played, I jumped in and tried it. Many happy, sunny, sweaty days were spent at the back gate of Barton Springs kicking in a circle and later net. I was fortunate to meet so many wonderful people who encouraged me to continue and progress. My first tournament was sometime in 1981 or 82 at Houston Memorial Park. I met Tim Vozar and Heather Squires and played net for the first time. I came in second out of three women! The highlight of the event was an appearance by Kenny Shults and Mr. Hacky Sack – Johnny Stalberger. Lisa McDaniel Jones talked me into attending my first Worlds and I was hooked on competition from there.
• Footbag has been a huge part of my life and has led me to some wonderful people, experiences and personal growth. I would not be the same person today without this wonderful sport and all the people involved.

• My biggest goal in footbag has been to obtain a World Title in each decade of my life. So far so good, starting with my 20s….

• • Tina has been an active player, promoter, and leader in the sport for the last 20 years. World Championship Titles include: 1987 first place with Scott Cleere in Mixed Doubles Net. 2005 first place Women’s Singles Footbag Net and first place Women’s Doubles First Place Footbag Net with Sam Conlon. In 1997 second place in Women’s Singles Net. 2001 champ at Women’s Doubles Distance One Pass.

• • It has been my great privilege to serve on the Board of Directors for IFPA and the Rules Committee. Though I am retired from these positions, I still compete and play whenever I can.

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60. Lisa McDaniel

• When did you see your first Footbag?
• Your own personal comments and notes?
• Major achievements?
  • Lisa has been a force to be reckoned with since her very first World Championships in 1987. Winner of Women’s Doubles Net, followed by Women’s, and Mixed Doubles Net in 1988. ’89 Women’s Doubles Distance One Pass. With partner Sam Conlon they won Women’s Team Freestyle in ’90, ’91’ ’92, and ’93. 1994 included Women’s Singles and Doubles Net. Women’s Singles Net, and Women’s Team Freestyle in ’96, and Mixed Team Freestyle in ’97. Women’s Singles Net in ’98 and Mixed team Freestyle in ’99. In 2000 Lisa won Women’s Singles Net and Mixed Doubles Net. Women’s Doubles Net in ’01 and ’03 and mixed Doubles Net in 2002. Besides all of that, she’s been active in her clubs development, co-directed 2 World Championships, and is still active with the IFPA.

• The sports future?

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61. Steve Goldberg

• When did you see your first Footbag?
  • March 1982, in the halls of the Computer Science Department of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia was the first time I saw a Footbag. Scott Vorthmann had it (he was a Ph.D. student at the time) and was kicking in the hall with some other students — I couldn’t believe how cool it was. But despite desperately trying, I could not kick it more than once at a time, and sometimes not at all.
  • A few days later, Donald Mead (one of my best friends who I’d told about it) got one and we started kicking every night at the dormitory. We went to the tennis courts and he learned really quickly so he tried to teach me how to kick it with my legs instead of other parts of my body I was mistakenly involving in the effort. I would go to his room every night and beg him to kick with me, but he soon tired and told me to play by myself. So I did. Then he told me about a Hacky Sack and Frisbee Festival that was coming to town the next week, and we went to Piedmont Park and saw the first *real* footbag players. It was awesome. I met Jimmy Caveney there.
• Your own personal comments and notes?
  • I was a geek studying computer science and really didn’t have a life outside school, nor did I have any athletic ability or interest. So, in my case, footbag filled a huge gap in my life both in terms of fitness and in terms of friendships/community. But once I got *really* into footbag (a few years later when I moved to California to go to graduate school), footbag definitely pushed everything else out of my extra-curricular life.

• Major achievements?
  • 1st in Mixed Doubles Freestyle w/Sam Conlon, World Footbag Championships, 1996
  • 1st in Intermediate Singles Net, California State Championships, 1996
  • 1st in Open Doubles Freestyle w/Ed La Macchia, Texas State Championships, 1992
  • 4th in Open Doubles Freestyle w/Ed La Macchia, World Footbag Championships, 1997
  • I started the Stanford Footbag Club which has been kicking weekly on Tuesday afternoons since 1987. It is the longest-running continual weekly freestyle circle on the planet to this day.
  • I co-founded and served as the initial Executive Director of the International Footbag Players’ Association, a U.S.-based global 501(c)(3) corporation in 1994 to foster amateur footbag competition world-wide. The International Footbag Committee officially moved under the auspices of IFPA, and the World Footbag Championships became the responsibility of IFPA to oversee from year to year. IFPA also now runs the footbag.org website, oversees the official rules of the sport, sanctions tournaments and clubs/organizations, and enables players, sponsors, and organizers to come benefit from a single global organizational effort and set of standards in the future development of the sport of footbag. It is an entirely volunteer, player-run organization. I stepped down as Executive Director in 2002 to allow it to run under its own steam.
    

    

    Induction ceremony.

  • I created footbag.org with early help from Jim Curtis who originally created a website called “Footbag WorldWide” on a small server at his company (Hewlett-Packard) in 1993. From then on, I became known as the “webmaster” as I built a suite of sophisticated web-based applications that became the foundation for collaboration and communication among footbag aficionados world-wide. I donated footbag.org to the IFPA as a centralized non-profit vehicle for the promotion, education, and resource sharing for the world of footbag.
  • I’ve done probably 30 demos at high schools in the local area (near Palo Alto, California) and organized the spots on MTV Sports and Good Morning America that happened in the mid ’90s. I also helped coordinate several other large media opportunities.
  • I organized the World Footbag Championships in 1994 and 1995, and helped (sometimes too much) with every Worlds since.
  • I ran the Western Regional Footbag Championships at Stanford University from 1993 to 2002 (ten consecutive years).
  • I’ve given about US$100,000 in cash to footbag events, IFPA, and players through sponsorships and outright donations over the last 10 years.

• The sports future?
  • Footbag is skewing younger than we ever imagined. The sport today, especially freestyle, is now really a youth sport — played at a very high skill level by kids from 13 to 20 all around the planet (literally). We should refocus our efforts towards this age group, and put as much as we can into helping kids who get to tournaments (by organizing safe, drug-free, kid-friendly events that parents would be happy to come to with their kids).
  • Also, as most people know, Olympic recognition is a dream of mine and many others. We need to eventually get to the point where we can prove to the IOC that we are in fact a sport. Both net and freestyle, with the right rules, standards, practices, and organizational infrastructure world-wide, can definitely qualify at some point, and this should be one of our goals if for no other reason than to take advantage of the amateur athletics practices and guidelines set forth by the Olympics. Once we’re officially recognized by the Olympics, nobody can say footbag is not a sport.
  • Footbag should probably stay somewhat small, relative to other sports. One of the best things most people get out of footbag is the small, close-nit community, with not a lot of outside influence trying to hog the hack. Let’s keep it that way. (No hacky hogs.)

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62. Julie Symons

• When did you see your first Footbag?
• Your own personal comments and notes?
• Major achievements?
  • Since 1987 Julie has been a world champ and driving force in the sport. She has over 20 worlds titles. Including 7 Women’s Doubles Net, 2 Mixed Net, 1 Women’s Singles Net, 2 Footbag Golf, and a Women’s Team Freestyle. 7 Women’s Doubles Distance One Pass, and 1 Women’s Overall in 1994.
  • In addition, Julie has been active in her club, helping lead it to host 4 World Championships, 2 as Co-Director. Founding member of the IFPA and is currently it’s Executive Director.

• The sports future?

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63. Greg Nelson

• When did you see your first Footbag?
• Your own personal comments and notes?
• Major achievements?
  • Greg Nelson – ‘GF Smoothie’, for ‘guilt free’ which means: no 2 add or less freestyle tricks for his championship routines. Active since ’84 and his first tournament was in ’85. Greg has won 5 World Team Freestyle Championships and seven World Mixed Doubles Freestyle Titles. An amazing 14 consecutive Singles Freestyle Finals performances. Active teacher and performer making Footbag Fun. He and his original doubles partner Jay Muldenhauer, raised Team Freestyle to another level, significantly changing the way Team Freestyle is done.

• The sports future?