The CLCK Family is Growing!

Congratulations to Bryan and his wife Bonnie, who gave birth to their first child in the early morning hours on Sunday, August 3rd. Anna Peironnet Nelson weighed in at 7 pounds, 15 ounces. Mom and baby are both fine and looking forward to heading home.

Zeke Bitches About Net, August 2009

July has come and gone. It fucking sucked compared to June. I was discouraged by not being able to play (doubles) after several straight weeks of practices. I grew to dislike practicing altogether. The drill sessions grew less and less structured. Fortunately, August brought my first doubles games in almost a month. Not one of my strongest outings. I got a few decent kills and I was serving well most of the day but I was over setting way too much. Defensively my service returns were freakin' terrible until the last few games. Then they were upgraded to not so freakin' terrible.

Ronnie had a rough afternoon but he did enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to play with the others as much as I did. He hit his first toe reverse in a game when on our first team up of the rotation. Scot and Corry were in stunned silence which was disrupted shortly by my jubilant schoolgirl laughter! His serves were ok but he did serve out at crucial moments (ok, so technically every serve is crucial) and he missed a lot of sets given to him. His service return was the main source of his frustration but it improved later in the day. He did manage to foot a few digs which surprised me.

I think we need to get back to basics. Ronnie and I grew too fond of 2 man wall ball and neglected everything else, particularly service/returns. We need to work serve returns and defense more often. I'm confident that the upcoming edition of Memphicago will boost my motivation back up to help accomplish my goals.










No spikes here. Just tracking my progress at crossing the plane for the hell of it. In a game, I've probably never reached farther than 1/2 a foot past the net.



Ronnie and I playing "doubles" net against the wall. Fairly laid back session just trying to get rallies and kills. In case you were wondering, we do 5 push-ups as punishment when we over set. We were over setting so often that we eventually decided to just skip the punishment just to have the energy to finish out the session. Fuckin' terrible.





Check my footbag net media:
Footbag.org galleries
Footbag photos and videos on Flickr
Videos on YouTube

Memphicago 4.1 is this weekend!

That's right folks! The fourth installment of the Memphicago Kick Volley Challenge will be underway this Saturday, August 15th, in Salem, IL. As always, we'll be meeting the boys from Memphis right around 10:30 in the morning for a day filled with spikes and digs. (NOW FEATURING: NO OUT SERVES!! (Maybe.)) We have 6 confirmed as of this posting. Will YOU be #7 or #8???

World's in Berlin

Hi Chicagoans,

As none of you made it to Worlds this year I thought that you might be interested in a short recap of the finals day: http://yevez.blogspot.com/2009/07/2009-world-footbag-championships-in.html

For now nobody knows where it's gonna be next year, some rumors were sending it your way but after Cory and Scot told me that their wives promised them a divorce if they did it again I took care of killing the story :-)

Luc Legault at the opening ceremony

Zeke Bitches About Net, July 2009

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.

The 2009 Windy City Cup Rocks Chicago!

Well, we've got another Windy City Cup under our belts, and I'd have to say we outdid ourselves from last year. What a great weekend we had! Before I get any further, I want to thank everyone that came out to compete, and I want to express a HUGE thanks to the local crew, especially Tom Whitworth, Zeke Ibardaloza, and Matty Sweeny. We could have never done it with out you guys!!

Navy Pier was gracious enough to host our event again this year. We moved our finals court to the North side of the front circle, where we saw an unbelievable amount of foot traffic. This was by far the best tournament I've ever had the pleasure of being involved with. Excellent work by the entire CLCK crew!!

Here's the results...

Singles

1. Jeremy Mirken (congrats JerBear!!)

2. Cory Current

3. Walt Houston

4. Ben Alston

5. Tom Whitworth

6. Zeke Ibardaloza

7. Sam Gregory

8. Jack Harris (s)

9. Jake DeClercq

10. Scot Hansen

11. Josh DeClercq

Doubles

1. PT Lovern and Manu Bouchard

2. Jeremy Mirken and Jack Harris

3. Walt Houston and Ben Alston

4. Cory Current and Scot Hansen

5. Tom Whitworth and Zeke Ibardaloza

6. Josh DeClercq and Jake DeClercq

7. Sam Gregory and Bryan Nelson (s)

Congrats to PT and Manu- the new Windy City Cup Champions!

Thanks again to all that made the trip, to Navy Pier for hosting us, and to our sponsors: Fancy Footworks, ProKicker Footbags, The Store til 4, Communications Direct, and Chicago Scenic Studios, who once again provided the most bad ass labor crew and bleacher set-up ever seen at a footbag event. Oh, and one more time for Zeke and Tommy- you guys rock!

There will be more pictures to follow, I'm sure....

Zeke Bitches About Net, June 09

Summer is back in Chicago! Finally. After a fairly productive spring, I'm looking forward to playing as much as possible this season and recruiting new players. Instead of tracking progress for the entire summer, this entry and subsequent comments will just be about the month of June. I'll start a new post next month.

With Windy City Cup just around the corner I need to focus on training more and warming up properly before sessions. I also need to arrive early to do a full warm up since we tend to rush to play as many games as possible before getting back to more important obligations. There are a few new possible recruits and a couple old ones that I need to keep contact with. At WCC I need to pick up a few more bags and get the new guys to buy some as well if they really want to get into the sport.

I update a few web pages. I have lots of older low res photos on footbag.org. Below is a sample of my footbag content on Flickr. The majority will be photos but I will occasionally upload some of video of my training. Most of them are unedited clips but I may make something a bit more viewer friendly when time permits. I have a videos on YouTube too.





As always, feel free to drop the proverbial line and comment on anything.