From: emp@xgml.com (Eric Promislow)
Subject: Boom Tournament Report #5
Summary: Better late than never
Keywords: boomerang, tournament, report
Organization: Exoterica Corporation
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 01:22:22 GMT

                     Throwin' in the Wind

    Most towns offer the traveler a conventional welcome.  Rotary Club
meets on the second Tuesday of the month.  Home of the largest hot dog
stand in southeast Agassiz county.  Population 8125.  Ed's Auto Parts.
Clean fill wanted.  Call before you dig.

    Amherst, Massachusetts, does things its own way. In _House_, Tracy
Kidder calls the town "the kind of place that has a fine public school
system and a foreign policy."  When I cross the Connecticut River on
Route 9, my favorite welcome greets me on the left:

    "This is the land of peace, love, justice and no mercy."

    I had to crane my neck to read the sign.  I always do.  Most welcome
signs sit right on the shoulder, in easy-to-read standard lettering.
This one was painted on the railway trestle over the river.  If the
town has put a more official sign along the highway, I've never
noticed it.  I'm usually too busy trying to place the railway quote.

    I don't intend to trivialize the quote, but it did seem particularly
prescient that Thursday afternoon.  Unlike all my other boomerang
drives into New England this summer, the weather was perfect, although
local weather offices were forecasting rain for Saturday all the way
along the drive.  The rain waited until Sunday morning to fall, which
it did with a vengeance, but first giving us two days of perfect, if
windy, throwing weather.

    Fifty boomerang throwers were about to gather on the throwing
grounds of the kafkaesque University of Massachusetts campus for the
10th Annual USBA National Championships.  I was one of them.  This
isn't bragging.  If you had put up the $50 to go, you could have been
competing as well.  The I got when I found the field that Thursday
evening was the same sense I get upon arriving at a juggling
convention.  Instead of finding a gym full of flying clubs, I got a
field with hovering boomerangs covering it.

    Of course, there's also the camaraderie that comes whenever a
group of people who are into a non-mainstream activity all get
together.  Just about everyone I had met throughout the summer at the
regional tournaments was there.  Moleman sported his new haircut: he
had been growing his hair back all summer, but had it all shaved,
except for a cool inverted-V shape above one ear (sorry, I forgot to
write down which one).  Rob Parkins was unusually subdued that evening
for someone who won every tournament he had entered this summer.  He
had been bragging about how this National would let him finally show
Chet Snouffer who the best thrower in the U.S. was.  We had all heard
it during the summer.  I think Rob, watching Chet calmly juggling a
couple of booms, was tasting reality and wondering if he could get it
with NutraSweet.

    I soon enough met Chet, U.S. champion for the past five years
running.  Chet's been throwing and making boomerangs for some 25 of
his 35 years.  My first boomerang was a Chet Snouffer Sea Breeze, and
is still one of my favorites.  I subscribed to his newsletter, the
Leading Edge, before I joined the USBA.  But I had never met him or
his Ohio contingent of throwers before.

    At a juggling convention, most people don't just walk up to Anthony
Gatto or Michael Moschen and say, "Hi, how's it going?"  Conversely,
few people expect Albert Lucas or Michael Davis to walk up to someone
they don't know and lay a friendly slap on the shoulder.  But as I
walked onto the field to say hello to a couple of throwers I hadn't
seen since the Northampton tournament (BTR #1), this dude with cool
wraparound shades trotted up to me and asked how it was going.

    "Fine.  How are ya," I said, trying to act like a half-decent
thrower.

    "Great.  I'm Gregg Snouffer."

    He looked familiar from Chet's newsletter, but I never would have
recognized him.  Then another dude, with a build not unlike Kirby
Puckett's, walked up, and Gregg introduced his big brother Chet.  Chet
definitely knew who I was, because I wrote him a letter once telling
him he shouldn't deprecate the movie "Bagdad Cafe", since it had
gotten him at least one subscriber, namely me.  Gregg and Chet asked
me if I had met Gary Broadbent, another Ohio thrower, and pointed out
Gary standing next to a bag containing at least 200 boomerangs.

    Gary and I needed about two minutes to establish that we were both
jugglers.  In fact, Gary showed up at the Akron juggling convention in
1990 with his big bag of fun booms, and apparently had people tossing
his short-range indoor booms all over the place.  Gary wanted to show
me the various booms he makes, but I was interested in finding out
about his uncle, Ed Broadbent, the former leader of Canada's New
Democrat political party.  Yes, Ed has thrown boomerangs, and Gary
even showed him how to juggle once.  I don't know if it would make the
world a better place, but it would be a more entertaining one if all
candidates had to demonstrate a useless skill before launching their
campaigns.

    I have a very tenuous connection with Ed, having once shared a house
with the daughter of a labor law professor from Hamilton.  She
remembers frequent Sunday dinners with the Broadbents, where the talk
was always about politics and the kids were expected to keep up.  Next
time I see her I'll have to ask her if Ed ever took the kids to the
field for some throwing.  Anyway, Gregg and Chet were very impressed
with this connection (or they sure acted impressed).  I've always
heard that people from the Midwest can be friendly as all get out, and
these guys lived up to the reputation.  For a 6-time U.S. champion (he
won once in the early 80s before starting his 5-year streak in 1987),
Chet could give a few star jugglers some lessons in dealing with mere
mortals.

    Incidentally, for anyone tracking the boom juggling record, Chet set
it on August 1, catching 480 throws at an Ohio tournament.  For
those who are _really_ interested, he's using his Gel-like jugglers,
two-bladers that travel out 25 to 30 meters and have a decent hover
when they return.  I was amazed when Gel beat the previous record with
his 206 throws (or so) last year, but that feat has been ground to
dust.  Now if only I could get past that barrier of 10.

    So as the sun set, the evening had the relaxed atmosphere one
finds at juggling conventions.  Everyone was checking out new booms,
doing some last-minute carving, wondering how the wind would be the
next two days (dead in the morning, up in the afternoon, predicted
organizer and long-time thrower Larry Ruhf), catching up on the year.
There wasn't too much partying though.  About thirty of the throwers
were hoping to make it on to the two U.S. teams for the '93
International Championship, and their performance during the
tournament could be a deciding factor.  I was in an enviable position
of not having to worry about that too much.  I had spoken with
Stephane Margeurite on the way down about his plans for the '93
Canadian team.  While this year's team would only consist of him and
another thrower, joining forces with two Swedes and two New
Zealanders, next year he wanted to field six throwers to represent the
country.  And since there weren't any Canadian tournaments this year,
and I'm the only Canadian who went to any U.S. tournaments, I'll be on
the team.  But I still wanted to improve my scores for all the events
at this tournament.

    Any similarity between juggling and booms ends, for me at least,
with these tournaments.  I find competing a natural result of the
practicing I've done on my own.  Practice is usually fun, but at a
tournament I have a chance to quantify how I'm doing.  People are
standing on various circles, and can tell you how far you're throwing
in Australian Round.  Folks with stopwatches can tell you, to a
hundredth of a second, how long your throws last, or how quickly
they're coming back.  Most people are very helpful, giving advice on
stance, grip, throw, reading the wind, and the various other factors
that a good thrower needs to know about.  For most of the throwers
I've met, the list that will get drawn up at the end of the day isn't
the most important part of the competition.

    Lessee now.  I went to the final two Hampshire spring conventions,
and hit the last couple of U. Mass conventions.  So since 1988 I made
four trips to Amherst.  This summer alone the tournament has given me
a third excuse for visiting the happy valley.  And I've found out that
while juggling conventions are great ways of meeting people from all
over the place, I've met some good locals at tournaments.  From the
folks at the organic garlic farm, Amy, Laura, and Carlo, I've learned
that the Classe Cafe has changed management (giving it its new name of
the "Class B"), and the place to go for breakfast is Daisy's.  I saw
the Church, a former Wesleyan church on the east side of Amherst (it's
worth the trip alone just to see that other side of the town), that's
been converted to a coop house on the main floor and an architecture
and urban analysis firm upstairs.

    Finally, you know you can call a place a second home when you know
some folks in a band.  Jim Youngblood, the thrower who organized the
tournament that was supposed to be part of the Hot Jazz festival until
its organizers got cold feet, is in real life the lead guitarist of
local Noho band, Who's Kidding Who.  They played a gig at the party
Saturday night, which I bet included a couple of tunes they don't
often play.  One was about boomerangs ("What's an MTA?  Throw it!!")
and another that seemed to be about Moleman and Michael "Gel" Girvin.

    Anyway, I ended up staying at a place Amy was house-sitting (a major
source of housing in the Valley during the summer), and found myself
confronted with a 200-pound Rottweiler named Max.  A 200-pound
Rottweiler named Max who played with balloons, and didn't pop them.
Max and I quickly reached a pact that I'd leave his balloons alone if
he didn't go near my boomerangs, and we got along fine.

    Friday was a perfect day for boomerangs.  The morning fog was
lifting, I stocked up on food and water for the day, and got to the
field around 8:30 in plenty of time to stretch and warm up.  Then I
looked at the schedule.  The events for that day were Doubling,
Juggling, MTA, and Fast Catch.  I had to shift mental gears, and
realize that I was going to get my three worst events over with right
away.

    These events aren't the sort of things I start doing at the start
of a practice.  I usually like to start easy, throwing short range
booms that I can do trick catches with.  Then I work on speed and
longer range.  Then, depending on what I feel like working on, I'll do
one of doubling, juggling, or MTA.  All three events require hard
throws.  When you throw two boomerangs at once you need to double the
power in the throw.  A good juggler throws the boom hard to give it
plenty of hover, and has the stamina to do that time after time.  The
harder you throw an MTA, the higher it will go, and the longer it will
take to come back.

    I fell way short of meeting my goal of improving my record.  In
doubling, I tied my season's worst.  In juggling, I extended my
streak of zeroes.  And I dropped my one good MTA throw, leaving me
with a zero in that event as well.

    Fast Catch gave me my last chance of the day to redeem myself.
Larry's prediction of the wind was dead on.  The winds grew heavier
with the day, and by this time, mid-afternoon, they were blowing fast
catch booms everywhere but back to the thrower.  In warm up I was
testing my beautifully handcrafted Jim Mayfield tri-blader.  While
it's beautiful to watch, it kept getting blown over my head.  I then
took out the ABS Darnell Tri-Fly blank I had been carving the past
two weeks, taped a dime to the bottom of each blade for drag and
control, verified that it was traveling out the required 20 meters,
and found it came right back to me with every throw.  I went with it,
and set a personal best.  My carving job was sloppy enough that it
gave the boom plenty of drag to fight the wind.

    I stayed in that groove Saturday, hitting new personal records in
Australian Round and Accuracy.  I finally threw a boom 50 meters in
Aussie Round.  I figured they were going that far when practicing, but
was happy to see me make a measured throw in competition.  This isn't
necessarily a terrific thing, as Aussie Round rewards points for
catching, accuracy, and distance.  Throwing a boom for 50 meters and
catching it 12 meters from the bullseye, as I did, earns 6 points for
the distance and 4 for the catch.  Throwing it 30 meters and catching
it on the bullseye earns 4 for the catch, only 2 for distance, but 10
points for accuracy.  Some throwers use a Fast Catch boomerang, hoping
to score 14 points on each of 5 throws for 70 points.  If all the
throws are perfect and caught, this strategy can put the thrower in
the top five.  But since Aussie Round is the only event involving
distance, I prefer to take advantage of the distance checkers, and
find out exactly how far I am throwing.  Besides, I don't have a
boomerang that will come back to me five times reliably.

    But my hacked ABS tri-fly did perform in Accuracy.  Two of the
throws came back to kiss the bullseye, and two others landed in the
6-point ring.  My second throw slipped as I threw it, leaving me with
the agonizing thought that if I had focussed a touch more it and
scored a third bullseye I would have tied for third place.  If I need
a reason for competing next year, that'll do.

    The Connecticut valley winds came up during trick catch, blowing me
and a few other throwers out of contention.  But the tournament closed
with Endurance in those same heavy winds, giving me another chance to
work with my ABS clunker.  This is the event where you try to make as
may catches as you can in 5 minutes.  The key in wind is to keep the
boomerang under control.  One errant throw that gives it to the wind
can cost 30 seconds.  I must have dropped a dozen throws during my
five minutes, but I ended up catching 33 of them, give me another
personal best, and also putting me in the top ten for the event.

    Our group finished early, and I walked to another circle to see
how Rob Parkins was handling the wind.  He had thrown another sub-20
round in Fast Catch on Friday, but today the wind was blowing his boom
all over the place.  He was walking, not running, after it, and
constantly dropping it, and ended up making 32 throws.  I never
thought I would beat Parkins in Endurance.  Twice this summer I
watched him break 70 catches.  But he's the kind of guy you have to
give that news to, though, so I did.  No mercy.

    Chet Snouffer won Endurance with 54 throws (he used magic, one of
the spotters in his circle said), and nabbed his 6th consecutive U.S.
championship.  Brother Gregg came in second.  Rob was in the top five,
but he'll have to wait to get his championship.  The top twelve
throwers of the day had a chance to face off in a closed tournament on
Sunday.  I couldn't stay for it, as I used up my reporter's expense
account (supplied by Usenet, of course), but I heard Chet won it as well.

    There wasn't a lot of social throwing going on at the tournament.
For one thing, there wasn't time, since we needed fifteen minutes
before each event to figure out how to handle the wind.  And although
most throwers spend most of their time during an event watching other
people throw, standing in that sun can be exhausting.  However, this
tournament introduced something new to the Nationals: team events.
There were four events, two on Friday, two on Saturday.  The official
purpose of the events, as gleaned from various newsletters, was to
give the two Hamburg-bound USA teams a chance to practice for the
team-oriented internationals.  I think there was an ulterior motive,
though, a seed planted by Gel and Moleman to make us all forget median
scores and placement points, and realize that throwing is primarily a
fun thing to do.

    Each of the team events was a variant of an individual event.  The
most intriguing was Team Super Catch.  An individual Super Catch feat
involves launching an MTA into the stratosphere, throwing a fast-catch
boom at least five times, and catching the MTA on its descent.  Only
about thirty throwers are known to have done this.  No, with my 20
second MTA throws, I'm definitely not one of them.  But the team event
gave everyone a taste of what this involved.  Each of the four players
on the team would throw his MTA, while the other three tried to make
as many catches as possible until he caught it.  Thanks to Bob Quinn's
eleventh hour throw, everyone on our team managed to put some points
on the board, sparing us the ignominy of coming up empty-handed.

    My favorite team event was the final event of Saturday: Team Rang
Relay.  This smells of a Gel creation, but after the well-honed
structure of a USBA tournament, a Gel event is like a shot of garlic
in an Indiana picnic basket.  Eight teams of four raced at once.  The
runners started on the 30 meter line, downwind from the bullseye (this
is important, because one throws upwind).  Each runner has to run with
a boomerang to the center, throw it out at least 30 meters, catch it,
touch ground anywhere within 8 meters of the bullseye, run back to the
30 meter line to tag the next runner.  If a runner misses catching the
first throw, he or she has to throw it once more.  Each runner gets to
do this twice.

    The USBA is searching for events that might be fun for spectators
to watch and the media to cover, thereby attracting more people to the
sport.  When Larry Ruhf announced that Accuracy was starting, he made
a special point of inviting any spectators to go up to the circles and
watch the throwers.  Since one doesn't use long-distance boomerangs or
fast-catch buzzsaws in this event, there was little chance of a
bystander getting hit.  But watching an accuracy event is right up
there with watching golf.

    But the start of Rang Relay, that's excitement.  Eight people take
off on the starting signal and run as fast as they can for 25 meters.
They then come to a dead stop, pick up a pinch of grass, drop it to
gauge the wind, and throw.  In the late afternoon sun, I found the
silhouette of the stopped runners picking up and dropping their grass
surreal, and realized that the smart thing to do was to pick up some
grass before I started running.

    Those Amherst afternoon winds blew as hard as they had been doing
all day, so I had my trusty wind-fighter, a Jim Mayfield Eagle.  Its
range is more in the area of 40 to 50 meters, but I didn't have
anything that wouldn't go just the required 30 meters without dong
unpredictable things in the wind.  On my first throw, it fought back
that wind and came right back to me.

    Unfortunately, my teammates' boomerangs were being scattered all
over the field.  So when I made my second run, anchoring our team,
the seven other teams had already finished.  I was feeling psyched,
and the clock was still ticking, so I poured on the speed anyway.  Got
to the center, felt the wind, and let out one of my best throws of
both days.  That Eagle easily went out 50 meters, and I stopped to
enjoy the show and get in position for a sure catch.

    The Eagle traveled just the way Mayfield said it should.  Low to
the ground most of the way, finally picking up some altitude on the
way back so it could hover back down for the easy catch.  I took a
couple of steps back to the 8 meter line, tagged it, and poured it on
back to the finish line to stop that clock.

    I realized afterwards that I made the final throw of the official
part of the two-day tournament, and it was a throw I could be proud
of.  It may not be headlining at the St Denis Theatre, but it was a
very satisfying way to end the tournament.

    As is the case at any boomerang tournament, there was no public
show.  Instead, Larry Ruhf organized an outdoor picnic in the wind
with barbecue chicken and fresh Happy Valley corn.  After the awards
presentation, where Ruhf forgot to read out Rob Parkins's low scores
from tournaments past, Mike Girvin hosted his 6th Annual Team Gel
Fashion Show.  Words can't do it justice, so I won't try.  Now I know
why the fashion shows are never mentioned in the USBA newsletter.  If
you want to know more, you'll have to go next year.  After the fashion
show, Who's Kidding Who answered the question that had been burning on
my mind for a number of years, namely what you'd get if you crossed
pre-disco, early 70s soul with early 90s rap.

    I imagine the IJA conventions were once like this, probably when
they were held in the same place in Pennsylvania every year, and
everyone knew each other.  A friend of mine went to the '78
convention, which fit in one ballroom in a Holiday Inn in Eugene,
Oregon.  Regional conventions wouldn't fit in one of those these days,
especially with more people doing numbers and needing gym-high
ceilings.  I don't see how the USBA can get as big as the IJA, but
I've been savoring the New England boom tournaments while they're
still manageably small.  Something this much fun can't avoid
attracting more converts.

                            Postscript

    The Open was the final tournament in New England of the season,
so this is my last report for the year.  I've enjoyed writing them,
and appreciate the feedback I've gotten.  As writers often say, any
factual errors are mine.  Which reminds me: Adam Ruhf lost to Eric
Darnell in that Suicide match I covered in BTR #4, but Adam's smile
was bigger at the end, and that's what stuck with me; neither one of
them was particularly upset with my error.  Eric Darnell's won plenty
of tournaments, and Adam will undoubtedly win his share in the future,
so one fun round seemed inconsequential to both of them.

    As some of you have no doubt guessed, the hardest part of writing
these reports wasn't the writing, it was deciding what to leave out.
But if any of you have enjoyed them, and want to read more, there are
two more tournaments scheduled for this year I wouldn't mind
attending: Portland, Oregon, on Sept. 19th, and Dennis Joyce's
traditional Thanksgiving meet in Hampton, Virginia, on October 10th
(hey, it's Thanksgiving in Canada).  So here's the deal.  Send me the
air fare to get to either one of these tournaments, and I'll put a
personally written acknowledgment in the respective report.
-- 
Copyright (C) 1992 by Eric Promislow.  Freely reproducible on
Usenet-like systems.  Reproducible elsewhere by permission only.

-- Eric Promislow            emp@xgml.com            Ottawa, Ontario