History
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, modern flying discs had become a popular pastime in the United States, developing into to various disciplines such as double disc court, guts, ultimate, disc golf, and freestyle. At the time, most disc players were overall players, participating in all the various disciplines. Freestyle began as a hobby among many players, such as Victor Malafronte and John "Z" Weyand, trying to perform more complex trick catches and throws. Eventually, freestyle developed into its own discipline, with the first freestyle event occurring in the 1974 Canadian Open Frisbee Championships, Toronto, Canada.
One of the earliest distinctly freestyle disc maneuver was the tip, the act of quickly pressing fingers on the bottom of the disc to maintain or alter its position without catching the disc or letting it fall to the ground. Tipping first began in the early 70s, becoming more popular and refined by 1975. The tip, according to some histories, eventually led to the nail delay, considered by many to be the beginning of modern freestyle.
The invention of the nail delay is disputed, but its first tournament appearance occurred in 1975 when Freddie Haft performed the delay in the first U.S. freestyle pairs event in Rochester, NY. The nail delay involves balancing the disc on the fingernail while the disc continues to spin. This technique allows freestylers to change the flight path of the disc and perform numerous balletic and technical maneuvers such as restricted pulls, holds, turnovers, and shoots.
The pinnacle of freestyle as a commercial and popular venture was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Wham-O sponsored major tournament circuits culminating in the Rose Bowl, an overall event with a prominent freestyle component. Experienced players would collect points in smaller tournaments to win a spot in the Rose Bowl. Famous appearances include freestyle legends like Joey Hudoklin, Donnie Rhodes, Bill Wright, and Jens and Irwin Valasquez. By 1981, Wham-O changed management and pulled its funding from freestyle. Subsequently, the growth of freestyle severely declined with play mostly limited to Americans introduced to the sport in its first two decades.
By the late 1990s, freestyle seemed to be in decline as few new players began playing. By the mid 2000s, however, the sport experienced a resurgence of growth in Europe, South America, and Japan. The cause of this resurgence is debated, but most attribute the growth to Paganello (a large, Italian ultimate tournament that sponsored a popular freestyle event), the impact of touring American players like Jens and Irwin Valasquez as well as Tom Leitner and Sune Wentzel (as part of a Nike tour), and a popular Nike commercial featuring two leading American freestylers, Dave Murphy and Dave Lewis. Today freestyle has a renewed popularity in the United States, as jammers across the country seek to emulate prodigy Emma Kahle (aka M-Maw), as well as in Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, Israel and Colombia.
Read more about this topic: Flying Disc Freestyle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)