History of IFPA
Footbag was invented in 1972 in Oregon City, Oregon, by John Stalberger and Mike Marshall. In 1979, Stalberger and Ted Huff formed the National Hacky Sack Association (NHSA) which became the first official organizing body for the sport. The NHSA sanctioned and/or sponsored footbag tournaments in the U.S., including the "Footbag Nationals" which evolved into the World Footbag Championships, an event that is has been running annually since 1980.
In 1984, the NHSA ceased to exist, and the World Footbag Association (WFA) was formed in Golden, Colorado, by Bruce Guettich and Greg Cortopassi. The WFA started as a governing body, but soon evolved into a touring team, magazine publisher, and footbag product retailer (via a mail-order catalog business). WFA formed the International Footbag Advisory Board (IFAB) to oversee the official Rules of Footbag Sports (the printed rule-book for the sport of footbag). WFA also took on the task of running the World Footbag Championships from 1984 through 1993.
The World-Wide Footbag Foundation, Inc., was incorporated as a California non-profit corporation for public benefit in 1994 by Steve Goldberg, Julie Symons, Brent Welch, and David Butcher. That year, WWFF became the official host of the World Footbag Championships which moved from Colorado to San Francisco and Menlo Park, California. From then on, the World Footbag Championships began moving from city to city as the official WWFF sanctioning process was put in place to provide a set of selection criteria and to decide which host city would be accepted each year. Also in 1994, the WWFF created and began hosting the Footbag WorldWide Information Service.
The IFAB continued under the auspices of the WFA for several years, and WFA continued to serve as the official sanctioning body for footbag events during that time.
In 2000, the WWFF changed its name to the International Footbag Players' Association, Inc. (IFPA) to better reflect its mission as a player-run volunteer organization and international governing body for the sport of footbag. At that time, the IFAB (which had been the rules body for the sport) reincorporated as a committee of the IFPA and was renamed the International Footbag Committee (IFC). The IFC took over responsibility for defining requirements for IFPA sanctioning and recognition of official footbag competition formats. An IFC rule book is available in several languages.
IFPA was granted provisional 501(c)(3) status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in early 2001, and was granted permanent charitable status under 501(c)(3) as a sports organization in early 2006.
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