San Francisco Chosen as Host to 23rd Annual World Footbag Championships

The International Footbag Players' Association (IFPA) has chosen San Francisco as the host for the 2002 World Footbag Championships, August 5-11, 2002. This is the 23rd year of this event, which is a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of San Francisco. IFPA is a non-profit corporation, promoting footbag as a healthy alternative sport targeted at youths as a drug-free athletic activity. See footbag.org for more info.

The 23rd annual World Footbag Championships will take place this summer, August 5-11, 2002, in San Francisco, California.

The event is a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of San Francisco, and is presented by the International Footbag Players' Association, a non-profit corporation working towards the recognition of footbag as an Olympic sport.

Footbag (also known by the brand name, Hacky Sack) is a competitive sport, with two main competition formats: freestyle and net.

Freestyle footbag is much like figure skating or skateboarding, where players perform difficult sequences of tricks with a footbag, in choreographed routines judged by a panel of experts. Freestyle finals will be in the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Saturday, August 10th, and is expected to be a sensational, standing-room-only show. (Last year's World Championships freestyle finals were in Theater Artaud in San Francisco, and the event proved exquisitely entertaining to packed, sold-out theater.)

Footbag net is a more traditional competition format, similar to tennis or two-person volleyball. Footbag net is played with a very small 32-panel ball on a grass badminton court, with a 5-foot net. Players set and spike in unbelievable aerial moves over the net, very similar to the Asian sport of Takraw.

Footbag is played in over 30 countries world-wide, and this event will attract players from the United States, Canada, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and possibly other countries.

Invented in the United States in 1972 by John Stalberger and Mike Marshall, footbag is an alternative American sport that has spread world-wide.

Much more information on footbag, and details about the World Footbag Championships, are available on the IFPA's website, http://www.footbag.org/

Contact Chris Ott, Marketing Director of IFPA, at chris@footbag.org or at 707-576-8145, or the World Footbag Championships organizers at worlds@footbag.org, or Lisa McDaniel, local coordinator, at 510-525-9178.

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IFPA, Inc., is a non-profit corporation, promoting footbag as an alternative, healthy sport for youth and adults alike, promoting drug-free athletics and peace through play.