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Archives for August 23, 2013

Sebastian Brock joins Duncan Crew!

August 23, 2013 By Rafael Matsunaga

2010 U.S. National Champion Sebastian Brock was just announced as the newest member of Duncan Crew!

A top-level competitor for several years, and boasting a very unique style, Sebby is the first member of the recently disbanded Team SPYY to find a new home.

This is the official announcement on the Duncan Toys Facebook page:

Please join us in welcoming the newest member of Duncan Crew USA… Sebastian “Sebby” Brock!

One of the most humble yet intense yo-yo players in the USA, Sebby is as competitive as he is innovative and carries a few 1A titles such 2010 U.S. National Yo-Yo Champion, 2010 European Yo-Yo Champion (open) and has even placed 2nd place at the World Yo-Yo Contest ! We couldn’t be more stoked to have a great guy like Sebby be a part of Duncan Crew Worldwide and are beyond excited to be able to call him a Duncan Yo-Yo Professional!

Sebby was also responsible for the popular Alternative Freestyle Invitational at the last two editions of the World Yo-yo Contest, and we foresee great things coming from this new partnership!

Filed Under: Players

Fixed Friday: Fixed Axle Championship of All the World!

August 23, 2013 By Ed Haponik

Well, first off I guess we have to apologize for last week. The World YoYo Contest came and went, and afterward neither Drew nor I were in a position to do a coherent column. Actually, I’m STILL not, but I promise you’re not gonna care! This week, we’ve got the sweet, sweet footage from our annual fixed axle free-for-all, the Fixed Axle Championship of All the World!

2013 marks the 5th year of the contest’s modern incarnation, which previously existed as the Fixed Axle Challenge (presented by several different companies, most notably Russell) before being demoted to “Fixed Axle Breakout” in 2007. I was at that 2007 breakout, put on by Ben McPhee, having just started going hard on No Jives over the previous year. Like 3 other dudes ended up showing. Ben helped me out with my moons, we did some silly “challenge” tricks, and called it a day. I spent the next two years gravitating more completely into the swirling vortex that is fixed axle play, and by 2009 I had put out some videos and was volunteered to run the breakout if no one else wanted it. Fixed axle seems like skating (or any number of weird niche activities) in that it goes through alternating periods of popularity and dormancy. During the advent of bearing yo-yo’s in the late 90’s, for example there was a staunch and stalwart fixed axle resistance movement led by Steve Brown, Chuck Short, David Capurro, and Jason Tracy. By 2004, there was again enough interest to generate the classic video “Fixed Axle Fun: Unlimited” at Worlds.

When the 2009 breakout was attended by Drew, along with Joey Fleshman, Jeff Coons, Shawn Fumo, Justin Weber, John Bot, Andrew Robinson, Dana Bennett, and others, it seemed fixed axle was due for another peak. At the very least, we felt we had enough radical players to have a sweet little best trick contest. After a few minutes of deliberation on format, Drew suggested that it be peer judged and (I THINK) it was Shawn Fumo who offered “Why not vote with our shoes?”

And so began what has become (in my humble opinion) the best tradition at the World Yo-Yo Contest and the most fairly (and amusingly) judged contest format in the history of yo-yoing. Drew beat out Jeff Coons for the win in 2009, and we [somewhat] jokingly hailed him as the Fixed Axle Champion of All the World. Sadly there was no trophy that year to commemorate his win. The next year, we took it a bit more seriously. We established trick criteria for the 4-round, bracket-style contest, and I commissioned a legitimately cool, playable trophy from yo-yoer/woodworker James Buffington. Randy Jansen took it home, edging out another talented field. Colin Leland, having just started TMBR, was the obvious choice to craft the 2011 trophy. I’m not sure anyone expected him to bring it home with him, winning the first Fixed Axle Championship of the modern era on the main stage instead of a salon. Last year, I caught a series of lucky breaks to win the raddest trophy ever (also by Colin), edging out a late-entry Ben Conde in the finals as he tried a trick which defied either description… or any likelihood of being hit. But, as the video will show, Big Ben has no problem going back to that well. Honestly, I don’t think anyone gets nearly as excited about who happens to win as they do about the joyful atmosphere and crazy-rad tricks… which is just as it should be.

Major thanks to Drew and Steve, who kept the dialog rolling on stage, to Ben and Nate, who’s first-ever head-to-head fixed axle freestyle battle was nothing short of spectacular, to Iron Mod Champion Adam Reeder who saved me with a sweet trophy at the last minute, and to Ben McPhee who took great photos of the whole affair. It’s really awesome to do this contest year after year. Everyone wants to throw down great tricks, but it’s almost as if the competitors are more stoked by seeing their friends crush it than by doing so themselves. I think part of that is a product of having everyone laughing and interacting on stage together, but it’s also a testimony to the chill and joyful mindset endemic to fixed axle play. (At least that’s what I’m going with.)

Voting with shoes is funny, but some of the Fixed Axle competitors need to invest in some Odor Eaters. Just sayin’. -Steve

Filed Under: Fixed Friday Tagged With: 2013 world yoyo contest, ed haponik, fixed friday

Gentry Stein – Shutter

August 23, 2013 By Steve Brown

YoYoFactory is releasing Gentry Stein’s new Shutter yoyo next week, and today they’ve released a solid new video to promote the release.

Gentry is in top form here, and it’s great to see the Shutter in action. Don’t forget to enter our Shutter Giveaway…we’re giving away three Shutters to lucky winners!

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: featured, gentry stein, shutter, video, yoyofactory

YoYoFactory Shutter Release & Giveaway

August 23, 2013 By Steve Brown

***CONTEST IS CLOSED! WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH***

Win A YoYoFactory Shutter

YoYoFactory’s newest release, the Shutter, is the third signature model for Gentry Stein and if early response from people who tried one at the 2013 World YoYo Contest is any indication, it’s well on its way to being the top metal release of the year.

Since everyone is so stoked on this yoyo, we begged a few off YoYoFactory and we’re going to give them away!

We’ve got three different colors of the Shutter, and three ways to win! Creativity will be rewarded!

YoYoFactory Shutter
YoYoFactory Shutter

1. Red & Black Shutter – Follow @yoyonewsblog on Twitter, and post a haiku about the Shutter. (Remember, a haiku is 5 syllables / 7 syllables / 5 syllables). Tag with #yoyonews and #yoyofactory

YoYoFactory Shutter
YoYoFactory Shutter

2. Blue Shutter – Follow @yoyonews on Instagram, and post a picture of your favorite YoYoFactory yoyo. Tag with #yoyonews and #yoyofactory

YoYoFactory Shutter
YoYoFactory Shutter

3. Violet/Blue Shutter – Like YoYoNews on Facebook, and share this post on your wall.

Enter as often as you like, and enter all three ways if you want, but this is no lucky draw…we’ll be rewarding creativity and ingenuity!

Contest starts now, and runs until Friday, September 6th. Winners will be announced on Monday, September 9th.

Good luck!

Filed Under: Giveaway Tagged With: contest, featured, gentry stein, giveaway, shutter, yoyofactory

Goodbye, Orlando

August 23, 2013 By Rafael Matsunaga

I have fond memories of the World YoYo Contest stage at the Rosen Plaza Hotel. I competed there in 1A, 5A, and Combined divisions, I practiced there late at night to hide my tricks from my biggest rival and good friend Makoto Numagami, I faced public humiliation (and fame) at the Wheel of Penalty, I earned my World Title there ten years ago, and I was awarded National Master on that stage.

2013 was the last of fourteen years when the World YoYo Contest was held in Orlando. In many ways, the contest’s history throughout those years has influenced my own, and the development of yoyoing as a sport owes much of its current state to the Orlando era.

My own yoyo career started in 2000, up until that time, the yoyo was no more than a toy for me. That was when I came upon this clip:

The 2000 World YoYo Contest was the first one held in Orlando, thanks to Gregory Cohen’s effort to save the event after a near disastrous 1999 contest in Honolulu — a symbolic end of the late 90’s boom.

That clip video got me instantly hooked. Paul Escolar, Kohta Watanabe, Hidemasa Senba, and the 2004/2013 AP World Champion Tomiyuki Watanabe were all there.

A very important addition was made to the contest structure in 2000: the X division. In 1999, counterweight play was introduced by Steve Brown, Hironori Mii got second place at that year’s World Yo-yo Contest 1A division playing offstring, you can see Doc Pop introducing some Mobius, and Rick Wyatt throwing some 3A in the clip above. The X division, then judged by the contestants themselves, marked the recognition of the new styles as a developing force.

The contest was held at Universal Studios, outside, in the merciless summer Orlando weather. Just walking outside for a couple of minutes in Orlando is a torture, but in 2000, the entire contest was held in the Florida heat, humidity, and rain. Thankfully, that was the first and last time that happened, and the contest found a new home next year: the Rosen Plaza.

From 2001 to 2013, the Rosen Plaza Hotel, in Orlando’s overly-touristic International Drive, was a yoyo haven for three days a year. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by other yoyo players for 72 hours. During the other 362 days of the year, you were the oddball yo-yo player, but during Worlds in Orlando, it felt like the World’s population was composed solely of fellow players.

Having a contest inside also meant perfect conditions for yoyoing, leading to an exponential increase in trick difficulty on the stage. But 2001 also set the precedent for the Artistic Performance division. Yu Kawada, the previous year’s 1A winner stunned the crowd by focusing on the performance aspect of his routine rather than going technical. He would not win 1A in 2001, but his freestyle inspired the creation of the AP division the next year. A division he would win himself in 2006 and 2013.

Note the almost complete lack of sponsors in the background. The scene would not recover so easily from the burst of the previous yoyo bubble.

My own first appearance at the World YoYo Contest was in 2002, competing in 1A, when compulsories were still in place. My first participation would end rather soon, missing Pop ‘n Fresh twice in a row. The judges for that trick were my now editor Steve Brown, and my current colleague at the IYYF board of directors, Hironori Mii. “Try again next year” — were Steve’s words as I climbed down from the little compulsories stage disappointed with my performance.

I would come back the next year, for sure. 2003 was another breakthrough year for the World YoYo Contest and for myself. That was the first year the fruits of the X Division would be reaped. After three successful and very popular showings in the “extreme” division, 3A, 4A, and 5A would finally be recognized as independent divisions, each awarding a new World YoYo Champion.

That would set the general format of the World YoYo Contest to this date. Another big change came in 2007, when compulsory tricks were replaced by one-minute freestyles, both in order to better evaluate the players as freestyle performers and to save the judges from the tedious job of watching the same tricks for hours. As 2013 has shown us, however, the system does not scale too well, and some adjustments are being worked on for the next editions of the contest in order to prevent the day-long preliminaries torture for the judges.

An interesting tidbit that took place in Orlando was the Combined Division. Held from 2006 to 2009, the division’s goal was to find out which player was the most proficient in all divisions. As the results clearly show, Shinji Saito was clearly better than everyone else — in addition to being nearly unbeatable in 2A — taking the award in all four instances of that division. The Combined Division was also the first to offer cash prizes at the World YoYo Contest.

The experiments and improvements made to the contest in Orlando set a solid foundation upon which the World YoYo Contest can build and grow. Worlds is now mature enough to take new steps, and advance further into a bigger and brighter future.

The 2013 edition was in some ways a fitting first step into that future. This was the biggest diversity ever among the top places in all divisions, with Hungary (János Karancz), Singapore (Christopher Chia), Mexico (Luis Enrique), Taiwan (Tuan Chih-Min and Who Theather), and of course Japan and United States all represented among the top three in different divisions, a sign of a healthy, growing, and competitive scene. The perfect scenario for the World YoYo Contest to set sail.

Next year, Worlds will be held in Prague, Czech Republic — the first edition under the management of the newly-formed International YoYo Federation — marking its first departure from the United States since the the first edition of its modern freestyle format in 1992.

Between doubt and excitement, the consensus is that the World YoYo Contest will never be the same. That’s probably right, and that’s also a good thing. The 2013 World YoYo Contest was not the same as the first contest in Orlando, it’s better in all aspects, much was learned, and all the experience from all these years will be carried on to Prague, then to Tokyo in 2015, and all Worlds editions to come.

The Orlando era will always be remembered as the time when we discovered what we wanted in a yoyo contest, when we figure out how to make it happen, and worked to make it happen. And none of it would have happened without the yearly efforts of one man, who turned the contest’s uncertain future into a solid present, and bright future.

Thank you, Greg Cohen.

Thank you, Orlando.

Filed Under: Contests Tagged With: greg cohen, iyyf, orlando, world yo-yo contest, worlds

Eric Tran-Ton – Take 2

August 23, 2013 By Steve Brown

Eric Tran-Ton is just entirely too damn good, and this new video proves it. Also be sure to check out his 1A and 3A freestyles from 2013 Worlds…the last trick from his 3A freestyle was the banger of the day!

Yoyo used is the new TRE by Werrd.

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: eric tran-ton, tre, video, Werrd

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