LeiOut! A small but mighty freestyle team brought freestyle to the LeiOut Beach Ultimate tournament in Huntington Beach, January 16-19. Demos, jams, new connections — and big interest from players who had never seen freestyle before. Read the full story…

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Friday, the group met near the Pier in Huntington Beach. The team connected on structure for the demo and had a lovely jam. While jamming, we met several college students from Sacramento and spent an hour with them learning to tip and do trick catches and nail delay. Another group of about seven middle school boys from Seattle also joined and we spent some time teaching them to tip and delay as well. The team filmed parts of the jam as well as the teaching session and posted a promotional video using the footage.

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Saturday was opening day of the Ultimate tournament — we set up at LeiOut Tournament Central and enjoyed several soft sand quick catch jams between ultimate games during the course of the afternoon. Daniel hooked up with the Guts players and Amy, Will and Lisa talked to the Ultimate players and had small jams on the sidelines. Will and Daniel used the asphalt section of the beach right next to center court to hold periodic mini-jams to create some interest. At the end of the day we had a shredding jam on the hard pack with local jammers Jim Dodelson and world champion Dave Lewis. As the sun went down and ultimate players happened by, we also were able to connect with them and show some trick catches — there was a lot of enthusiasm and interest. Most had never seen freestyle before and some didn’t know it was even a sport.

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On Sunday, we set up on the main field and we were able to get in some long throws with trick catches and a short jam with lots of good co-ops. This pretty shreddy warm-up demo was filmed by the LeiOut videographer on the soft sand. During the halftime of the highest seed ultimate bracket game, our team performed a 3 minute routine with several long throws and shorter co-op sequences in front of a crowd of about 300 to 400 ultimate players, many of whom had never seen freestyle before. Amy had an amazing body roll sequence, Will hit several spinning catches, Lisa got a nice combo ending in a crow, and Daniel was able to pull off a huge layout catch in front of the crowd. The spectators were very fired up!

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After that game ended, the Guts finals were played on the main field (Daniel’s team also made — and won — the finals, which made him highly visible at the event!). After the demo we talked to players from Boston, Memphis, and Kansas City. During the Guts finals after the Ultimate finals, Amy and Lisa jammed on the sidelines which gave us the opportunity to teach several women how to perform body rolls and trick catches. It was a great opportunity to share and talk about our sport. Tournament Director Grant Boyd came by immediately after the finals to congratulate us and enthusiastically stated that he would like us to have a freestyle tournament as part of LeiOut next year.

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Local shredders Danny Cameranesi and Jim Dodelson joined us on Sunday and, after all the events were over, we made our way out to the hard pack for another beautiful sunset jam, again taking opportunities here and there to teach ultimate players and connect with folks walking by. A promising young jammer named Rob joined the last jam of the day. He came in knowing how to delay, brush, and kick — and he shredded! We had a small audience (10–20 people) of remaining Ultimate players who were getting fired up by both our big moves as well as Rob’s impressive repertoire.

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The FPA will be working with organizers to possibly host a beach freestyle tournament at LeiOut next year. Events may include freestyle competition, an airbrush race, and more freestyle demos featured during the finals of the ultimate tournament. Thanks to Amy Shiller, Lisa Hunrichs, Daniel O’Neill, and William Ho for spreading the love of our sport!