Frisbee player freestyles on Quad
Kalen Ponche
Issue date: 9/25/03 Section: TruLife
Each day, Kirksville resident T.J. Barton, 49, wakes up and heads off to the Quad.
Santana's soulful tunes float through the air from Barton's radio as he sprays silicon on the back of his Frisbee disc.
Standing up, Barton spins the Frisbee in the air and bounces it on his fingernail before making it roll across his chest and catching it with the opposite hand.
Barton, a freestyle Frisbee player, is considered a Frisbee grand master and practices every day for a few hours to hone his skills.
Unlike traditional, ultimate or golf Frisbee, freestyle Frisbee involves doing tricks, including some that take lots of practice.
"The hardest thing about freestyle is that it's boring," Barton said. "You have to do the same thing 100,000 times to get it, but once you do it's really cool."
People can see Barton practicing on the Quad Monday to Friday. While many have seen him, few stop to ask what he is doing or to throw the Frisbee around, although some have interacted with him in other ways.
"I drew a sketch of him for my drawing class because he was doing lots of crazy positions you don't see everyday," freshman Lindsay Koski said.
Barton shows off his freestyle
Frisbee skills at demonstrations and at tournaments. He said competitive freestyle tournaments are similar to gymnastics or skating competitions in that freestyle performances are done to music and are graded on variety, unity of play and difficulty of tricks.
"There's definitely an artistic element to it," Barton said.
Tournaments take place worldwide and throughout the United States. Competitors can participate in a variety of categories including solo, open, mixed pairs, men's and women's divisions.
Competitors usually pick out music in advance and choreograph a routine with their partner before the competition. This doesn't always happen, however.
"You try to put a routine together," Barton said. "Ideally, you have one. If you don't, you go [to the tournament] and find someone else without a routine and put something together. You never do really well with that, but you get to be around the best players."
Santana's soulful tunes float through the air from Barton's radio as he sprays silicon on the back of his Frisbee disc.
Standing up, Barton spins the Frisbee in the air and bounces it on his fingernail before making it roll across his chest and catching it with the opposite hand.
Barton, a freestyle Frisbee player, is considered a Frisbee grand master and practices every day for a few hours to hone his skills.
Unlike traditional, ultimate or golf Frisbee, freestyle Frisbee involves doing tricks, including some that take lots of practice.
"The hardest thing about freestyle is that it's boring," Barton said. "You have to do the same thing 100,000 times to get it, but once you do it's really cool."
People can see Barton practicing on the Quad Monday to Friday. While many have seen him, few stop to ask what he is doing or to throw the Frisbee around, although some have interacted with him in other ways.
"I drew a sketch of him for my drawing class because he was doing lots of crazy positions you don't see everyday," freshman Lindsay Koski said.
Barton shows off his freestyle
Frisbee skills at demonstrations and at tournaments. He said competitive freestyle tournaments are similar to gymnastics or skating competitions in that freestyle performances are done to music and are graded on variety, unity of play and difficulty of tricks.
"There's definitely an artistic element to it," Barton said.
Tournaments take place worldwide and throughout the United States. Competitors can participate in a variety of categories including solo, open, mixed pairs, men's and women's divisions.
Competitors usually pick out music in advance and choreograph a routine with their partner before the competition. This doesn't always happen, however.
"You try to put a routine together," Barton said. "Ideally, you have one. If you don't, you go [to the tournament] and find someone else without a routine and put something together. You never do really well with that, but you get to be around the best players."