The case for juggling as sport

 

The ultimate human achievement in juggling will always be its presentation as an entertainment art. Someone who both masters the skills and presents them to the public in an entertaining fashion deserves a round of applause and a decent paycheck.

 

The IJA celebrates this height-of-the-art achievement in its U.S. Nationals, Juniors and Teams Championships, all of which are judged through a combination of scores for technical prowess and presentation skills. But why is it that technical juggling without accompanying entertainment is not generally recognized as an athletic endeavor in its own right?

 

Watching Olympic coverage on TV prompted that thought. In a short segment on events surrounding the event, a street entertainer was filmed juggling chain saws. Appreciative of the coverage, I was nonetheless miffed that the media invariably presents juggling as colorful entertainment, rather than as athletics.

 

Aren't the skills displayed by Albert Lucas in his discipline in the U.S. Nationals as legitimately athletic as those of Mary Lou Retton in gymnastics? Yet Lucas is recognized as an entertainer by the world at large, while Retton gets acclaim as an athlete.

 

Herein lies a golden opportunity for growth and development of the IJA and the popularity of juggling in general. It's time to define juggling as a sport.

 

Almost all of the trappings are in place. The unabridged version of Webster's Dictionary carries two definitions for sport. Juggling qualifies easily under the first: "any activity or experience that gives enjoyment or recreation; pastime; diversion." The second definition introduces our shortcoming to this point, to wit: "such an activity requiring more or less vigorous bodily exertion and carried on according to some traditional form or set of rules... " Any juggler can tell you about the vigorous exertion. But there are not now nor have there traditionally been any rules for juggling.

 

If the goal of the IJA  is to promote juggling, it is leaving a large segment of the population out of its mission. Those are the multitudes of jugglers who enjoy the athletic side of the skill without caring to present it as a performing art. After a certain point, association with the IJA provides little positive feedback for the athletic practice of juggling. Without a system for measuring advancement, or a competitive forum for judging technical skill against others, many jugglers lose interest and move on to other diversions.

 

The purely athletic contests in place now - numbers and joggling - partially address this concern. Athletic skills are also promoted in convention workshops, but unless a technical juggler is either very fast on his or her feet with three balls or very consistent with at least five clubs or seven objects, there is no forum in which to test those new skills.

 

A great deal more can be done. The difficulties of creating something (athletic competitions) from nothing (the status quo) are enormous. Mainly they center around creation of a competitive format, agreement on a common language to describe tricks, dissemination of the system, and finding the manpower (or judge-power) to run it.

 

But in this sports-oriented society, juggling's recognition as a new-age sport could lead it to levels of public participa­tion we can barely imagine today. Dream if you will of a Dick Buttons-type commen­tator at televised coverage of the 1992 Olympics.. . "Next up for England is Minny Bahls. Look at that precision with five balls behind the back, I bet they're peaking within two inches of each other. Oops! A little shaky in the transition to the shower... It could cost her a tenth. But look at how easily she moves directly from the shower into a floor bounce! And here comes the pirouette to end it... A perfect catch! That's just beautiful! Look at her smile! And listen to the crowd, they know it was good!"

 

As in gymnastics and skating, juggling competitions could be broken into compulsory and freestyle exercises. To involve even more people, and provide a structure for advancement and reward from an early stage, several levels of competition should be established. With everyone performing the same compulsory moves, judging can be fair and should not be difficult. An anything-goes freestyle demonstration would be trickier to judge, but no more so than under the current structure. Leave music and costuming out of both portions of the competition. To keep from clogg­ing the system with the same winners, make it mandatory for competitors to advance to the next level after finishing high in competition at the level below.

 

The possibility for team competition exists as well. Can you imagine turning to the sports page and finding rankings for the Big Ten Conference in juggling!?

Considering that juggling is the most visually captivating of all human exercises, there's no reason to see why it can't capture the public's imagination as a popular sport.

 

And where does this leave the U.S. Nationals? In a more exalted and respected position than ever, I believe, as a greater number of people become attuned to the athletic difficulty of juggling and begin to realize how truly difficult it is to take this infinitely complex sport and create with it a beautiful art!