Long Numbers Event Prompts Call For Changes

by Tom Sparough

Due to reasons obvious to people in the audience, the IJA Numbers

Championship, sponsored by Planters this year, will be a separately scheduled event next year. In Denver it was combined on an evening bill with the Juniors Championship, and the time allotted for both events was taken up by the numbers alone.

"The only complaint was that it took too long," said Craig Barnes, championships director. Barnes said next year the numbers will be held as an event by itself.

No existing records were broken, but new ones were set in team numbers, since this was the first year they were held. Two regularly performing jugglers, Barry Friedman and Frank Olivier, came out on top in the balls and clubs events (see results below). Bob Mendelsohn and Owen Morse teamed up for first place in the rings division. .

Olivier and Mendelsohn won the individual balls and rings events. No one could manage to juggle six clubs to qualify for that event, so it was not held.

Olivier told Juggler's World after the competition that "winning did something to me that I didn't like." He asked, "Can you really say that someone is better than another?" It was the strangest form of energy he has ever received from a crowd. "I had more fun than most people and I still got overwhelmed by it."