Juggling on Hallowed Hardwood  

by Bill Giduz, editor

 

Kareem Abdul Jabbar made points in UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, but he never handled a basketball like Bob Nickerson. That's Nickerson - "with the knickers on!"

 

Nickerson, a punny jocular juggler, dribbles four basketballs simultaneously, and can dribble five small balls with a taps through his legs! Not many of coach John Wooden Bruin basketball heroes could ever learn to do that!

 

Entering the IJA championships for the 10th consecutive year, Nickerson's delightfully eccentric skill was an appropriate part of an event that covered juggling from water glasses to sombreros...

 

... Two days later and the inside of my head still feels like moss. The blur of the past juggling week a coast away can't be neatly sorted into sentences and stories. So we begin with Bob Nickerson.

 

He looms above many other festival experiences that cross my memory like a confused, over-ripe five club cascade.

 

Festival-lag. The week is a whirl­wind of images, many set in the Pauley Pavilion dome with its constant day / night artificial light. Lousy lights for photography, but good enough to see jugglers gathered there to make the UCLA hardwood their own hallowed ground.

 

And after mixing and mingling in the precious, emotional joy of common cause and kindred soul, most were exhausted.

 

Tired because you add to the slope of The Hill a 12 hour day on your feet juggling and fellowshipping. One of the many mathematicians present figured that his eight hours of club passing daily added up to 16 tons of lifting!

Juggling festivals are not like normal vacations. But there was no question among jugglers that the 43rd IJA festival was the right place to be. You could tell it the minute you descended The Ten Thousand Steps onto the Pauley floor. The sight of clubs flying everywhere and banners of affiliates and prop makers built the excitement.

 

One old-timer found it overwhelming. John Boettcher was at the first IJA festival in 1948 as an 18-year-old, and hadn't been back since. "I can't conceive of anything like this," he said. "Eddy Tierney did five clubs at that first gathering and no one could believe it."

 

Five clubs at UCLA hardly raised an eyebrow... unless they were in the hands of young Jason Garfield, who whipped them into solid back crosses with astounding precision.

 

But Boettcher and other present veterans like Art Jennings, Eddie Johnson, George and Bill Barvin, Nick Gatto, and Phineas Indritz had their own tricks to trade. Boettcher told about his old tramp act twist on tossing a ball into the top of a top hat. He said, "I let the ball come out the trap door a couple of times, then locked the trap door for the next throw and took a foam ball out of my mouth instead."

 

A place like that where ideas are thick as stars abruptly jump-starts your creativity. Besides 30-plus workshops on manipulative skills and performance, each stroll around the pavilion floor revealed "neat things." In one corner is Francois Chotard, spinning a Guinness record nine balls on Freddie Krueger -like finger extensions.

Over there Chadd Lowe claims he can spin anything on his finger, and proceeds to pudiddlelle a suitcase, then a machete, than a wheelbarrow!

 

Not only new things to watch, but new things to try. This inaugural year of The IJA Games proved to be a big hit. Different activities on four separate areas of the pavilion floor involved just about everyone in something.

 

Down at the other end of the floor, serious practitioners dueled in the formal numbers challenge to test the ultimate limits of their ability. Allen Knutson and Dave Morton passing 12 balls and Owen Morse and Jon Wee with 10 clubs set IJA team records in the process.

 

Two IJA and Guinness records were set in joggling. Team Exerball (Albert Lucas, Owen Morse, Tuey Wilson and Jon Wee) found the third time a charm in breaking the four minute mile relay. Despite a drop in the third leg, they flashed to a 3:57.38 in front of a large gallery of peers and reporters. Morse later set a new solo mark for the 400-meter run with a time of 57:32.