Large Field of Individual Competitors Includes Familiar Faces

 

Greg Kennedy emerged as the gold medal winner in the Individual Championships, but the crowd was royally entertained by the rest of the field as well.

 

Silver medallist Jay Gilligan said he entered not to try to win, but to show some new material he has developed. His act was very dance oriented, and included a brash character in heavy eye makeup manipulating a cane and ring and balls. "Tonight is just because I have some new tricks and it's fun, there's nothing technical in it," he said.

 

Gilligan, 19, has attended IJA festivals since 1988. He won once each in the juniors and teams, and this was his second silver in the individuals. He also owns a host of gold medals for team numbers events. For the past year he has been a member of the team, blink. That group took the month of July off, allowing Jay to attend both the IJA festival and a unicycle convention in Iowa.

 

Bronze medallist Brian Patz was juggling in his seventh IJA championship event. He did five and seven balls, then three boxes, five and seven rings and three to five clubs, accompanied by an upbeat jazz tune written for him by a friend. The 20-year-old won five previous medals, including three silvers and two other bronze. As usual, Patz had a big cheering section in the audience. The entire seven-person Patz family has attended nine straight IJA festivals to cheer on their favorites, and this year they were joined in the audience by several members of his father's family who live in Rapid City and nearby Sturgis.

 

Brian is a part-time business student in Albuquerque. He worked in Japan with Sem and Teresa Abraham for six weeks last year, and has now returned there to work in a cabaret show in a five-star hotel near Tokyo.

 

Other competitors in the Individual championships were: Reid Belstock, Jeffrey Daymont, Jon Poppele, Scott Sorenson and Dr. Stardust (Gil Pontius). 

 

Reid Belstock has been a professional entertainer based out of Denver for the past five years. The 23-year-old did a short act with three and four balls, as well as one and two diabolos. Just getting into the championships was a victory for Belstock. "I've been wanting to get into the seniors for the past six years and never got out of the preliminaries," he said. "I'm happy to have gotten over that hump now."

 

Known in performance back home as "the Jerry Lewis of Juggling," he appears as a geeky, nerdy, high-pitched character.  His comic presentations are based on physical comedy and gimmick juggling, including prarfalls and balancing chairs on his head. A 1991 graduate of Ringling Clown College, he worked for three seasons at Walt Disney World in Orlando and was at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for eight months last winter.

 

Jeffrey Daymont, 28, has been coming to IJA festivals since 1983 and was making his second appearance in the Individual Championship. He did a comedy talking routine working up from three to five clubs, then a three box routine to jazzy rock electric guitar.

 

He began his professional career in near-poverty on the Renaissance fest circuit, but hard work, persistence and learning from his mistakes has paid off. He now works on cruise ships and other higher class venues. His show begins with a comedy ball juggling routine, building to seven. He gets a volunteer to help him onto a rola-bola, where he juggles machetes and does an under the leg throw. He does ball spinning and head bounces, then finishes doing tricks with his Cabbage Patch doll, Sergei, and the cigar box routine for which he is most noted.

 

Jon Poppele did a lighthearted three and four club routine, then switched to fast, intense music for a driving one diabolo routine. The 25-year-old Minneapolis juggler has been working as a full-time professional since the spring as "AirPlay." Though he has attended every IJA festival since St. Louis in 1991, this was his first time in competition. "I knew it would force me to deal with a lot of things personally and as a performer," he said. "To me this is a big step, getting up in front of 500 of my peers and saying 'This is what I do,' and hoping they like it."

 

Poppele is also a veteran bicyclist, and he camped and biked more than 340 miles in early July on a four-gig swing through the state. He rides a folding bike that fits inside his prop case, and his prop case includes wheels so that it attaches as a trailer to his bike. He hopes to eventually work the bicycle motif in as part of his stage character. For now, his show includes shaker cups, club juggling, diabolo and sometimes torches and flaming diabolos.

                                  

Scott Sorenson was appearing in his second IJA championship, and did nothing but rings. Performing as a "dark" character with an ominously painted face, he worked up from three to nine, then pulled down to three again to do pancake type throws most people do only with clubs. That included pancakes under the arms, Mill's Mess, behind the back and blind behind the back catches.