57) Derrick Fogle - Hacky sack has been part of my life for 25 years. I first kicked a footbag in the summer of 1980. I was going to a party in the mountain community of Dillon, Colorado with my older brother. There was a circle of people outside the house kicking something around, laughing, spilling a little beer on each other, you get the idea.

I asked them what the heck they were doing, and they invited me to join in. I was terrible when I first started! I might have actually kicked the bag 3 or 4 times that evening, but I had a blast and nobody ever told me I sucked or tried to get me to leave the circle. There seemed to be all levels of kickers there, and everybody cooperated to keep the bag off the ground.

I was hooked. I just HAD to get better so I could hold my own in the hacky circles. There was only one kind of Hacky Sack available back then, and they were pretty expensive. At first, I kicked with the roundest smallish rocks I could find (this was the Colorado mountains). After I saved up a few bucks, I bought my first real Hacky Sack and kept trying.

It took me awhile - I wasn't very coordinated when I started - but I kept at it, eventually catching up with my brother. Then I headed back to Lawrence, KS where I went to school. I was one of the first people to ever bring a Hacky Sack into Lawrence High School. Of course I got a few of my friends hooked on it, and we hacked every day during lunch. I would kick every day after school, finding lit tennis courts at night, sneaking into the school gym during lunch in the winter, almost anything the get a chance to "Hack the Sack."

In college, I purposely set up my schedule with a couple early classes, a very long lunchtime, and a couple late classes. The middle of the day was always devoted to kicking on campus at the Johnson County Community College. In the winter, I managed to find times I could use the college gym to kick. I would kick almost anywhere, anytime. And I was getting better.

I finally heard about a hacky sack tournament in Kansas City. The night before the tournament, I went to a registration party and met several people who would become part of my life for many years afterward. I was totally jazzed about the trying to win the freestyle award, and I did - with a pair of rainbow flying clippers! Boy has footbag changed since then. I saw my first "delay" that day; if the guy that could do them had pulled them off in the competition, he most likely would have won.

I got myself plugged into the footbag promotion scene, helping out with Hacky Sack and Frisbee festivals, helping with tournaments, eventually running my own tournaments, and competing. I made freestyle finals in several World Championship competitions and set a world record in one discipline of footbag (since broken). My wife, who picked up footbag when we started seeing each other, is still a current world record holder in the women's 5-minute timed consecutives event.

Retirement from competition came about 6 years ago after my 2nd child was born. Parents know how that goes. But I still love to kick, mostly at events where there is live music. I can often be seen kicking at the Twilight Festivals -
Courthouse Square, Thursdays in June, in Columbia, MO and at Speaker's Circle on the MU Columbia Campus other evenings.

I'm proud to announce that as of 2005, I have been inducted into the Footbag Hall of Fame. I grew up - emotionally if not physically - in the footbag community. To be recognized by and inducted by my kicking peers (who have seen me behave incredibly childish at times) is a truly amazing experience. Any impact I have made upon the sport of footbag is insignificant compared to the impact that footbag and the footbag community has had on me.