2017 World Footbag Championships, day 6 of my trip to Portland, Oregon. Competition day 4

Today we are approaching the most interesting parts of the tournament. In Open doubles the quarter finals didn't produce any upsets. Teams 1,2, 3 (easily) 4 (shakily) advanced to the semi finals. We will be in for a treat in the 2 vs 3 match as it  is full of questions. Team number two is François Depatie-Pelletier and Manu Bouchard packing a little more offence playing the Finns Tuomas Karki and Matti Pohjola showing a little more regularity . I see that match as being more of a tight bout than the other. 

Team number four appeared shaky at best in their appearance vs Chris Siebert and Dan Greer. In fact it's kind of a miracle that they are still alive. Wiktor Debski (Poland) and Luc Legault (Montreal, Quebec) are not used to play together and they will meet the team with the biggest serves in the semi finals. Walt Houston and Benjamin Alston appear as clear favorites in this confrontation. They just won the Akisphere (Montreal annual tournament) and they have one more year of experience under their belt after finishing 3rd last year. As Walt also appears to be the grand favorite in open singles they will be exsuding confidence. Luc and Wiktor's serves are also below average it should be a walk in the park for the #1 seeded team. As for my predictions for the finals I'll reserve my judgement after the semis.

In the women's singles category Lena Mlakar (Slovenia) scored a big upset over Geneviève Bousquet (Montreal, seed #1) There was also a bit of a controversy as to how this bracket was ran. Without being too technical something abnormal happened and will need further study for future tournaments. So no more Montreal representatives in the singles category. Geneviève still has to play in the Women doubles finals and the mixed doubles semis and hopefully finals.

Otherwise the players are pushing the envelope more and more.
Here are some images of this net day by Cory Current:



In the freestyle world routines semi finals were on the menu today and the few echoes that I gathered are the following: Scott Bevier and Taishi Ishida went dropless during their presentation and Vasek Klouda was not satisfied with his performance. Which could be a good thing as he could even do better in the next round.

Good luck to all the competitors for the next steps. This time I'll leave you with a picture of two legends of the sport who, each in their way redefined the game of Footbag Net and Footbag Freestyle.

Left: Eric Bartholomay, AKA Bart great singles specialist brought his very dynamic, powerful and totally offfence minded game to the sport in the 1990's.
Right: ''Rippin'' Rick Reese redefined a lot of the boundaries of footbag freestyle in the 80's and 90's with a combination of great difficulty in the moves and creativity in singles and doubles routines. One of the first real ''shredders', of the game. 
They met, I suppose at the Denver airport en route to Portland to see old friends and spectate with great interest. 

Lots more action to come, stay tuned.