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Log inMainer bound for World Yo-Yo Contest
Mainer bound for World Yo-Yo Contest
by Outspoken on Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:08 pm
Mainer bound for World Yo-Yo Contest
BY RAY ROUTHIER
Blethen Maine Newspapers
SCARBOROUGH -- Competitive yo-yo'ers?
Most people don't know they exist. But a teenage Brandon Baines not only knew they existed, he knew exactly how to become one.
A few years ago, Baines, now 20, decided to get a yo-yo company to sponsor him. So he spent six months or so developing yo-yo tricks that he felt nobody had ever done before, that nobody had ever seen before.
Then he put a video of his tricks online and waited for offers to come to his home in Scarborough.
He didn't wait very long.
"The tricks he came up with are really innovative, and anybody who knows the sport knows how technically hard they are," said Andre Boulay, captain of the 42-member competition team at YoYoJam, a yo-yo manufacturer and Baines' sponsor. "Technically, he's as good as anybody in the world."
Baines will have a chance to prove Boulay true today through Saturday, when he competes against 100 other yo-yo hotshots at the 2008 World Yo-Yo Contest in Orlando, Fla.
If successful, it will be the result of literally a lifetime of training. Baines took up yo-yo'ing in the third grade, when a yo-yo craze was hitting his elementary school.
Other kids dropped it for the next big craze, but Baines stuck with it -- while also learning to juggle, ride a unicycle and do tricks for the Gym Dandies, a children's circus based in Scarborough.
"I knew I was coordinated enough to do it, but mentally, I had to work at it," Baines said.
He worked for years, including the three or four years he spent creating new tricks for the video that got him a sponsorship from YoYoJam. (The sponsorship, by the way, includes free yo-yos and covers travel expenses, but is not enough to pay the rent.)
His competitors and friends say Baines in not only technically great -- he specializes in fairly subtle string tricks -- but that he's the perfect person to be a face of the growing sport of competitive yo-yo.
"He's one of the good guys of yo-yo'ing. Not the quiet, shy type of good guy. He's the cool, rocking, determined type of good guy," said Rafael Matsunaga, a yo-yo'er from Brazil who will also be competing at the contest in Orlando this week.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5277971.html
BY RAY ROUTHIER
Blethen Maine Newspapers
SCARBOROUGH -- Competitive yo-yo'ers?
Most people don't know they exist. But a teenage Brandon Baines not only knew they existed, he knew exactly how to become one.
A few years ago, Baines, now 20, decided to get a yo-yo company to sponsor him. So he spent six months or so developing yo-yo tricks that he felt nobody had ever done before, that nobody had ever seen before.
Then he put a video of his tricks online and waited for offers to come to his home in Scarborough.
He didn't wait very long.
"The tricks he came up with are really innovative, and anybody who knows the sport knows how technically hard they are," said Andre Boulay, captain of the 42-member competition team at YoYoJam, a yo-yo manufacturer and Baines' sponsor. "Technically, he's as good as anybody in the world."
Baines will have a chance to prove Boulay true today through Saturday, when he competes against 100 other yo-yo hotshots at the 2008 World Yo-Yo Contest in Orlando, Fla.
If successful, it will be the result of literally a lifetime of training. Baines took up yo-yo'ing in the third grade, when a yo-yo craze was hitting his elementary school.
Other kids dropped it for the next big craze, but Baines stuck with it -- while also learning to juggle, ride a unicycle and do tricks for the Gym Dandies, a children's circus based in Scarborough.
"I knew I was coordinated enough to do it, but mentally, I had to work at it," Baines said.
He worked for years, including the three or four years he spent creating new tricks for the video that got him a sponsorship from YoYoJam. (The sponsorship, by the way, includes free yo-yos and covers travel expenses, but is not enough to pay the rent.)
His competitors and friends say Baines in not only technically great -- he specializes in fairly subtle string tricks -- but that he's the perfect person to be a face of the growing sport of competitive yo-yo.
"He's one of the good guys of yo-yo'ing. Not the quiet, shy type of good guy. He's the cool, rocking, determined type of good guy," said Rafael Matsunaga, a yo-yo'er from Brazil who will also be competing at the contest in Orlando this week.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5277971.html
"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."
Plato (427-347 BC)
Plato (427-347 BC)
