It may not be a competitive team sport in the traditional sense, but the University’s juggling club does not lack in athletic challenges.
Founded by University alumnus and current LCC physics professor Paul Bunson nearly a decade ago, the juggling club consists of 30 to 40 members who gather every Monday to perform a dazzling array of tricks.
“In general, juggling sort of encompasses any sort of object manipulation,” said Bunson, who also serves as the club’s coach. “These days we get quite a variety of acts, sort of anything that falls under that circus umbrella.”
Possibly the most challenging circus trick is the treacherous balancing act of mountain unicycling. Third-year juggling club member and club coordinator Daniel Wilson is an experienced mountain unicycler himself and says the act isn’t for the faint of heart.
“It’s pretty crazy,” Wilson said. “You get out there and you’re doing stuff like riding along logs and going up and down trails and through little streams. You get beat up pretty bad. If you’re not bleeding at the end, then you haven’t done it right.” While the risk-taking and athletic parallels to other sports are apparent, the juggling club differs from most University club sports in that it doesn’t participate in competitions.
“The goal was not so much to be a competitive group, which is really what Club Sports tries to encourage,” Bunson said. “They seem to have a mission to promote only competitive sports, and we didn’t really fit that bill entirely.”
Bunson said that has led to some friction with the club sports administration.
“We were sort of caught in the middle,” Bunson said. “I think they were a little bit skeptical about including us, but in the end they decided we were OK. Even now they probably prefer that we be more competitive, though.”
Still, juggling club members seem to have no issue with the club’s laid-back attitude.
“My favorite part of participating is having fun and trying new things with everyone,” Wilson said.
The jugglers do have an opportunity to show off their skills. A few times every year the team heads to a major juggling festival, usually in Portland or Corvallis.
“We go to different juggling festivals together,” Bunson said. “The festivals generally have an open gym that you’ll find a lot of people just working on stuff. Then there are workshops and some festivals have competitions. Then there’s typically a professional show as well.”
But getting to a level where the jugglers are comfortable performing in such a showcases takes time, practice and more practice.
“It’s (mainly) repetition,” Wilson said. “We encourage each other and give each other new ideas, but mostly it’s repetition.”
Bunson added that while repetition is important, there is a definite progression to improving one’s juggling abilities.
“On a given night, everybody is teaching everybody stuff. It’s not like I get up and say, “Everybody do this,” because everybody is at a different level,” Bunson said. “In terms of getting people started, you start off with one ball and then work up to two balls (with the) basic move. When they start getting comfortable with that, you try to nudge them to three balls.”
Juggling club member Yona Appletree, a second-year student at LCC, said his improvement over the past 18 months has been marked.
“When I heard about juggling club, I had very little juggling experience,” Appletree said. “When I walked in, I saw (a few guys) juggling and I was inspired. I spent the next several months learning to juggle clubs; once I was decent at that, I learned how to pass, and over the last 18 months or so I’d say I’ve gone from almost no skill to being almost competent.”
For those interested in checking out the juggling club for themselves, practices are held Monday from 7-9 p.m. in 220 Gerlinger.
“We want everyone to come,” Wilson said. “The way to join (the juggling club) is to come to practice.”
[email protected]