Ianek Regimbald

Year Nominee Started Playing: around 2002

Footbag History / Significiant Leadership: Ianek is someone that contributed so much to freestyle, and for an obscure reason is not remembered to the full impact he had on the sport.

He did so much, footbag freestyle would be very different without him today.

Direct contributions:

Most importantly : Creator of Footbag Circle contest (with co-creator Elis Piltz), Ianek introduced circle contest at worlds in 2006 as an unnoficial event, and had almost all freestylers present want to compete. It was a massive success, and within the following year or two, Ianek perfectionned the event to the format known until this day.
Circle contest is still the most representative format of competition that is alligned to the way most players train every day in groups, thus making it the most popular, and representative.

On top of circle, Ianek also created many different competition formats
Request Contest, another very popular format until this day
STP (Short technical program) (was meant to replace shred30, only done in worlds at prague)
Battles (another very popular format still used until today)

As an organizer, or co-organiser, Ianek held many events in Montreal, but on top of this, he was used as a judge for finals in many worlds, also used as an organizer on many events for various disciplines. He was always a reference for organization, pools, seedings, making sure all went smooth.

As a player, he was always there to give tips and tricks to players of any level. He had a very good eye to spot what people did wrong, and what to tweak to make them better. I remember him even going on travels to spend weekends with different players who wanted to improve (ex: nick polini, mark monistere, amongst others)

Ianek was very skilled, was able to hit about every trick in the books, and was a reference if you wanted to improve, and sacrificed so much of is time in tournaments to make everyone better.

I think Ianek is exactly what should be an HoF member, someone who gave a lot to the sport, gave a lot of himself, and should be remembered for all he given to the sport.

Tournaments Completed: I could not list all, but he did many worlds, and many smaller events in North america.

Club Affiliation: Montreal, no particular club.