Chris Siebert

Chris Siebert's footbag story begins the way the best ones do, at a party, in 1987 in Fairfax, Virginia. He was 15, at a friend's 16th birthday party with a rock band and stacks of pizzas, when people started kicking a Sipa Sipa. He was hooked. He kicked every day at school with a big group, and after that for years.

He didn't fully understand competitive footbag until he was 20, when his friends Tuan Vu and Mike Lockwood came back from the legendary Funtastik tournament buzzing with excitement. Tuan Vu brought Chris to his first tournament in Windham, NY in 1993, and he has competed every year since. (Fun fact: Chris and Tuan went to high school together. Tuan is one year younger, so Chris taught him everything he knows about footbag back in 1988.)

The nickname "Conan" was bestowed by his DC All-Star teammates, likely Jason Langis, around 1995, due to his long flowing hair and strong high kicks. Wielding the "axe." A taekwondo instructor once told him he had "good hips," and he tried to maximize his gifts from there. Jumping and kicking high made him feel like he could fly.

Controlling the plane of the footbag net with spikes and blocks came relatively easy to Chris and has been his greatest strength in competition. Everything else, in his words, "was earned with sweat and focus and countless lessons playing footbag with and against so many great players."

He was not the dominant net player of his era, he'll be the first to tell you that was Manu, but he got better year after year and found ways to beat all the best players. His crowning moment came at the 2002 World Championships, where he and Peter Shunny captured the Open Doubles Net title. He reached the Worlds doubles final two more times, with Martin Cote in 2001 and Andy Ronald in 2006, and made nine World Championship semifinals across 16 appearances since 1996.

The real fun for Chris has always been doubles net. "It's a journey you take together," he says, "and when you win it's a special achievement you share." Over a career spanning more than three decades, he accumulated 60 open net titles — 34 doubles (with 24 different partners), 18 singles, 4 mixed — plus a record 4 Funtastik Service Poaching crowns. His competitive longevity is remarkable: he was still winning titles at the 2025 US Open, taking doubles gold with Jasper Shults.

Off the court, Chris has given as much to footbag as it has given him. He served as U.S. Open Director for ten years and Worlds Net Director for three, has directed events every year since 2000, co-founded the IFPA Net Rankings system with John Leys, and has taught footbag in schools as a physical educator since 2000. In 2012 he published his Master's Thesis: Heart Rate and Accelerometry during Footbag Net Singles Play.

At his very first tournament, Chris watched Kenny Shults play Yves in the singles final and had his mind blown. Then he saw Peter Irish and Eric Wulff play freestyle. That was all it took.

Clubs: DC All-Stars, NPR, Sole Purpose

Chris Siebert