Steve Smith

Steve Smith is one of the greatest OG footbag players in the sport, having a career spanning back to the early 1980s. He has a long and extensive history of tournament wins that are almost too numerous to list here.

Steve began his footbag journey in 1981 when he got his first two-panel original Hacky Sack for Christmas. He was in 6th grade at the time. He couldn’t kick it more than five times until a couple of years later when he started using indoor soccer shoes. His hometown of Malta, Illinois is where he started. He mostly played alone until he went on a church retreat and kicked with the volunteers on break. He became a volunteer himself which gave him more time to play. One individual there had a Footbag World magazine, prompting Steve to join the WFA (World Footbag Association). He then attended his first World Footbag Championships in 1990.

His favorite discipline was footbag net, but he also excelled in footbag golf and timed footbag consecutives. He competed in all events, but decided to opt out of freestyle when the technical level evolved beyond his interest.

Some of Steve’s inspiration came from James Robert and Jeff Wells who displayed freestyle moves beyond his own. He has noted that he’d never met anyone better than him until he stepped off the plane in Denver, Colorado and played with James and Jeff in the airport. The two motivated him to practice more.

Steve went on to meet the great Ted Martin at that same World Footbag Championships and they started practicing together for the next 18 years. Other inspirations came from Andy Linder and his legendary skills.

Here are just some of Steve’s achievements in the sport of footbag;

-Competed in 88 tournaments over 17 years

-Won 136 1st Place titles

-Took 2nd place in 73 events

-Took 3rd place in 34 events

-His top 3 placements reached across a broad spectrum of events, including 74 events for footbag golf, 106 events for footbag net, 55 events for consecutives, 6 events for freestyle footbag, and 2 events for the Ironman event.

-In 51 consecutive tournaments he finished 1st or 2nd in footbag golf over the course of six years.

For Steve Smith’s long list of achievements, he was deservedly inducted into the Footbag Hall of Fame.

Steve Smith