Rule changes for the 2007 National Yo-Yo Contest

For those that missed it, the 2007 United States National Yo-Yo Contest (October 5th and 6th in Chico California) has established pre-qualification rules for entry into the 1A Championship Division.  If you want to compete in the 1A Championship Division of the United States Nationals Yo-Yo Contest (Nationals) you will need to place in the top five at a Regional Contest during the 2007 yo-yo season.  I think this is a perfect change for the National contest if we ever hope to legitimize yo-yoing as a sport.

And I think the National contest needs to be legitimized if we ever hope to get it on TV and get lots of money into it.  One of my friends recently said “If bowling is a sport, then yo-yoing is a sport” and that might be true, but we have to convince people first.  Somehow bowling has million dollar cash prizes and tons of air time on weekend TV.  

A few yo-yoers are upset about it.  Namely Yuuki Spencer who is arguable one of the best players in the country.  He was complaining because he thought that you had to place top five at your regional contest and he felt that would exclude great players from regions that have lots of great players (like the Northwest Region whereYuuki lives with at least a dozen of the best players in the country).  But the rules do say that you can place in top five at any Regional Contest in the United States and it doesn’t have to be your own region. 

Speaking as a judge of many yo-yo contests, I would have hated to judge Nationals due to the sheer number of competitors.  This new rule will make the day a lot easier for those judges because they won’t have to sit through the one minute freestyles of people who do not deserve to be on the stage.

I think the Midwest Regional contest could be really hot this year because there are only a couple of people in this region who should be competingnationally in the 1A division.  Hopefully we’ll get people from all over the nation this year to try and land a top five spot.

Further reading….

http://www.nationalyoyo.org/contest/2007/pages/qualification.php

http://www.yoyoing.com/news/viewpost.php?post=257568

http://www.dazzlingdave.com/mwr/mwr.html

-Josh