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Sports

Beach Boom Boomerang Tournament Comes to Hermosa

Hermosa Beach hosts one of five national boomerang tournaments.

Fancy plastic was flying high near the Hermosa Beach Pier this weekend at the Third Annual National Beach Boom Boomerang Championships.

Participants gathered on the sand for the two-day event and competed in six categories, including accuracy, distance, fast catch, trick catch, Australian round and maximum time aloft. Hermosa Beach hosts one of only five nationwide annual tournaments in competitive boomeranging.            

Though boomerang events are gaining in popularity, they are still a curiosity. A small crowd of about 10 spectators looked on from beach chairs set up nearby while passersby on the nearby bike path stopped to observe the spectacle.

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Unlike most boomerang events in which players get just one round of throws, Hermosa's competition is head-to-head, meaning players face off against one another with the winner of each round moving on to the next level. It's like March Madness but with boomerangs instead of basketballs.

Hermosa Beach is home to six competitive players, according to Morri Mohr, the tournament organizer, who counts himself in that group. An additional 14 participants, including world-class players Rich and Dan Bower, who traveled from Seattle, competed in the event. Both brothers are members of Rad Revolution, one of three national teams.

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Rich Bower said he made the trek to Hermosa Beach to get in shape for the bi-annual Boomerang World Championship, to be held in Rome later this year. "I'm here to practice," he said.

Mohr said his interest in the sport was piqued when he helped his son with a school project. "He had to build something that flew but wasn't an airplane — so we built a boomerang," Mohr said. "He got an A on the project and he was just like 'That's cool,' but I really thought it was the coolest thing ever."

Unlike classic two-pronged 'rangs, the devices in vogue at the weekend event were crafted of high-tech plastics with up to four protruding points — or wings.  

"All the technology is complex. It's all aerodynamics, airfoils," said Kim Galeazzi, one of the competitors. "Shapes are still evolving."

As the warm sun gave way to heavy fog for the last two events around 5 p.m., the tournament continued with the trick catch and Australian round competitions.

The fifth event of the day, trick catch requires the boomerang thrower to catch the boomerang with special catches, such as the eagle catch (swooping in from above), the hackey catch (bouncing the boomerang off the throwers foot before catching it) and the foot catch (jumping and catching the boomerang with the players heels).

"Each player has a different hardest event, mine is trick catch," said Mohr. He was ranked ninth in the US while at his peak but he said it was the trick catch that kept him from doing better.

The final event of the tournament was the Australian round, an event that combines accuracy, distance and catching ability. The thrower stands in the bull's eye and throws the boomerang out towards a ring of spotters who judge the distance. The thrower then tries to catch the boomerang back in the original bull's eye. Each of these components counts toward a score for each throw.

"The maximum is 100 points, but no one has ever gotten it," said Mohr. "The world record is 99 points." German competitor Fridolin Frost set that record in 2007.

This tournament didn't see that record fall, but it did see Dan Bower eventually win not only the final event but the entire tournament by taking first place in the Australian Round with a score of 89. With the composure of a professional, he merely said, "Yeah, I won it."

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