I first tried juggling when I was in middle school, picking up 3 tennis balls and teaching myself the cascade. My record was around 30 tosses until I got bored and quit… however this was the spark to my interest of this skillful and amazing hobby.
It wasn't until my freshman year of high school when I got back of juggling via my school club, the Silver Creek Jugglers. I originally started out learning devilsticks in the club, as everyone else was either ball juggling or diaboloing, and I wanted to be unique. But it wasn't long until my stubbornness subsided and I picked up the diabolo. It took me a couple of lunches to learn the basic spinning and balancing. Before winter break I purchased my first diabolo, which was an orange Henry's Circus Diabolo. This is where I mark the true beginning of my juggling career, as it is the point in which I started to practice seriously.
I trained for hours on end, day after day, conquering new tricks and finding out the secrets of the diabolo. My freshman year consisted of mainly basic one diabolo tricks, and a few qualifying runs with two diabolos. If I remember correctly, I purchased my green circus at the end of that school year.
Summer consisted of a more intense training regiment and a few breakthroughs with signature tricks. Come start of sophomore year I was equipped with an array of 1D and 2D tricks. This year the SCJ (what I like to think of the "original SCJ"), which included Matt Hall, Matt Brown, David Pham, a few others, and myself, filmed for videos and did a few talent shows. They are perhaps the jugglers who had the greatest impact on my juggling interest, especially Hall Sensei who has inspired me immensely as well as taught/shared some cool tricks with me. Although we didn't officially have a club that year, I went to the D5 classroom nearly every break, lunch, and after school before cross country to train. I went to Berkeley's First Annual Juggling and Unicycle Festival this year in October, and the IJA 60th annual festival in Portland Oregon, July. This was a great juggling year for me, and I performed in a few shows, one being Winterfest 2005, which was a trio of Pham, Hall, and I themed to Indiana Jones. I finished this year being able to qualify 3 diabolos, all in my first year of serious juggling. Summer was another period of intense training with 1D, 2D, and 3D and Excalibur as well as the IJA fest.
Junior year took similar break, lunch, and after school training regiments up until May. I attended Berkeley's 2nd Annual Festival, hanging out with Brown and Ben. This year was mostly the sharpening of my skills, mainly infinite suicide, Excalibur, and 3D. I also performed in more talent shows this year, one of my biggest being Noche De Fama with my performance, Enter the Draco. Our club was ran by David Pham as president and me as vice, but died out after winter break, only having me and a few others as active members. Now lets go back to Noche de Fama…
This performance was a solo of mine for our school's Latino Student Union, and it ran throughout the whole school day. I performed class after class in my heavy leather jacket themed as the Matrix, but the crowd loved it. The stage was dark and led a lot to be desired with ceiling height. My night show was the best of them all that day and consisted of a second song not featured in the day show performances. I found my first love at this talent show, who was in this show singing Secret Love by Jojo. After the show my juggling life slowed down a bit as I became occupied with my girlfriend, but my juggling skills were still peaking.
Summer wasn't much a juggling summer as it was a summer with my girlfriend. Although, I did get a few intense training sessions in. This seemed to keep my skills at the same level without much groundbreaking progress.
Senior year once again had similar training sessions all year long which solidified many of my tricks with the diabolo. However, I did not attend any festivals. I became president of the SCJ and led that club to be the most active it has ever been before, ending the school year with 20+ active members, and many new events such as Klutz Trips, talent shows, and a school juggling demonstration. I also performed in way more school talent shows and community events… wait I did attend a festival, the BAC (Bay Area Classic) yoyo competition at San Jose's Discovery Museum. There weren't much jugglers at that event, mainly yoyoists and diaboloists, but it was still really fun.
My senior year, I also got into ball juggling seriously during winter break. I ended that year qualifying 5 ball, and getting an interest in club juggling as well. I also ended the year qualifying 4 diabolos and having mad 3 high skills like 456015141 with a whip on the 01.
So ends my high school juggling career. But what did I really get out of those four years of intense juggling? Juggling led me to somewhat fame, love, happiness, and a great lifelong hobby. But most importantly, above anything else, those four years built character; they built a confidence and discipline that could only be found by going to my extremes, spending many lonely training sessions frustrated for months on end trying to master extremely difficult patterns like self teaching myself 3 diabolos (low and high)… something I thought impossible when practicing. That's the real stuff right there, something I can never lose… my passion, WHO I AM!!!
And now begins my life as a professional juggler and a student at UCSC majoring in Computer Game Design.
Professional Juggling Instructor and Performer,
Christopher D. Garcia
August 12th, 2008
