Bernell DorroughAt first, Seth Stratton appears to be a normal college student-he goes to class, he hangs out with his friends, and he commonly engages in heated political and social debate. But Seth has a hidden talent that few could guess unless they had seen him in action; Seth is a yo-yo champion.
Seth, who was the 2001 Washington State Yo-Yo Champ and has also competed and placed at the National Yo-Yo Competition, began yo-yoing as a way to pass time in the summer after receiving a yo-yo as a birthday present from a friend.
“It was my freshman year of high school, and yo-yoing was starting to boom. There was a new wave of tricks that had never been seen before. There wasn’t really a yo-yo fad per se. About every ten years it becomes a fad, and millions and millions of yo-yos will be sold,” Seth explained. “Well, they had these new yo-yos out with ball bearings and I got one for my birthday. And I was bored, so I started to toy around with it. I went online and looked up some tricks. And that was pretty much it.”
After only practicing for a couple of months, Seth entered his first competition.
“My first contest was pretty cool because I won all these yo-yos,” he said. “I won a few hundred dollars’ worth of yo-yos and I had only been yo-yoing for a couple of months then. And I thought that this was pretty cool.”
Seth continued, “It’s kind of a natural progression of getting into yo-yos. You want to know the tricks and then you want to know other people who yo-yo, because there are so few people who are actually into it. The competitions were really more social than competitive for me.”
But not all of the competitions were purely fun. Seth explained, “I’ve been to competitions all over the country. And I went to Vancouver for the Canadian National Yo-Yo Competition. And they wouldn’t let me compete, those bitches. I’m a Canadian citizen. I have dual citizenship. But the lady wouldn’t let me compete because I’m a nonresident, and she thought I was going to win. I went up there wanting to bring home the proverbial bacon, and they wouldn’t let me compete. It was my worst competition.”
Soon after Seth began competing, he decided that it was time to start a yo-yo club of his own in order to get others involved in the hobby and create an environment where he could learn new tricks and meet other enthusiasts. “I started a yo-yo club in Seattle. It was me and these guys who work at a tattoo shop and we got together and started this club called Strung Out. It’s these three hundred pound biker dudes with tattoos over every inch of their bodies, and then me and these other 13-16 year olds,” Seth explained. “The owner of the tattoo shop, Jesse, he gave all of the guys in the club, who were old enough to get tattoos, tattoos. He made this yo-yo tattoo that said “Strung Out in the Northwest.” I say this for a fact, that we could definitely kick the shit out of any other yo-yo club on the face of this planet.”
Seth and his tattooed compatriots are hardly the nerdy guys one might expect as yo-yo enthusiasts. Seth claims that yo-yoers are a diverse and eclectic crowd.
“The stereotypical yo-yo guy is the guy who wants to be competitive in other sports but doesn’t have the physical capabilities to do so. He’s really a bit nerdy. But the fact is that there isn’t a stereotypical yo-yoer,” he said. “You have everything from guys who look like that they’re straight out of a trailer to ex-professional football players. It’s all guys though. That’s the thing. There are very few female yo-yoers. You don’t go into yo-yoing to get chicks.”
And while Seth has not yet started his own WU version of Strung Out, he is still willing to teach others his very uncommon and amazing skill. “The closest thing we have on campus to a yo-yo support group is the National Prestigious Society of Collegiate Jugglers, which is not in actuality a national society or prestigious,” he explained. “And I’ll teach people to yo-yo there. And yoyoing.com is a very good resource.”
The National Prestigious Society of Collegiate Jugglers meets on Monday nights from 8:30-10:00 in Green Chairs in Lower Mallinkrodt. For more information just stop by-and don’t forget to bring your yo-yo.