The
chicken wing scoober was invented (discovered? cognized?) on
September 8th, 2006 at around 12:48 at the Cupertino
Ultimate Club's lunchtime game.
It applies the same
throwing grip as the
sidearm
lift and in fact, the Chicken Wing Scoober is also is classified as a lift and
as such, it is a wicked sick throw when and if you ever
nail it.
What good is it and what
purpose does it serve? It's fun. What good
is a 360 degree slam dunk in an NBA game? It's a
flashy finesse
throw that you pull out when you've bludgeoned your
opponent into submission to the point where you can put up anything you
want at any time. In three short weeks, I've
gotten to the point where I can throw it nearly 25 yards
with stability (with as much as a 5 foot lift) but it will take some
time before it has the consistency and reliability
I'd like. It's not exactly second nature yet.
Still, I wanted to share
it with everybody so here it is, with the best I can do
for a description (not an easy task, this throwing
motion almost defies definition).
1) The grip. The
grip is identical to the
sidearm
lift and
consists of four fingers all pointing towards the
center of the disc with the thumb on top (also pointing
towards the center).
2) The wind-up. The
mechanics on this throw are similar to how you would
begin a scoober. Using the grip above, draw the disc across your
chest.
However, when the disc
gets to the other side of your body, as the disc to
turn over the 90 degrees vertical point (like a scoober) start rotating
your arm so your elbow begins turning towards the sky and with your
index finger, begin pushing the bottom of the disc upward and forward so that
the disc begins to turn right side up.
3) The Throw. Start to bring the disc forward while lifting it
almost straight up at the same time with some intense upward velocity,
but also extending the arm away from the body at the
same time in a circular type of motion and pushing up on
the bottom of the disc with your finger tips to give it
a good rise (from the looks of these two photos, it
appears that I got
about a four foot lift while keeping the disc relatively
parallel to the ground).
4) Enjoy.
This is an extremely fun throw once you master it
and as you can tell in the video, 13 year old kids
(including my son Sean) have mastered it ambidextrously in just a
matter of days.
By the way, there are at
least two different variants of this throw.
There's the micro version that is basically thrown in
between the throwing arm and the head and then there is
the sky hook version where you swing your arm all the
way around behind your back and release the disc
straight up over your head. They are both on the
film with Sean throwing the micro version and there is
one clip of me throwing the sky hook. On this
particular sky hook in the video, the entire flight of
the disc was not caught on camera and it looks like it's
flying at about a 45 degree angle but in reality, it was
a beautiful throw. It easily had over a six foot
lift and by the time it came back down to eye level, it
completely flattened out it's flight and came in
perfectly level with touch.
I believe there is at
least one more version with the same grip but with the
opposite spin that can be thrown by completely rotating
the disc under your arm and flipping it up with some
lift. I've thrown it a couple of times with
stability but for only 10-15 feet and only a few feet
off the ground but I think it can be mastered as well.
The video for
this throw can be viewed
here.
The throws are not perfect and neither is the video
quality but you should get a pretty good idea of how the
disc flies. As usual, I strongly encourage
you to
download the full MPEG version using file donkey
(instructions
here).
MPEG looks so much better than Google video.
The name Chicken Wing
Scoober is accredited to Luke Rickford who blurted the
name out when he first saw the throw. Luke was
also on hand to see the first ever tournament thrown
Chicken Wing Scoober by Idris at NorCal Sectionals this
past weekend.
