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Showing off (and up)

by Aly Beery

Matthew Phelps and Andrew Maginniss have been roommates since their first year at Grinnell, when they lived on the fourth floor of Norris. In addition to living together, they have juggled together ever since the first week of college.

Phelps, who has juggled since "maybe early middle school," didn't waste any time showing his floormates his talent, and Maginniss, who "sort-of knew how to juggle," decided to enhance his own juggling repertoire after he met Phelps.

"He was obviously very talented at juggling," Maginniss said of his roommate. "He showed off to the whole floor, and he was always around to help if you got stuck."

Phelps doesn't deny making an effort to propagate his juggling skills. "I try to teach people around me how to juggle all the time," he said.

Although many residents of Norris fourth learned how to juggle in 2001-2002, Maginnis and Phelps made attempts to broaden the juggling community to include more Grinnellians.

"One year we were at the [New Student Orientation] activities fair," Phelps said. "We had an email list of about thirty names, and none of them showed up."

"We did an ExCo class once," said Magginiss, who said that the students who signed up had little or no experience with juggling.

"It seems like people sort of had goals, and once they reached those goals we wouldn't see them again," he said. "Like if they wanted to juggle three balls, we'd teach them that and then we would never see them again."

In addition to holding classes for beginners, Phelps and Maginniss have also been members of Grinnell's Juggling Club.

"Juggling club used to be a bigger deal here, but for awhile it sort of died out completely," Phelps said.

However, now that the weather has been more juggling-friendly, Maginniss, Phelps, and other juggling enthusiasts have been meeting on Sundays on Mac Field to juggle together. Some students stop by to learn how to juggle three balls (called "cascade"), others stay and improve more complicated tricks, such as club juggling, passing or four or five ball juggling.

"By far my favorite thing I have learned in juggling is this," Phelps said as he performed a five-ball cascade.

"There's nothing quite like juggling five balls…The higher it is, the more precise it has to be," he said

Indeed, five-ball juggling looks challenging and impressive, but the more dangerous tricks, such as knife or torch juggling, wow a crowd even more.

Phelps and Maginniss took three torches each, doused the wicks in lighter fluid, and lit them. After swinging them around to get rid of the excess fluid, they stood across from each other and began to juggle.

First, they juggled by themselves and once they were both grooving, they began to pass on every third toss.

"We're probably the only two people here who can confidently do that," Maginnis said of torch passing.

"There are three or four who can pass clubs with us," Phelps added.

While some of the appeal of juggling is that "it looks cool," as Phelps said, it can also be a stress reliever. "Juggling three balls is just kind of relaxing," he said.

"Juggling would increase dramatically during times like Hell Week," added Maginniss.

"It's a great way to procrastinate and blow off some steam."

While neither Maginniss nor Phelps sees juggling as a primary source of income in the future, teaching and learning tricks, as well as adding to the ever-growing bag of juggling toys, will probably continue.

Sidebar: Bag of Tricks

Juggler's tools:

• Contact juggling balls (fiberglass)
• Balls
• Beanbags
• Rings
• Clubs
• Machetes (blades dulled-Phelps gets them from an army surplus store)
• Torches
• Lighter fluid
• Cup for the fluid
• Matches

Sample tricks:

• Boston mess
• Martin
• Mill's Mess
• Rubenstein's Revenge
• The Robot

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