Ken Westerfield
Kenneth Ray Westerfield is an American pioneering frisbee disc player, who achieved numerous disc sports accomplishments in the 1970s. A disc sports Hall of Fame inductee in freestyle, ultimate, and disc golf. In addition, he was voted "Top Men's Player" in the 1970–75 Decade Awards. Westerfield produced tournaments, set world records, and won awards in every disc sport. He was a tournament co-director for the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships in Toronto, the Vancouver Open Frisbee Championships in Vancouver, BC, the 1978 Santa Cruz Flying Disc Classic in Santa Cruz, California, the 1985 Labatt's World Guts Championships in Toronto, and the 1987 World PDGA Disc Golf Championships in Toronto. Westerfield founded the first ultimate league in Canada – the Toronto Ultimate Club. As one of the original freestylers from the 1960s, used his expertise in several company-sponsored touring Frisbee shows in the U.S. and Canada. Irwin Toy,, Molson Frisbee Team, Adidas Canada, Goodtimes Professional Frisbee Show, Orange Crush Frisbee Team, Air Canada Frisbee Team, Lee Jeans Frisbee Team and the Labatts Schooner Frisbee Team.
Early life
Ken Westerfield was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Margaret Marion, a clerical administrator for the public school system, and his father, Gene C. Westerfield, a trade school-trained refrigeration contractor in a family-owned business. Born into a close, middle-class household, Westerfield lived with his parents and younger sister, Kathy, who graduated from Winston Churchill High School in 1972 and made a career in special education. Westerfield's parents were both athletic, and his father schooled him in many different sports. Cleo Conn Westerfield, his grandfather, played baseball for the Detroit Street Railway League in the 1920s. This contributed to Westerfield's early sporting interest. Sports, in the order of interest, along with all disc sports, were baseball, hockey, motorcycles, golf, and basketball, in which he competed in several city leagues.Early Frisbee and disc sports career
In 1960, at the age of thirteen, Ken Westerfield and Jim Kenner, who later founded Discraft, became best friends. They started playing Frisbee during their high school years. Daily they would experiment with new ways of throwing and catching the Frisbee, this would later be called "playing freestyle." At the time, Frisbee was only considered a toy for recreational purposes, and there was no reason to become skilled in throwing it. There were no Frisbee professionals to look up to or disc sports tournaments to compete in. Their shared anti-establishment attitude and lifestyle, which included their rejection of traditional sports, led them to develop a proficiency in playing Frisbee that had never been seen before.After graduating from Franklin High School in Livonia, Michigan, in 1965, Westerfield and Kenner spent their summer days at Cass and Silver Lake beaches. They also showcased their Frisbee skills at music festivals. One day, they noticed an event ad in a local alternative newspaper and decided to take their Frisbees and a VW Bug to a music festival called Woodstock in upstate New York, which later became the music event of the century. At the festival, they would throw the Frisbee over the crowd, just out of reach, and watch as people sitting on the ground reached out for it as it flew by. Many of them may not even have known what it was. Westerfield later reflected that it was an interesting crowd to play for.
In 1970, Westerfield and Kenner moved to Toronto, Canada, and established their disc-playing headquarters in Queen's Park. They made a daily routine of playing Frisbee freestyle and object disc golf at the park. The following year, with only a hundred dollars each, bedrolls, and a Frisbee, they hitchhiked across Canada. They stopped along the way to perform Frisbee street shows to audiences in cities and at popular annual events such as the Klondike Days in Edmonton and the Calgary Stampede in Alberta. After completing their cross-country tour in Vancouver, they made their home for the summer in the "All Seasons Park", which was founded by the Youth International Party as a protest against the Four Seasons company's plans to build a complex on two blocks adjacent to Stanley Park. Although they were not politically affiliated with the Yippies, Westerfield and Kenner made the protested park their home. They made a minimal income by selling alternative newspapers, the Georgia Straight, on the city streets by day and performing nightly Frisbee shows in the historic Gastown area, in front of a railroad car turn restaurant named Frisby's. Because of the urban settings, their performances were highly surreal, as they freestyled with a frisbee at night in front of crowds in the streets. They bounced the disc off buildings, threw around statues, skipped the frisbee through traffic, and threw over mobs of interested spectators. One night, while performing at Frisby's, they unwittingly became involved in the Yippie-organized Gastown Smoke-in, a demonstration for the legalization of marijuana. The subsequent smoking of marijuana in the town square quickly turned the peaceful but illegal demonstration into the now-famous Gastown Riots. The police also began regular raids of All Seasons Park.
During the fall of 1971, Westerfield and Kenner, having to leave All Seasons Park due to continued police raids, needed money to return to Toronto. They continued to perform at Frisby's and decided to try collecting money like street musicians. It was a success. Upon returning to Toronto, they resided in the notorious counter-cultural Rochdale College, while performing Frisbee shows on the Yonge Street Mall. Nightly, thousands of tourists and Torontonians would enjoy displays of their Frisbee expertise, while attractive accomplices would use a Frisbee to collect donations. They wanted to add professional legitimacy to their Frisbee show and approached Ed Hurst, promotions manager for Irwin Toy, the Frisbee distributor in Canada. They proposed their show as a way to promote the Frisbee. They scheduled a basketball halftime show at Jarvis Collegiate Institute as a demonstration for Irwin Toy's management. The students loved it, and so did Irwin Toy. They successfully proved that their show would be beneficial in helping the company promote the Frisbee. In 1972, Irwin Toy retained them to perform at special community and sporting events across Canada. Westerfield and Kenner became the world's first full-time professional touring Frisbee players.
The Canadian Open Frisbee Championships and the beginning of flying disc sports
Disc sports originated in the 1970s, and several tournaments played a significant role. These tournaments were the IFT Guts Frisbee competitions held in Northern Michigan, the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships in Toronto, and Vancouver, BC, the Octad in New Brunswick, NJ, the American Flying Disc Open in Rochester, NY and the WFC in Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA. Before the events that would transform Frisbees into serious athletic equipment, they were merely considered as toys for recreational purposes. However, Ken Westerfield and Jim Kenner were already recognized as Frisbee athletes who were on par with other professional sports athletes. They joined forces with Andrew Davidson, a professor at Humber College, and Jeff Otis, the event coordinator of the Canadian National Exhibition, to organize the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships. This competition initially included disc guts and distance events but expanded to include disc golf, freestyle, ultimate, and individual field events at the CNE. In 1975, the tournament was relocated to Toronto Islands. Westerfield and Kenner also founded the Vancouver Open Frisbee Championships. Some of today's techniques and competitive formats can be traced back to these pioneers. The Canadian Open Frisbee Championships and the Vancouver Open Frisbee Championships introduced Frisbee as a disc sport, including the first competitive freestyle events.Freestyle is a competition where teams of two or three players perform a routine that involves a series of creative throwing and catching techniques set to music. The routine is judged based on its difficulty, execution, and presentation. The team with the highest score is declared the winner. Before the invention of the nail delay in 1975, freestyle play was fast-paced and involved various throwing variations with spinning and leaping stylized catches off the throw. This intense and flowing routine was often compared to martial arts and dance.
In 1973, Westerfield and Kenner added their idea of a Frisbee freestyle competition to the 2nd Canadian Open Frisbee Championships. However, due to a lack of competitors, the freestyle event was canceled. Unknown to them, there were a few Frisbee players in the United States with freestyle interests in Berkeley, New York, Ann Arbor, New Jersey, and Chicago. The following year, newly energized freestylers from these cities gathered in Toronto to compete in this new freestyle event. In 1974, at the 3rd annual Canadian Open Frisbee Championships, Westerfield and Kenner introduced the freestyle event and won it.
The first-ever freestyle competition featured several noteworthy Frisbee pairs, including Doug Corea and Jim Palmeri, John Kirkland and Jose Montalvo, Irv Kalb and Dave "Buddha" Meyers, Dan "Stork" Roddick and Bruce Koger, and Tom Cleworth and John Connelly. Westerfield and Kenner won the competition and became the world's first Freestyle Frisbee Champions. The same year, they organized the second freestyle competition along with other Frisbee events at their Vancouver Open Frisbee Championships, which took place at Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is where Bill King, Jim Brown, and John Anthony made their first competitive appearance and gained early freestyle fame. A year later, the American Flying Disc Open in Rochester, New York, the Octad in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the 1975 World Frisbee Championships, held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, adopted Westerfield and Kenner's freestyle competition format as one of their new events. Today, this freestyle event is one of the premier events in flying disc tournaments worldwide. Jim Kenner and Ken received The Decade Awards 1970-75 Top Freestyle Routine: Canadian Open 1974. They were also inducted into the Inaugural Pioneer Class of the FPA Freestyle Disc Hall of Fame.
In 1974, Westerfield and Kenner approached Molson Breweries with the idea of performing Frisbee shows at basketball halftimes in Canadian universities as the Molson Frisbee Team. Always looking for unique ways to get into the university market, they accepted their proposal and were more than impressed with the results. The following year, Molson's up the promotional fee and used their show exclusively to introduce a new brand of beer called Molson Diamond.
In 1975, with Molson's sponsorship, Westerfield and Kenner moved the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships from the Canadian National Exhibition to Toronto Islands. Molson's would continue to sponsor their Frisbee shows and events for several years. Along with promoting Molson products, this would help Westerfield and Kenner to promote their new sport everywhere.