After 25 years of retirement, it doesn't take much to bring the inventor of the Hacky Sack and once-frequent footbag tournament organizer back into the game.

On Saturday and Sunday, former Oregon City resident John Stalberger, Jr. will help engineer and oversee the 29th annual U.S. Open Footbag Freestyle Championships in Vancouver, ending his quarter-century absence from the sport.

Footbag frenzy

The 2009 U.S. Open Freestyle Footbag Championships will take place in Vancouver this weekend.

Registration starts at 7 p.m. Friday in front of the entrance to the Nautilus World Headquarters sports facility, 16400 Southeast Nautilus Drive.

The championship events will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., both Saturday and Sunday.

Events include open performance and open routines, as well as circle competition. Clinics for the public will be added to the agenda this year. Both days of competition are open to the public.

"All my kids are grown and I truly believe that what God put me here for I haven't finished," said Stalberger, now of Camas, Wash., about his comeback. "I want to do this for the players, I want to do this for the sport."

The dream began about in 1972 in the Oregon City basement of Stalberger's late friend, Mike Marshall.

Because of the usual frequent rain, the duo had to move inside to kick around a denim bag filled with rice.

"Actually that's what made us good because we played in a basement where the ceiling was low and we had to learn how to control the footbag," Stalberger said. "We would more or less dream about how we were going to make this sport big."

The rest, as they say, is history.

Stalberger was awarded the patent for Hacky Sack in 1979, four years after Marshall died in his late 20s of a heart attack. The two are credited with inventing the American version of the centuries-old footbag game.

Historians believe the Chinese emperor Huang Ti was among the first to kick around a hair-filled leather footbag in about 2597 B.C. He reportedly made his military use it in training.

But footbag playing became popular as a party game and at concerts in America after the Hacky Sack was introduced, according to Bruce Guettich, president of the World Footbag Association.

"The vast majority of the people who play this game play it is because it's non-competitive," said Guettich, who kicked his first footbag on the steps of Portland's Grant High School. "People used to say it's just a fad, that it's just another hula hoop. That is absolutely false. This is here to stay."

For the past couple of decades, Stalberger, now 58, has busied himself with raising a family and trying his hand at several occupations in construction and as a business consultant. For the past 10 years, he has sold real estate.

Several weeks ago, he gave one of his nine grandchildren his first Hacky Sack.

"My 6-year-old grandson went to my daughter and said, 'Mama, I am so glad my papa invented the Hacky Sack'," Stalberger recalled. "When your grandkids are kicking one around, that's cool."

This weekend, Stalberger will stage his return to the sport he loves most.

An estimated 50 professional footbag jugglers from the United States and Canada will descend on Vancouver to "hack the sack."

This is the first time the U.S. Open Freestyle Footbag Competition has moved out of Portland in 29 years.

Competitors will take part in both individual events and group events, which performed in a circle. Scott Bevier, a footbag player for the past 10 years, will compete in several events, including an individual, two-minute routine he crafted himself.

The 29-year-old Bevier, who recently moved from Pennsylvania to Portland, said he practices between five and seven hours a week and planned for his routine beginning last fall.

"I'm always trying to refine my form and to express myself through footbag," he said.

Bevier's career began in 1999 when someone spotted him playing footbag and thought he had potential.

"It took a bit of convincing but then I went to a tournament and realized there was so much to learn," he said. "I just got hooked on learning."

Since then, he has placed third in individual freestyle competitions at the World Footbag Championships in 2004 and 2007. He said he also appeared as actor Adam Sandler's double in an opening scene of the 2008 movie, "Don't Mess With the Zohan," in which Bevier plays footbag with a group of people on a beach.

Bevier said he is looking forward to the national competition next weekend and once-again seeing Stalberger.

"It's always great to see John and show him what his babies turned into," he said.