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Ken Westerfield (born May 23, 1947) is a pioneering Frisbee disc player. In the 1960s, as numbers of young people became alienated from social norms, they resisted and looked for alternatives. They formed what became known as the counterculture. The forms of escape and resistance manifest in many ways including social activism, alternative lifestyles, experimental living through foods, dress, music and alternative recreational activities, including that of throwing a Frisbee. Organized disc sports, in the 1970s, began with promotional efforts from Wham-O and Irwin Toy, a few tournaments and professionals using Frisbee show tours to perform at universities, fairs and sporting events. Disc sports such as freestyle, double disc court, guts, ultimate and disc golf became this sports first events.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://wfdf.org/ )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://wfdf.org/history-stats/history-of-fyling-disc )〕 Two sports, the team sport of disc ultimate and disc golf are very popular worldwide and are now being played semi-professionally.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.pdga.com/ )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://theaudl.com/ )〕 The World Flying Disc Federation, Professional Disc Golf Association, and the Freestyle Players Association are the official rules and sanctioning organizations for flying disc sports worldwide. Major League Ultimate (MLU) and the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL) are the first semi-professional disc ultimate leagues. Ken Westerfield is a Frisbee (disc) player from the 1960s. A Decade Awards and four-time Hall of Fame inductee in freestyle, ultimate and disc golf. Westerfield produced numerous tournaments, world records, many competitive wins in freestyle, ultimate, disc golf, distance and other individual events in over-all tournaments.〔 Invented freestyle moves, including "body rolls" and introduced the first freestyle competition at the 1974 Canadian Open Frisbee Championships, Toronto, Canada.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://people.ucsc.edu/~kdgivens/1970s_pre_modern.html#mens_pod )〕 Westerfield was one of the original freestylers from the 1960s and used his expertise in several company sponsored touring promotional Frisbee shows for Irwin Toy, (Frisbee distributor in Canada 1972–76), Molson Frisbee Team (1974–77), Goodtimes Professional Frisbee Show (1978–82), Orange Crush Frisbee Team (1977–78), Air Canada Frisbee Team (1978–79), Lee Jeans Frisbee Team (1979–80) and the Labatts Schooner Frisbee Team (1983–85).〔 ==Early life== Kenneth Ray Westerfield was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Margaret Marion (née Beach) 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 of refrigeration and air conditioning. The family later move from Detroit to Livonia, Michigan, now twelve years old, he lived with his parents and younger sister, Kathy who graduated from Winston Churchill High School in 1972 and has made a career in special education. Born into a close, middle class, conservative household, Westerfield attended area public schools and was active in many sports. His father, whose father Cleo Conn Westerfield played baseball for the Detroit Street Railway League in the 1920s, was very active in sports himself. 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. It was at age thirteen that Westerfield would become best friends with Hall of Fame and Discraft founder Jim Kenner. They began playing Frisbee in high school. Daily they would experiment with new ways of throwing and catching the Frisbee, this would later be called "playing freestyle". In the sixties, when the Frisbee was still considered a toy used just for recreation, there wasn't a reason to become proficient at throwing a Frisbee, no Frisbee professionals to emulate or disc tournaments to compete in. The only reason they became as good as they were was because of their shared anti-establishment attitude and lifestyle (that also included the rejection of traditional sports in general). This would result in a proficiency at playing Frisbee that had never been seen before. They would later lay out a competitive format, creating a sport that would display the results of their freestyle flying disc playing abilities. Graduating in 1965 from Franklin High school, and leaning towards the counterculture, Westerfield and Kenner spent their days on Cass and Silver Lake beaches, as well as at music festivals, developing their skills. One day, noticing an event ad in a local alternative newspaper, they took their Frisbees and a VW Bug and went to a music festival near Bethel, NY, called Woodstock, that later became the music event of the century. While at the festival they would throw the Frisbee over and just out of reach of the crowd, who while sitting on the ground watching the bands would keep reaching for it as it flew by, probably not even knowing what it was. Westerfield later stated, "it was an interesting crowd to play for".〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=https://canadianultimate.com/inductees )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ken Westerfield」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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