PHOENIX — Tyler Goldenberg started playing with yo-yos a decade ago. He's gone to a training camp. He's competed in dozens of regional and national competitions. Even when not gearing up for a contest, he practices six or seven times a week.
Goldenberg, 17, of Phoenix, will compete next month at the 2012 World Yo-Yo Contest, an international competition held annually in Orlando. Last year, he came in 70th and hopes this time to break into the top 50.
The contest, held Aug. 2-4, will attract an estimated 300 competitors and 800 friends, family and onlookers from dozens of countries.
Competition is in six categories: one yo-yo, two yo-yo looping tricks, two yo-yo sleeping tricks, the string attached to a finger but not the yo-yo, the string attached to the yo-yo and weights but not the finger, and artistic performance.
For the past two months, Goldenberg has fine-tuned his minute-long single yo-yo routine, practicing 10 to 20 times a day. A standout routine requires speed, performance, choreography and originality, he said. Although he has the latter three, he admits lacking speed, preferring smoother tricks that flow.
At higher-level competitions, a unique set of tricks is necessary, he said. Goldenberg makes up tricks daily, and if he thinks they're good enough, they might eventually make their way into his routine.
That ability to create his own style is what drew him to the yo-yo in the first place. "It's pure creativity," Goldenberg said.
Goldenberg, ranked 12th in the nation, said it would be nice to be a national or even world champion. However, he mainly enjoys the chance to show his skills and interact with the yo-yo community. It's a small group of people, with an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 serious players, he said.
He has prepared hard for next month's competition, but once he's done his routine, he's looking forward to hanging out with other enthusiasts.
"The rest of the time it's just a five-day party with my friends from all over the world," he said.
Goldenberg is part of a 24-person junior team sponsored by YoYoFactory, a Chandler company that manufactures 500,000 yo-yos a year and sells them worldwide. Goldenberg works at the company during summer and spring break.
Hans Van Dan Elzen, the founder of YoYoFactory, said the company looks for and sponsors talented individuals trying to break into the yo-yo scene. It supplies yo-yos and pays for plane tickets and entrance fees to competitions.
Yo-yo contests are a way for kids to gain confidence and come out of their shells, Van Dan Elzen said. And, when picked up by a sponsor like YoYoFactory, they can travel and make international connections they couldn't otherwise.
"It's a surprise what you can do with the yo-yo and what the yo-yo can do for you," he said.
Greg Cohen, chairman of the World Yo-Yo Contest since 2000, said the sport is slowly catching on. Competitors' attendance is up 7 percent over last year, Cohen said, and he believes it will be up by as much as 12 percent once everyone registers. As of July 13, competitors from 20 countries, including Mexico, the Czech Republic and Malaysia, had signed up to attend.
Cohen said the international contests, held since 1992, have created a yo-yo culture that is beginning to have its own dress, music and trends.
Even his title, chairman, is a joke derived from that culture. He adopted the honorific from a little-known Japanese comic called "Super Yo Yo." The comic, which Cohen described as thinly disguised advertising and "not even worth Googling," features a mysterious, wise character who ran a worldwide contest and is known only as "The Chairman."
The yo-yo community is a generous, tight-knit one in which losers raise victors on their shoulders and the camaraderie crosses borders, he said.
"The wondrous thing is you find all these kids sitting there yo-yoing, and they don't speak the same language, and it doesn't matter," Cohen said.
Like Van Dan Elzen, Cohen said yo-yo contests have a way of transforming the competitors. He recounted stories of two participants who turned from failing student to successful lawyer and bashful youth to entertainer because of the confidence they found with the yo-yo.
Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com