The world's top boomerang throwers will compete next month in Seattle — where a lot of them already live

Daniel Bower threw hard and overhand like a third baseman rushing a peg across the diamond. His carbon fiber "tri-blade" boomerang hissed about 20 yards before slowing, listing left and looping right back to him.

He played catch with himself for five minutes straight as part of the "fast catch endurance" event at the Greater Seattle Open boomerang tournament last month. He rarely had to step from where he stood, winning the event by catching 68 of his own throws and winning the tournament in which competitors vied to see who could keep their boomerang aloft the longest, sling it most accurately and catch it most creatively.

Winning a Seattle tournament is no small feat because this is a hotbed of the funky, overlooked, yet highly skilled sport. In fact, seven of the 18 U.S. throwers entered in team competition of the 15th annual World Boomerang Championships — set for the University of Washington intramural fields Aug. 18 — hail from here.

World championships are held every other year and Germany has dominated, other than in 2002 when the American team beat them in Germany. This time around, the Americans are banking on a Seattle home-field advantage.

Local boomerang stars

Bower, 22, also won the national title last year and will compete on one of three six-member U.S. teams, along with his identical twin, Richard, and Seattle pal Billy Brazelton. They all are members of the "Hole in the Head" boomerang club, which uses the tag line, "Stay Rad."

Betsylew Miale-Gix, a Seattle personal injury attorney, will be on a squad with her husband, Will Gix, who taught her how to throw on their second date many years ago. She's been the world's top female thrower the past decade and owns a world record in the "unlimited time aloft," when her boomerang stayed up for three minutes and 49 seconds.

Steve Kavanaugh, president of Seattle-based Washington Boomerang Club (www.waboomclub.org), will compete on his eighth U.S. team. He is the only three-time World Champion in the "GLORP" event, which is a freestyle trick catch event, the boomerang version of H-O-R-S-E.

Throw them some credit

Perhaps more mysterious than the physics that make a boomerang return is how Seattle, despite its maddeningly inconsistent winds, became the U.S. center of a sport in which reading wind is critical.

Some say it's because we are at home with both aerospace physics and free spirits, or that we embrace the outdoors to the point of being in tune with the elements. Some say we have the patience to develop muscle memory and the vision to build just the right tool.

Another reason, says Kavanaugh, is Michael Gel Girvin. "Gel," as he's called, was a student at The Evergreen State College in the late '80s when he taught boomerang throwing to other students.

"There was this wild, partying group of boomerang throwers who on Fridays had this boomerang class," Kavanaugh recalls. "Hey, you want to write papers or go throw boomerangs and drink some beer?"

It was about fun, but Gel was a good teacher, too. Six Evergreen alumni went on to compete in the World Boomerang Championships and spread the boomerang word. Over the years, Gel organized more than 100 tournaments. A former world champion and world record holder, he no longer throws because of injury, but his Web site, www.gel-boomerang.com, is a good source of information.

Ben Ruhe is credited for creating the current American sport. He first led boomerang workshops in 1969 as part of his work at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and National Museum of Natural History. Then he organized tournaments and the United States Boomerang Association in 1980.

Ruhe also led an American team, which included Seattle's Ali Fujino, to Australia in 1981 for the first modern-day competitive boomerang competition. To everyone's surprise, considering the boomerang's ties to indigenous Australians, the Americans won.

"The Bower towers"

Unless you understand and appreciate the nuances and required skill — like reading the wind, finding the perfect release point and velocity on the throw, and choosing just the right instrument — watching a boomerang tournament can be akin to peering in on somebody else's family picnic.

Throwing a boomerang is simple, but being good enough to compete takes years of practice. It took the twins, whom Miale-Gix calls "the Bower towers of boomerang power," five years of competing and crafting their own boomerangs to move to the top of the pecking order — and that's relatively quick.

The Bowers were 14 when they were introduced to the sport during a school demonstration by thrower Will Herlan. He sent them home with some unrefined samples. The twins spent that very night filing and sanding.

"When we threw ours, they came back," Richard recalls. "That was pretty great. We competed in our first tournament about six months later with the crappy boomerangs we had amassed. I'm sure we got last, but we learned a lot."

The Bowers are carpenters and make their own boomerangs. Among the boomerangs that fill the walls of the family's living room in Kenmore is one that consists of two foot-long cedar baseboards connected into a right angle. "That actually flew pretty good," Richard says, laughing. "It came back."

The Bowers are made for the sport. They both are a lanky, athletic 6-foot-2-inches. They both wear beards and finish each other's sentences, except when you ask which one is better. Richard admits Daniel has placed higher the past two years, but others say Richard has the prettier form.

Competitive challenges

Modern boomerangs, many of which are made of carbon fiber and weigh about two ounces, have come a long way from the nonreturning wooden stick our ancestors used for hunting. Throwers bring dozens of different boomerangs to competitions so they can match what's needed in a particular event. And they have favorites. Kavanaugh has climbed trees and jumped in lakes to rescue his beloved warmup boomerang.

It's not all engineering, though. You need experience so you can identify the correct angle into the wind that you should throw, the right tilt, the right elevation, the right velocity, the right snap on the release. You must keep on top of wind direction and adjust. The Northwest's winds — from the sudden dead zones to competing gusts — are what makes the sport even harder to master here.

Miale-Gix, who played a lot of softball before picking up a boomerang and wishes more women would try the sport that allows them to compete on even ground with men, lives for the moments of synchronicity.

"Competitive boomerang takes a lot of practice and awareness of all types of factors," she says. "It's hard, but there is a magic when everything comes together."

Richard Seven: 206-464-2241 or rseven@seattletimes.com