I just spent the better part of a week at a juggling festival. Conveniently for me, the International Juggling Association’s annual festival was here in Winston this year, which meant I got to attend while not having to take off a ton of work. So I spent the mornings working, and the afternoons/evenings juggling.

My favorite thing about juggling festivals is the opportunity to pass clubs with lots of different people. Club passing is inherently social, since it requires two people at minimum, and you make a pretty strong connection when you’re counting on the other person not to hit you with their passes, and they’re counting on you to avoid hitting them. You also have to be in rhythm with each other, which means paying close attention to each other in general.

The most basic club passing pattern is 4-count, or every-others. Naming patterns is confusing, because one method counts every throw, while the other way only counts right-hand throws, and people use them interchangeably, as far as I can tell. So 4-count means every fourth throw is a pass, which is the same as every others, meaning every other right-hand throw is a pass. There’s a lot of free time in a 4-count pattern – time to do a pirouette, or throw a double, or a triple, or any other fancy throw you feel like, really. So sometimes you make it harder by doing 2-count, or everies. So every right-hand throw is a pass. This leaves you less time to throw crazy tricks, but if you’re good, you still have lots of options. But my favorite thing to do to make 4-count more interesting is to add more people. You started with 2 people, right, throwing a pass every other right-hand beat. Well, if you add a person, you can create a “feed” where one person is doing 2-count, alternating who they throw to. So now one person’s doing 2-count and the others are doing 4-count. And then you can add another person, and this is where it gets really interesting. You can either make 2 people feed, and make an N-shape, or you can do a three-person feed, where the feeder is throwing to 3 people in sequence – either 123123 or 12321 are the standard versions, called typewriter feed and windshield wiper feed, respectively. The guys on the ends of a windshield wiper feed are actually doing 6-count, and that’s a lot of free time… so why not add more passers for them to throw to in their spare beats?

Anyway, all of this explanation about feeds and 4-count and 2-count boils down to my favorite thing about large multiperson passing patterns: not everyone has to be the same skill level. When you build a 9-person pattern, there’ll be some spots on the edges where all you have to do is standard 4-count. And then maybe there’s a spot in the middle doing a typewriter feed, and another spot who’s doing a windshield wiper feed, except his middle guy is out of place and a long pass (typical passing distance is around 6 feet – if the person’ further away than that, it’s a harder throw). So you can have a beginner doing simple 4-count, an intermediate person doing the typewriter feed, and a more advanced passer doing the hardest spot. All of them matter to the success of the pattern, and everyone can push their skill level just by switching up a spot for a few minutes, or take a break by switching down. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to juggle with a whole group, everyone being challenged, and everyone taking pleasure in the accomplishment. You’re not limited by your weakest link – you just give them a spot they can handle. I wish more team sports were like that.