Bohannon Middle School Teacher Bags World Championship

While teachers had the summer off, P.T. Lovern, a physical education instructor at , kicked his way into winning a world championship footbag title in Helsinki.

Lovern and partner Jody Welch, from Mountain View, took the title at the 32nd Annual International Footbag Players' Association's 2011 World Championships. It's Lovern's fourth world title—he won mixed doubles last year in Oakland and men's doubles championships in 2004 in Montreal and 2008 in Prague.

"I guess since I've been playing for the past 16 years, I'm kind of past doing it for recognition," Lovern said. "You just do it for pride."

A net separates players who volley a footbag—a small bean bag similar to a Hacky Sack—back and forth using only their feet.

Lovern began playing Hacky Sack back in high school. He also enjoyed volleyball and soccer growing up. But he was attending Southern Illinois University when he discovered the sport — by reading a magazine — for which he would later hold the world champion title.

"It's funny what can inspire you," Lovern said. "I never thought I'd be a world champion in anything."

Back in 2003, Lovern founded the Chaos Footbag Club in Oakland, where he currently resides. Over the years, a few of his own students who learned footbag in his seventh- and eighth-grade physical education classes went on to join the club.

Lovern says that while footbag originated in the U.S., it has grown popular in other countries due to YouTube and the Internet.

"That's why it's fun to play abroad, because there's such a high interest in it."