It's probably safe to say that when most people think about boomerangs, which admittedly may not be very often, a familiar picture appears in their minds:
An Australian aborigine is stalking prey in the Outback…suddenly he spots a bird aloft…he rears back and lets fly with his trusty boomerang….the bent stick goes whirling skyward and bingo! conks the bird square on the noggin…the bird falls to earth and the hunter collects it and takes it home for supper.
That's a picture that Dave Boehm, boomerang booster, wishes he could expunge from peoples' minds; that of the boomerang as a hunting tool and therefore a potentially dangerous weapon.
Neither aborigines nor anyone else ever hunted with a boomerang, according to Boehm. Boomerangs weigh only about eight or nine ounces and are too light to be much use in bringing down prey.
"In any contest between a bird and a boomerang, the bird'll win," says Boehm. "I've seen it happen. At boomerang meets, birds'll go after boomerangs, knock'em right out of the sky."
What the natives of Australia used to hunt with were hunting sticks, sturdy clubs about the size of baseball bats and weighing six to eight pounds. The natives would hurl these clubs at prey, usually with deadly accuracy. But the boomerang was invented by the original Australians many centuries ago for sport, for fun, claims Boehm.
"Unfortunately, anthropologists lumped boomerangs and hunting sticks together under the term boomerang. But hunting sticks are clearly lethal and are made to be hurled in a straight line. A boomerang is something that comes back at you and is not a hunting stick," said Boehm.
Weekdays, Boehm, 46, of Highland Heights, is a market analyst for Health Research International. On weekends, however, Boehm tirelessly booms boomerangs. He is the founder of the Cleveland Boomerang School, the only incorporated boomerang school in the country, now ten years old. The aims of the school, which has about 350 members, are to promote boomeranging as a safe sport and to provide proper boomerangs to people who want them.
That second aim is almost as important to Boehm as the first because it would help clear up another misconception about boomerangs, namely, that they don't work.
All too many boomerangs that are sold in toy and sporting goods stores are mass-produced and made of plastic or cheap wood. According to Boehm, they don't do what boomerangs are supposed to do - come spinning back to the hurler. Instead they wind up on a distant garage roof or simply fall out of the sky. This results in keen disappointment to the would-be boomeranger, usually a kid who got one for Christmas, and accounts for the widespread belief that the danged things don't work.
Boehm and his fellow boomerangers at the Cleveland Boomerang School not only preach and teach boomeranging but make the curved sticks as well, usually in the winter when it's too cold outside to be out doing what they love best - throwing boomerangs.
As part of its mission to correct popular misconceptions about boomerangs and to make them cceptable, the CBS has forged a bond with the staff of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area where Boehm and company teach boomeranging near the Virginia Kendall Lake shelter on the first Saturday of the summer months between 2 and 4 p.m. In July, however, that date will be moved to the second Saturday, July 9, because the first Saturday coincides with the Independence day weekend. And in August, the regular Saturday lessons will be bumped by the seventh annual Northeast Ohio Boomerang Open, to be held Aug. 6 and 7.
The open will be held at the Howe Farm and is expected to draw boomerangers from a wide area, as far south as Florida, and as far west as Kansas, said Boehm. About 60-80 contestants usually take part, although Boehm expects more this year because of a special boomerang project the club has with several local girl scout troups. Usually about 1,000 spectators show up, Boehm said.
Last year the Cuyahoga Valley park was the site of the national championships of the United States Boomerang Assn., which drew hundreds of participants from all over the world, including of course, Australia. This year the OSBA nationals will be held in Bethlehem, Pa., June 18 and 19. The Cleveland Boomerang School is a member organization of the USBA and will send a team to compete.
On Sundays, Boehm and the other CBS instructors can be found in Wade Oval behind the Cleveland Art Museum from noon to 2 p.m. ready and willing to teach boomeranging to anyone who wants to learn. The lessons are free. Usually only a handful of people take the lessons, but Boehm says he's satisfied.
"As a sport, boomeranging is growing very slowly, but it's steady progress. If I can teach just a few people every week how to throw a boomerang properly, I'm satisfied."
Like many boomerangers, Boehm's fascination with the bent stick goes back to childhood, although most of the boomerangs he had as a kid were duds. His real introduction to the sport came when he visited Australia in the early 1970s and learned boomeranging from Joe Timbery, aboriginal champion and founder of the Sidney Boomerang School. He became an instant convert.
"If Joe hadn't taught me, I would never have really known the sport. As I was learning, it dawned on me, my gosh, boomerangs have been here practically forever. Before the Wright Brothers, before the Greeks, the Australian aborigines understood the principals of aerodynamics," said Boehm.
A) Preparing To Throw The Boomerang should be held secure but loose. Rotational spin drives the Boomerang around the circle. Your arm should follow through with the throw after release. B) Throwing The Boomerang  C) How To Hold a Boomerang The Right Way  D) The Wrong Way. Trust Us.  No return Boomerang is ever thrown sideways. A return Boomerang released sideways will rise sharply in the aire - and crash. Results in a two piece Boomerang. |
An adult usually can learn the principals of hurling a boomerang in about 20 minutes. But it takes two or three months to develop a throwing arm, he says. Essential to tossing a boomerang and having it return is what boomerangers call "reading the wind." First, says Boehm, toss a few bits of grass into the air to determine the direction of the breeze. Then face 45 degrees to the right of the breeze so the wind is hitting the left side of your face. Throw the boomerang with an overhand motion, like that of a tennis serve. Never hurl a boomerang sideways. To catch, slap the boomerang between both hands as it comes spinning in. Catching, says Boehm, is the trickiest part of boomeranging and can take years to master. "Accuracy in catching is what you're after. You can learn accuracy by steering the wind and to do that you must have the ability to visualize the wind three-dimensionally. "The way you throw the boomerang today is the same way the aborigines did it 100 years ago. You throw it off to the right of the breeze as the wind is heading against the left side of your face. You throw it straight up and down. Gyroscopic precession and aerodynamic lift cause all boomerangs to behave exactly the same regardless of their shape. However, some boomerangs are more aerodynamically stable and those are the ones competitors look for," said Boehm. Another misconception about boomeranging is that it's a lazy man's or fat man's sport because of the notion that the boomerang comes right back to the hurler. Actually, boomerangers have to be pretty athletic and have good coordination because the sport does involve a lot of running, bending, throwing, and catching. Some boomerangers are capable of such feats as catching a boomerang with their feet (as the boomerang comes spinning back, sit down, stick your legs up in the air and nab it with your feet), or grabbing them backwards or between their legs. At boomerang meets, competitors are judged in such categories as juggling (throwing one out and then launching another before the first comes back), doubling (throwing and catching two boomerangs simultaneously), consecutive catch, maximum time aloft and night throwing with lighted boomerangs. |
Finally, there's one last mistaken notion about boomeranging that Boehm is anxious to clear up, namely that it's a macho sport for guys only.
"In fact, women do as well as men in boomeranging. Every year in the nationals, a woman wins an event. Sometimes this drives people crazy because they think it's a macho sport or a martial arts thing when it's really about skill, determination and endurance," he said. Boehm unabashedly loves boomerangs. "A product life cycle is usually measured in years. We think the product life cycle of the boomerang is measured in centuries, and that if we could move the boomerang ahead just a couple of percentage points in our lifetime, it would be a tremendous accomplishment."
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