Editors Note: LHSDigitalNewspaper and Lowell High School do not endorse the ‘Team Oodabagah’ or parkour activity, which may take inherent physical risks at times and may have involved trespassing, as reported on in this story.
By Christian Hy
Dracut, MA-It’s Sunday at 6:30 pm. Team Oodabagah trains and practices at the back alley open gym just outside of Lowell.
The members sprint from point to point executing websters, gainers, and back fulls off of vertical walls and 5 foot ledges often in an urban environment.
Team Oodabagah is a local freerunning and parkour group.
Parkour mixes art and sport with thrill seeking.
As an art it’s the disciplined movement of the body and as a sport its sprinting, leaping, climbing, and more to get from point A to B as efficiently as possible, according to the website Parkour http://www.parkour.org/.
Freerunning takes parkour to the next level by performing flips, spins, and other types of acrobatic feats all while leaping, dropping and running.
It’s the art of motion, and allows you to be in more control of your body than most people, the informal CEO/CFO Brian Khakeo said about the newly popular activity.
A French military course called a ‘parcours do combattant’ is considered the origin of the discipline, Parkour, according to the a Parkour training blog http://www.parkourtrain.net/parkour-history.
If you want to do the activity, Parkour and Freerunning requires a whole new vocabulary, according to members.
A tracer, derived from the French word traceur, is a person who practices Parkour.
Members boast of the health benefits of the discipline, although there are inherent risks in many of the movements.
A webster is a front flip variation that involves jumping off one foot and using the legs and arms to create lift and rotation in one fluid movement completed in many steps.
Gainers are back flips that are performed while running or walking forwards.
A back full is a back flip with a 360 degree twist.
Team Oodabagah established themselves, according to Khakeo, “around January 21st, 2012.”
But before that date they went by other names as many informal groups are also forming around the United States and Europe.
“We started out as just a group of 6-7 friends from middle school,” said Khakeo of the group. Ironically, one of the group’s favorite spots is the Butler Middle School. Now the group is composed of 11-12 people and they have traveled as far as Hartford,CT for a free running/parkour jam”.
Occasionally Oodabagah will train in Boston to find different environments since training in the same spot everyday can get a little repetitive.
Oodabagah said they are “ somewhere in between professional and amateur.”
They support the claim with their history of having been asked about commercial sponsorship, but they declined the offer, and chose the self promotion route.
“Sophomore year is when we first made everyone on the team custom tank tops,” said Khakeo about the team’s merchandise.
Now the group sells tanks, baseball shirts, hats, and more to the public, according to Khakeo.
Soon they will be selling group pins for a dollar a piece so anybody can get some, ‘Oodabagah,’ he said. “The money raised supports the the team’s costs.”
Oodabagah can be contacted by Instagram messaging, he said.
Watch Oodabagah in action at Hampton Beach on the “Team Oodabagah” Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqGh00RQEXw
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