You may have seen them around campus in front of the Kansas Union or out amidst the trees in front of Fraser Hall. You might have even seen them performing at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival last month. But whether they’re using clubs, rings or balls, the members of the KU Juggling Club are keeping their tossing hands strong.

As I walked the hundreds of steps up to Fraser Hall I noticed, other than that I am out of shape, an intimidating man with dark hair and a very long beard to match. A quick look down at a bag of juggling implements assured me that I was in the right place. I introduced myself to the man who told me his name was Justin Gramarye, former KU student from Fairfax, Va., and has his Ph.D in vertebrate paleontology.

He asked me what I could do and I explained that I was only a beginner at juggling as I quickly dropped all but one of the soft beanbags he had given me. We chatted as he juggled (he was much better than me) and told me that he had started the club three years ago with a woman named Emily Tremain who is no longer a part of the club.

Gramarye told me that he had always loved juggling and that it has been a part of his life ever since he was a kid. His dad, he explained, had been fascinated with juggling and owned all different kinds of juggling paraphernalia, but had preferred standard juggling balls.

“My dad definitely had more tricks with those than I did, but he never used all the other equipment he had, so I got better with those than him,” Gramarye says. “And when I moved out I took all of that stuff with me.”

A while after I had ceased my awkward attempts to suspend the three beanbags in the air for more than a few seconds, the rest of the group started showing up. Thomas Duermeier, Lawrence senior, aka Tio, was the second to appear. Duermeier had also gotten into juggling when he was a kid. In a weird coincidence, his family lived next to a performer who did pantomime and incorporated a bit of juggling into the act. To give her kids some useful experiences, Duermeier’s mom traded massages (she was a masseuse) for juggling lessons. He told me this story as he juggled clubs, tossing them from behind his back and catching them over his shoulder with seeming ease. As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, someone had brought a futbol with them and, in response to a challenge, Duermeier was juggling three clubs while balancing on the ball.

“I think I’ll just stick with three clubs for now,” he says after being prodded to try four clubs. “I don’t feel like hurting myself just yet.”

Finally, the president of the club, Ezra Huscher, Salina junior, came along, bringing boxes of pizza for the entire group. After nourishing themselves on juggling food (delicious cream cheese pizza) they got back into the swing of things. As Gramarye and Duermeier practiced passing seven clubs between each other, Huscher talked about the club’s trip last year to the World Juggling Federation (WJF) Training Camp. Fifteen members attended the trip.

“It was a really good time. We got to meet a lot of cool people and the really famous juggler who started the WJF,” Huscher says.

The organization may sound a lot like a pro-wrestling group, but it brings together jugglers from all over under the juggling banner, providing these like-minded people with a place to interact, converse, and throw stuff at each other. This is much the same goal as the KU Juggling Club. Even though the group is relatively small at about 20 members, the chance to get together and have some fun juggling and just interacting makes it all worthwhile.

The club meets twice a week; once on Tuesday in front of the Union at 7 p.m. and again on Saturday in front of Fraser Hall at 1 p.m. In addition to the weekly meetings, the jugglers recently juggled at the Renaissance Festival in Kansas City and made a trip to the St. Louis Jugglefest on Oct. 6. If you happen to find yourself on campus and see a group of people tossing various objects into the air, give them a wave. Just not when a club is headed for one of their faces.