Via Sands started juggling to win a bet. A complete beginner, Sands showed up at the Minnesota Neverthriving juggling club, hoping to learn how to do it before a friend could.
Three weeks after that first meeting, Sands is practicing basic three-ball cascade juggling in the shade, chatting with other club members. A few meters away, Bill “Biz” Olbrisch, who has been at this for over 30 years, takes a break from throwing four differently sized balls in a complicated pattern to tell Sands that she’s doing well, and that she needs to work on keeping her elbows down.
Sands isn’t going to collect any winnings from her friend, who apparently didn’t realize they had made a bet at all, but she’s going to keep coming anyway. In a time when, according to the American Psychological Association, loneliness is a bigger problem than ever, a place like the Neverthriving club is special. Sands’s advice for finding community is to force yourself to show up—“you just gotta do it,” she says.
“One thing that’s been getting me through learning to juggle is remembering that you have to be bad at something first in order to then be kinda good at something. And it’s the same thing with being in community and making friends: you have to try, and maybe fail, in order to succeed,” Sands says.
Despite the ironic name, the Minnesota Neverthriving club is, well, thriving. The club regularly draws two to three dozen jugglers of all ages and skill levels to Matthews Park on Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons. In the winter, or when it rains, they meet inside at the park’s rec center. But when weather permits, the group congregates in a flat, shady spot next to the basketball courts, creating a whimsical scene in the middle of the park: conversations are punctuated with the slap of clubs and sometimes even the squeak of a rubber chicken as objects fly through the air and balance on various body parts.
While some club members like Sands are new to juggling, others have spent decades honing their skills or even working in the circus industry.
Olbrisch went to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in 1996 and then spent years as a solo juggling act, doing publicity for a traveling circus. In 2010, he moved to the Twin Cities and became a member of the Neverthriving, at which point, he says, “I was just like, ‘OK, well, these people will be my friends now.’”
The group has become a huge part of his life. Olbrisch runs games at MONDO, an annual juggling and unicycle festival held in the Twin Cities (it’s the biggest juggling fest in the Midwest!), and he’s on the board of the International Juggling Association (IJA) along with several other members of the Neverthriving. Olbrisch and many of the other jugglers also hang out at a bar after club ends—an invitation that is “very” open to any 21+ club attendees.
Like Olbrisch, Neverthriving member Ben Schave is also an alum of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. He’s been juggling for 30 years and attending the club for eight years.
“When you move to MN it’s really hard to make new friends because everyone made their friends in kindergarten… I came here [to the club] and found a group of people who were accessible and kind. They reached out, so I just kept coming,” he says.
Schave shows up to the club with a briefcase full of different props: traditional balls, but also cigar boxes, plus a cane and hat for performing balance tricks. He says the club is welcoming to all types of juggling and juggling-related activities.
For others, juggling has always just been a hobby. Dan Ries says the club has been a nice weekly decompression space for him since he came across the group’s Facebook page a year and a half ago.
“By day, I’m a physician, but in my vacation time, I juggle a lot,” he says.
After 45 years of recreational practice, however, Ries’s decompression time looks like a proper juggling show.
“It’s a super open community,” Ries says. “There are professional circus people here, and then there are people like me who have just been juggling on the side. I mean, it’s fun to learn new skills when you get to be as old as I am.”
Clearly, new dogs also like to learn new tricks. Families with young children often come to the club, and many of the Neverthriving’s most consistent members are young adults.
“We’re always excited about new people joining,” Olbrisch says. “Our biggest problem is not finding someone who’s willing to teach people to juggle; it’s getting people to take it easy and let them learn.”
One regular club member, Jasper Slichter, is a college junior who’s been coming to the club for three years.
“I love learning from everybody here,” Slichter says. “I’m the first to ask for help. When I need help for something, there’s always somebody willing to explain a trick or tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
A month ago, Slichter convinced their friend, Sander Klotzbach, to come to the club as well, and he’s also been attending ever since.
Klotzbach first learned to juggle in middle school, but he says that even people without any experience are welcome at the club.
“The group is very tight. There's no judgment if your skill level is lower. If you’re completely new to it, people are happy to help you out and give you tips,” Klotzbach says.
One member, Ava Malloy, even teaches juggling (more specifically, a prop called a kendama) as her job. She works at Mindfulness Through Play, a non-profit that teaches juggling in schools.
“What it really teaches is emotional regulation. We use skill toys like yo-yos, juggling, and, primarily, kendama to teach regulation because it's a very frustrating toy. You learn that patience pays off when you finally get the trick and feel that rush,” she says.
Malloy also says that juggling can serve as an important outlet for young people without access to expensive school sports programs or other extracurricular activities. Many props are inexpensive, and just one tool allows endless possible progression.
Malloy first learned to juggle when she was seven after by chance seeing Olbrisch using a prop called a diablo. She lost interest for a while, but returned to the club as a teenager after learning some butterfly knife tricks. Now, Malloy’s most dedicated to kendama (you can see her videos on Instagram @ava_juggles).
“I didn’t have a great relationship with my parents growing up, but the juggling crowd has always been there for me,” Malloy says. They added that, through juggling, she’s found “the people I consider family.”
