A new club has joined Community High School (CHS), and it’s getting members up and active. The first day of Juggling Club had participants picking up the basics of juggling quickly. Members, including science teacher Courtney Kiley, met in Kiley’s room on Nov. 3 to begin the repetitive practice towards mastering the challenging skill.

“I was engulfed by the glory of juggling,” Kiley said. “It’s addicting. It’s [also] good exercise because [you’re] squatting, you’re engaging all your muscles and all [of] your brain.”

Max Steiger, a sophomore at CHS started the Jugglenauts, with the idea to spread his juggling talent to his peers. He loves to juggle and wants everyone else to learn to love juggling as well.

Steiger is a self-taught juggler. His skillful talent all started from a night of procrastination. Steiger had to write a paper for Judith DeWoskin’s American Literature class but instead watched online videos of people juggling. It took him about three to four hours of straight juggling to master the first couple of sets.

The atmosphere in room 318 during Friday lunches is “loud,” Steiger said. “Everyone is enthusiastic and really excited to learn.” Beginners of the club screamed out of joy when they finally got a complete repetition. The room was bursting with energy.

 Jugglenaut member Ruby Taylor said the first day was really fun.

“I felt like I connected with a lot of the members of the club that I didn’t really know before.” Taylor joined the Jugglenauts because she saw Steiger juggling a lot and felt a bit jealous, wanting a ‘quirky’ skill like Steiger’s.

 “I’m definitely not good at juggling yet, but I’ll get there,” Taylor said.

While Steiger doesn’t have any big plans for upcoming Jugglenauts meetings, he hopes to implement competitions once everybody is comfortable with their juggling. Kiley dreams big about the club’s potential. “I think we’re gonna get away from tennis balls and bean bags, and we’ll get up to knives and flaming bowling pins, maybe some chainsaws and unicycles [too],” Kiley said. “We’re going to need a bigger space, I can see [the club] becoming really popular.”

Anyone is welcome to join the juggling club. “People should join because it’s a fun time. Everybody loves juggling, and even if you don’t know how or you don’t think you ever can, you’ll have a fun time in juggling club,” Steiger said. “I want everybody [to do] what they are capable of doing. I’m not gonna expect everybody to be able to juggle five balls because it’s not an easy thing to do. I think anybody can juggle because here’s the thing about juggling, everybody can do it, it’s just that not everybody has the balls.”