Hello yo-yoers! My name is Tony Song
I was born in South Korea and raised by my mother after my parents divorced when I was two. As a child, I was taught to live kindly. But kindness did not prevent hardship.
In elementary school, after making a small mistake during a festival rehearsal, fourteen boys pushed me to the ground and stepped on me. It did not leave visible scars, but it left something deeper — a fracture in confidence. Bullying continued through middle school and high school.
In high school, I practiced yo-yo every day. What felt like hope to me became a reason for others to mock and isolate me. I was told it was pointless. That it would never lead anywhere. That I should stop and “focus on real things.” For nearly ten years, I never truly received positive support for yo-yo. At one point, my yo-yos were taken away for an entire year so I could concentrate only on academics. My family wanted stability for me. They were afraid I was wasting time. But for me, yo-yo was not a distraction. It was survival. When academic pressure felt unbearable, and peer violence made school unsafe, the yo-yo was the only place where effort turned into visible improvement. Trick by trick, repetition by repetition, I rebuilt something inside myself.
Even when I played alone.
Even when I was ashamed to show it publicly.
Even when I doubted whether it had value.
Yo-yo, in my darkest years, was a quiet act of resistance against giving up.
When I was fifteen years old, I went to school in South Pasadena, California. It was the first time I received positive recognition for performing with my yo-yo. Rather than mocking me, the audience showed appreciation by giving me applause. That experience was a first for me, and it changed me. I felt good about myself in a way I was not used to. It made me feel like passion and dedication were worth something. I went back to South Korea, and yes, the realities I faced there were very tough. In South Korea, I received very harsh academic pressure and bullying, and I suffered emotionally; however, I was a different person than I was before. I had received a glimpse of what life could be. During my military service, I was taught to be disciplined, be responsible, practice teamwork, and do what needs to be done in order to survive. The military environment was very tough, but it helped me learn to be resilient and dependable. After my military service, I returned to California and started studying Business Marketing at Santa Monica College. I wanted to learn to build communities around passions and create environments where people feel a sense of belonging rather than isolation. It was a long and difficult journey, but with mental, academic, and physical discipline, I made a slow but visible transformation. I broke my cycle of unhealthy habits and said goodbye to loneliness. I decided to prioritize my health and take control of my destiny. The same thing that once made me a target became the base for my progression. The moment Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu gave yo-yo a shoutout, something awoke in me. I reminisce on the time that I was the kid practicing in the corner. Embarrassed for being different. If there is a child being mocked for the same reason from anywhere in the world, I feel for them.
My journey with yo-yo was full of silence and isolation.
My journey with yo-yo is built on confidence and structure.
I do not practice because I need to prove something.
I practice because I believe in something.
I carry no anger toward those who doubted me,
I carry understanding. Doubt often comes from fear.
Above all else, I wish for a world where people can do what they want without shame. Where someone’s hobby does not become a reason to ridicule. Where people can be creative without the fear of being sensible. Yo-yo demonstrated to me that I could accomplish something, but not by making me famous. If, one day, the yo-yo is on an even more visible podium than the Olympics, it will not just represent a sport.
It will represent the dignity for all the people who have been told that their passion and love does not count. I have had a burdening past. An intentional present.
Looking to the future, I will not be moving on from resentment, but from belief.
Because once you know the feeling of almost disappearing, you know the value of helping others to be visible.
Link for sign up for → [Yo-yo Olympics](https://www.change.org/p/add-yo-yoing-to-the-olympics)
When we discuss recognition from the Olympics, we have to be realistic, and I think we have to be strategic as well. Should yo-yo have the opportunity to become an Olympic sport, one structural question stands out: Would it be a single unified discipline to start? Or should it be split into three medal events, such as 1A (traditional freestyle), Meta 1A, and Art/Creation X-Division, with a different medal allocation? In the Olympic system, how medals are awarded is a very important consideration. The way an event is structured is a key element that will develop a balance in how many countries participate over time, the sustainability of an event, and how serious it is taken within the Olympic framework. For us to have any hope of yo-yo being taken seriously, we will need to approach it with a practical mindset, and not just a passionate one. We don’t need to rush. All Olympic sports, in the beginning, have started small.
Let’s take the time to build it.
Let’s take the time to assess the demand.
Let’s take the time to refine the structure.
Before medal structures, event structures, and committees, we need to have something that will be of the utmost importance: Unity.
What is of utmost importance right now is unification in the yo-yo community. If we want the recognition, we need to be unified. The recognition will be much easier to gain if the community is unified.The recognition we want is not the goal. What we want is to unify the yo-yo community to feel the recognition is coming.I hope in the near future we will be able to design an Olympic yo-yo format that is open, responsible, thoughtful, and collaborative.I am happy to chat about the possible structure of an Olympic yo-yo event. I am easy to contact via Instagram. I hope we can talk in an easy, constructive, and positive way.
