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Shawn Renfroe, 24, keeps his hobby on a string and that string around his finger.

“I played with pretty much every toy before I picked up a yo-yo,” he said, Saturday, “and then when I picked up a yo-yo, it was just like love at first sight.”

Shawn traveled to Garden City from Oregon to compete in his first ever yo-yo competition. After just three years of practice, he can walk the dog, skin the cat and rock the baby.

But in the converted elementary school assembly room where the competition took place, Shawn was one of the rookies.

“I wouldn’t place myself up there in even the top-100 in the world,” Emmett’s Michael Montgomery said. “There are people who are amazing. Like, what I can do gets dwarfed by them.”

But what Michael can do made him a favorite to take home the title of state champ, Saturday.

“A yo-yoer good at yo-yoing?” Michael asked rhetorically.

Not a tongue twister, we wanted Michael to tell us what he thought it might take to leave a crowd of the yo-yo savvy exclaiming: Yo! Yo! Check this guy out.

“I guess that could be debated: What makes a yo-yoer good,” Michael said.

“Yo-yos can really affect your play,” Shawn said.

Some spin-doctors do shows. Others teach. And then guys like Michael and Shawn string together salvos of tricks to music, receiving scores based on difficulty, execution and how many times the axle and two discs strikes the string.

“Our official Idaho State Yo-Yo Champion,” one of the judges announced through a microphone plugged into a boom box, Saturday, “[is] Michael Montgomery.”

Yo yo, Ma! I did it! Michaels mom and Shawn got to watch the new champ sleep and loop his way to a yo-yo trophy, leaving our yo-yo greenhorn hungry for more.

“I try to practice really hard and keep a strong flow,” Shawn said.

String around his finger. What a world. What a life.

“Love at first sight,” Shawn said.