| Topic: Welcome New TSAC Exec board members |
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Finally the TSAC Bi-elections are complete and I'd like to welcome our 3 new board members: Jose Leite: Quebec & Maritimes - Garlando Michael Tremblay: Quebec & Maritimes - Bonzini Julien Beaumier-Ethier: Quebec & Maritimes - Tornado for our new board members, the other board members are: Eric Dunn - President (from BC - Tornado region) Tim Dudra - Presidents delegate (he votes to represent BC - Tornado - as president cannot) Ahmed Taha - VP (also representing Ontario - Tornado ) Brian Leoppky: Treasurer (also representing Alberta - Tornado ) Paul Gee: Saskatchewan - Tornado Sean Lee: Ontario - Fabi We normally do not communicate through email, the only time we will use email is when I (or the acting president) will notify the board member that a topic requires a vote, or that a important discussion is taking place (like this) , and i'll alert the board members to it. We must continue to communicate through the TSAC executive message boards, as this ensures we are acting in a open and transparent manner. Other times we'll use email is to communicate on matters where privacy is of concern, or as outlined in our constitution. Which i've posted here: http://tablesoccerca.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1985405%3ATopic%3A94 Please give it a quick read through. the exec message board can be found here: http://www.tablesoccer.ca/message_list.asp?domain=exro Please ensure you can post, if you cannot please let me know. I'd like to hear from each of the board members and have them introduce themselves, and tell us about - the foosball scene in their region, - how many tables, - how many players, - how often tournaments, - what can TSAC do to help their player base grow and become stronger? - any other thoughts or ideas you'd like to see us tackle this year |
Posted: Apr 5 2008 1:00AM
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I'll start with introducing myself: Eric Dunn - live in Victoria, BC Been playing foosball for (oh god) 20+ years now. Ranked Pro-Master on USTSA Tornado tour. daytime job: Software Developer for IBM. The scene in BC is wanning to put it nicely. Vancouver has a small group of players that show to weekly Tornado singles tournaments once in a while. There's a handicapping ranking system that can be found at: http://www.vancouverfoosball.com/default.asp Other than weekly small events, there has not been an actual tournament in BC many years. Victoria has a couple of locations (one with 4 tales), but only a few serious players, where most of the players are very casual. No weekly events - the regulars just get together on friday nights and play hard to keep in foos-shape. I would think that if TSAC had a ranking system in place, or a series of provincial qualiers leading to a national championship, then the interest of the local player bases would have something larger to shoot for. A reason to improve their games. Right now all their is is local rivalries, and the occosional trip down to vegas for a Major Tornado tournament. Other thoughts: I think we need to move TSAC to our own site, like ning: http://tablesoccerca.ning.com/ where i've put up a prototype of what an official TSAC ning site could look like. We need to raise money for our ITSF membership fee this year (500 euro). We need to start thinking about how were going to raise money and / or sponsorship to send a canadian team to the 2010 World Cup of foosball. and we need to determine how that team is going to be formed keeping in mind the table-diverse player base canada has. |
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Ok this is my turn now. Julien Beaumier-Ethier - living in Trois-Rivières, QC Been playing foosball for 5 years on Garlando, Bonzini and Tornado Far from being Pro-Master but looking forward to reach this level. Occupation: student in computer engineering, finishing school in december of this year. The Tornado scene in Quebec is very young. In fact, 2-3 years ago, there was a huge Garlando community when Adam Imanpoor was leading the QTSA. At the end, some players that used to support the QTSA became tired of the QTSA way to manage foosball, created TornadoQuebec (it was Matthew Keezer and Regis Levesque). After having realized that it would be very hard to put Tornado tables in Montreal bars, because of the Garlando distributors monopoly, they kinda stopped working on foosball promotion to put energy on personnal career. Since then, Jean-Christophe Ghuibodau, a former Bonzini Pro-Master in France (actually almost still unbeatable on this table), has discovered the Tornado table and felt in love with it. So he has reached Regis to ask him help to run tournament on Tornado in Montreal to try to give a new live to TornadoQuebec. Since a year and a half, they ran 3 Open Doubles and 1 Open Singles, and they play to run another Open and Rookie Doubles on May. Unfortunately, it's a little bit hard to convince non-Tornado players to come to try the Tornado. By organizing events in which the best players are not allowed to play (a rookie doubles for i.e.), we hope that more people will come. For now, we have probably 20-25 regular Tornado players. Also, there's a VIFA league running in the Quebec City area (2 hours and half drive from Montreal). I don't have a lot of information about it for now, but I'd like to make promotion about TornadoQuebec to them. I just know that there's a little Tornado community in this area, with players that don't seem to play outside of this league, because we never heard of them in other tournaments. Anyway, I'm confident that we will grow this Quebec Tornado community up in the next few years. When I talk to players around me, I always try to convince them to come to our Tornado tournament, and I try to sensibilize them to the fact the Tornado is the primary table outside of Quebec, and it is important to know how to play on it if we want to eventually have good multitable players who can compete with anyone from Canada and from the rest of the World. By the way, I'm planning to go to Kentucky State tournament this summer, so if you guys plan to come, I'd be very happy to meet you. |
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Jose Leite is having trouble logging in, so sent me this in an email: ok about us:all started 5 years ago with creating a friendly league. we started with 8 teams of 4 players each team second season 10 teams, third 12, fourth 18 and the last one that just finish 16 teams. We do tournaments around every 6 weeks passage and no passage. I really think that we are going in the right direction it took a lot of sacrifices but we all do this for the love of the game. The thing that we are missing it`s the sponsors and we all know how important that is. Plus we had to get the players trust back after what happened with adam around here, but MTSA is doing really good. Hope we can work together in the future for the good of the game. sorry for my bad english |
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Brian Loeppky- Live in Calgary Have played foosball since 1977 with a 15 year break in there. Played on TS, Pro-top, Dynamo and Tornado tables. Ranked amateur in the US but play to a semi-pro level. My occupation is with the federal government. The Tornado foosball scene in Calgary has surprisingly been growing the last couple of years. We have had 5-10 new players coming out. There is a stable bunch of core players. Competition is quite strong with 10-12 semi or low pro caliber players. There were 4 teams in the VIFA league this last year. 2 teams went down to the VIFA championships. A Calgary team won the league championship for a third year in a row. There are 2 main locations to play at weekly. Blackfoot Inn and now a new one at Juliets Castle. Calgary usually has a yearly tournament called Foosapolooza run by SML Entertainment. It is usually $5,000 +. The next one is actually next weekend April 18-20. http://www.smlentertainment.com/foosapalooza.htm Calgary has one foosball site, http://www.Calgaryfoos.com. It is run by Kent Farries and myself. |
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Michael Tremblay I live in Montreal, but I come from Saguenay Lac-St-Jean, a region far in the north but full of bonzini players. I'm ranked as a pro on Bonzini but sometime wondering how it could be possible! I starded on Garlando 11 years ago, Bonzini 6 years ago and I played a little on Tornado for 3 years. I'm doing my master degree in history and I also work in a cable company. The Bonzini scene looks pretty good in the province of Quebec, taking into account that we have very little support from our local distibutor. There are some good players in Montreal, Quebec, Chicoutimi and Trois-Rivieres. We're growing up and the association spreads as far as Rimouski. We also have a good tornado player from Ottawa who attends almost all our tournaments. Thank you Ahmed Taha by the way. There are around 40 Bonzini tables in the whole province, the majority being in Quebec city. Of course, many of our members have their own table. The AQBB was doing good during its first 3-4 years, but the level of the players increased hugely when Jean-Christophe Ghibaudo arrived in Mtl 3 years ago. He brought with him experience and skills, and forced us to upgrade our level of play. The future of Bonzini could be very good in Quebec and hopefully elsewher, but it will depend of the attitude of our distributor and the Bonzini company. For the moment, our Association holds 5 major tournament per year in addition of weekly tournament in Quebec city and soon in Montreal. I'm glad to start over our weekly tournament in Montreal. With this, I plan to gather money so we could hold a major tournament in Montreal and be able to buy some new tables. Also, maybe we would be able to attract some Tornado players from elsewhere in Canada :) |
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Taha. I live in Ottawa and I've been playing Tornado for 6 1/2 years (with a 18 month gap in the middle) and Bonzini for 2 1/2 years. I'm ranked pro on Tornado (yikes!) and Semi-pro on Bonzini. Foosball in Ottawa is almost completely Tornado. There are 4 tables in our main location at Zampub, and perhaps another 6 tables in other places in town. We have league on Wednesdays and DYP on Fridays, although as league has become more competitive and DYP less so, we are starting to get lower turnout for the DYPs now. Our core group of players is about 20, and there are another 20 more casual players who play well, but just aren't that serious anymore. Chris Thomas, our organizer, has run a few "Win a Wii" beginner tournaments to try to recruit beginners. We are hoping to pick up new blood this way. The OFA generally runs 1 weekend long tournament a year whose payouts are about 4,000$ and 2-3 1-day tournaments that are either OS and OD, or RS and RD plus an open DYP. Players come to our tournaments mainly from Ontario and Quebec although we occasionally get US representation from New York and Vermont. Recently though, running weekend long tournaments has become more difficult because our vendor has not been cooperative, and we are sometimes forced to have tables (not even new ones) shipped into us from Toronto by Gilchrist. Chris is trying to work out how we will proceed long-term, and has applied for some government of Canada grants to see if we can buy our own tables and go it alone. First and foremost, I'd like all the provincial and city associations to get on board with TSAC. Right now everyone keeps asking "What's in it for me?" and that's not the right way to think. People have to think what is good for the game in Canada. I would also like to see TSAC gain some national visibility by becoming an official organization with Sport Canada and hopefully this will lead to funding for possible tournaments or for sending players to overseas tournaments. I would really (really) like to be able to send a team to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. We'll see. Taha |
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From Paul Gee: My name is Paul and I live in Regina, Saskatchewan. I have been playing foosball since 1985. I started playing on the Tournament Soccer Tables and then moved into Dynamo table at the local arcade. I started on Tornado when I was visiting Vancouver and was introduced to Peter Tielens and the gang. I am ranked as an amateur in the USTSA book and ranked as a semi pro in the inter-provincial tournaments held in western Canada. Foosball in Regina is completely Tornado and the Regina Foosball Club (Jack Hood and I) have tables in 6 different locations throughout the city. There are 2 tables in our main location (called Tumblers) and we currently run weekly DYP’s on Tuesday nights. Historically, we have run weekly DYPs for the past 5 years but our attendance has slowly diminished as each year goes by. In our first 3 years of operation, we ran 3 weekly tournaments DYP/BYP or Singles. We would get anywhere from 12-24 players 3 times a week and this lasted for approx 2-3 years. In year 3-4, we then dropped down to approx 10-14 players for the three weekly tournaments. Now in year 5, we run 1 DYP per week and get 6-10 players. Not sure why its dropped off so much. Our host location gives us free pitchers of beer and free pizza… but this doesn’t seem to entice the players to keep coming out. In hopes of recruiting new members, our local city newspaper has run 3 articles during the pasts 4 years about foosball in Regina. Unfortunately this has not resulted in any new players. Our most popular foosball scene for recruitment seems to be a local Irish Pub in downtown Regina. Every Friday and Saturday night, the table is full of bar style players, but they only seem to be looking for the less serious side of the game. In regards to the future of foosball in our community, I agree with what Eric Dunn wrote in his post. I think that if TSAC could organize a series of provincial qualifiers leading to a national championship, then the interest of the local players would increase as they would have the motivation to a longer term goal. It seems that a local DYP, (playing the same people for the past 5 years), doesn’t give a big enough reason for players to continue with playing in the weekly DYP’s. |
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Howdy, I'm Tim Dudra and I'm not really a member of the exec, just the Prez's delegate. I'm just the horse's front and hind quarters (mouth and ...). I get to voice my opinion when Eric is in a conflict. Fortunately, my voice has never really been needed here. I'm a Vancouver fooser with experience in the old days on Pro Soccer (a well-built TS table) and Tornado. I've been playing competitively for 20+ years and still suck - fortunately, many foosers suck worse than I do so I can occasionally do some winning. Vancouver foos has been pretty sparse of late. We hold Singles tourneys on Friday nights and get between 4 and 10 players with the occasional oddball night with more or less. Our Sunday doubles tourneys are really suffering - 3-6 teams is about the best we've been able to pull off. Problem is (a) and aging foos population who is now spending time with their wives, their children and, in the case of Gerry, their long-term palliative care nurse and (b) a lot of us are a$$$*!es and drive away new players with our overly competitive, in your face, "you suck" attitudes. We are working on becoming nicer and have begun to model our behaviour after English soccer hooligans - we figure start small and get better from there. I have some further thoughts but, as I must now leave this one room to move to another, I will end here and hopefully post something further later when opportunity knocks. Tim |
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