| Topic: Cool thread about the history of foos in edmonton< |
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Check out Greg Ustina's post about Edmonton's foos history. Pretty cool to read about. http://www.saskfoos.com/view_topic.asp?ParentID=40558&x=32&domain=EDM&searchterm=Results |
Posted: Nov 6 2010 3:14PM
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On the History of Canadian Foosball My name is Greg Ustina and I have been playing foosball in Canada for several decades. The first table I saw in the Edmonton region was back in the mid-sixties. It was a dutchmiester that was part of an arcade that was traveling with the exhibition rides that came to town every summer during K-Days. Later on in the early seventies I played on a variety of cheap tables until finally some semblance of organized foos appeared on a Garlando at the U of A in my first year, 74-75. There we players met in SUB every day to bash away at each other. I suspect it had started at least the year before because we newcomers were fortunate enough to have some very good competition. For example “Dick Tracy” shooting a “set shot” from the two bar, (pulls from the 1 man !?), and his forward shooting push kicks. “Set shot” is the term we used back then to describe what we would now call a “series”. Finally by spring my partner Richard Trost and I could beat Dick Tracy and thinking we were the best in town set off in search of competition. We found a TS Green Top at the west-end Snooker Shack and that was sweet.. We were lucky because as Richard, Trost, Torbin Jenson, myself and others in the west end formed one group of players, there was another group in the north end, Lee Murry, Bob Farris, and Dale Trynchuck, and friends. A rivalry was born, which not only fed the skill levels of Edmonton players but in time fed the promotion of foos in Canada. The real Father of Foos in Canada is Lee Murry. He was the one who in 74 or 75 grabbed a kid named Bob Farris and dragged him off to the States to play in a foosball tournament. While he was there Lee immediately got the knickname “Backhand” because he played his left hand flipped around the wrong way on the 5-bar, such that he could shoot wrist shots and the like. Lee was constantly teaching others how to play and encouraging them. Also Lee was an excellent spokesmen for Canadian foosball in the States. He met with TS owner Lee Peppard several times, introducing other Canadians to him and promoting the idea of TS coming up into Canada and throwing a few tourneys up here. I remember at the 76 Nationals in Minneapolis there were something like a dozen players from Edmonton (the burnt bumper trip of which I have pictures ect.) The large number of Canadians there was not only due to Lee Murry’s leadership but more importantly caught the attention of Lee Peppard and the TS organization. The first major tourament in Edmonton was just a local 500 dollar event held at Hi-Spot Billiards and was co-directed by Bob Farris and myself. Bob beat Lee in the finals electing to take Lee by surprise by rejecting the slow and methodical “wall pass---pull shot” game usually played and just play “rocket ball” against Lee in the tourny.. It was played on TS Blue Tops. About a year later there was a company that sprung up called Leisure World that promoted foos. They started in an old supermarket, the biggest arcade I have ever seen in my life. At one point they had a tourny every night of the week at any of about five different locations. They started with TS Blue tops but shifted to Premier Blue Tops. Early on they threw a 1500 tourny but made a typical mistake. The mixed event was cancled and singles was OK but they had a DYP instead of OD, SD and RD. As luck would have it Dale beat me in the singles final and we drew each other in the DYP, winning that and almost all the money that weekend. It was shortly after this that TS came to Canada for the first time. In 1977 they held a 2000 dollar tournament in Vancouver, again on Blue Tops. Dan Kiaser and Rick Martin came up from Oregon. On Saturday night Richard and I, being the proper Canadians we are, gave the two legends a spanking and sent them to bed in losers bracket. Arguably the strongest team ever beat by two Canadians. They couldn’t stop my 5-bar and Richards defence was absolutely inspired. You< |
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I quit playing for a couple years so I don’t remember much. I lived in Montreal for a bit in the fall of 78 and couldn’t find a table anywhere there. At the same time Bob and Richard played in Chicago. They did poorly, and had a major peanut fight on the plane on the way home, the stuff of legends. Bob always did poorly in the States but Richard did well. He won novice singles at a Portland 50 Thousand. This was one month before Super Doubles in Minneapolis 78, and Richard reached TS Pro status that weekend in Portland. Lee too was a TS pro I think, taking second place open singles at the Vancouver 10 Thousand and so on. He lost to Dan Kiaser but this result is perhaps the best singles result for a Canadian in a tourney of that magnitude, factoring in for inflation and stuff. I don't know, there have been several other good results too. Lee still is a strong but some what inconsistent player living in Texas, a Tornado pro. In 1980 TS came to Edmonton with a 4000 Tourney and J.E Weatherhead, a distributer out of Vancouver, helped bring that about. There was a new talent on the Edmonton scene by the name of Dwight Gouchee and he beat me in the singles final. Lee and Dwight won doubles beating Steve La’Rock and some one else from Vancourver. This was the first time the Vancouver and Calgary players were starting to come and compete with those from Edmonton. Brian Leopky from Calgary took third in singles. We also in Edmonton had a Super Singles Tourney that year with the same result, Dwight won and I came second. I also won a sportsmanship award that weekend ( oh how I’ve changed), perhaps the only such award in the history of Canadian Foos, and I did everything I could to avoid winning that thing, including voting for myself and sending Bob out with twenty bucks to see if Mitch Jang or anyone else from Vancouver wanted to bet against me in the semi-finals against Steve Rix . No takers and I was lucky to get past Steve, the tide had already turned for the worst before I hacked one in to win it in four. Joey Ramjag from Edmonton won novice singles and was to go on to make quite the name for himself. In the early eighties there were a number of tourneys in Kamloops. I only went to one but they were a popular place for western Canadians to meet. I know one year there were two. One in the spring and one in the fall and there was to be a huge playoff in the fall between the singles winner in the spring and the singles winner in the fall to crown the real singles champ. Lee won in the spring and Mitch one in the fall. Immediately before the final playoff Lee went over to the Juke Box with about five bucks in quarters and plugged the same song over and over “… rambo jam rambo jam Whoa Black Betty rambo jam … “. Lee won the match, he beat Mitch and I think Lee would make a hell of a coach for our national team. I think Doug McKarthy from Edmonton at some point might have beat Mitch in a singles final out there too, I’m not sure. The year I went Rix won doubles for the second year in a row. I was living in Vancouver during the winter of 82-83 and playing at Dillingers. It was during that winter that the TS Brown top was replaced with the Pro Soccer table. Also in around 85(?) Canadians had some good results at the Dynamo Worlds. Mitch and Chezboro (?) I heard won the worlds roller-ball title two years in a row. Even more impressive perhaps was that Joey won the worlds under 17’s and the same year won the Friday night DYP with some no-name pro US goalie. There were some good players in that event, Fury, Lott, Bacon and Lafrado. Todd took third with a guy from Edmonton, Simon Edwards shooting some awesome euros from 2-bar. And Joey has such a mouth on him that what I heard was that in the DYP during his match against Johnny Horton it was Joey that got so offensive that Horton eventually just shut-up took the spanking and went to bed !!! (Possably not true but Joey was still getting himself banned from the local |
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Greg - I had to post it onto this thread, too cool of a post not to get people to read it. Makes me excited just thinking about how lucky all you guys are to have been through that whole deal. Hopefully the glory days are comin back one day. So awesome. |
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