it would be fantastic to see the younger players stepping onto the net courts. but i don't really see this happening at the moment. some of the larger net clubs like Montreal & Chaos have seen some growth in their youth population. the east & west coasts seem to be the only places that can sustain large net clubs. however, for the smaller clubs anywhere else in the U.S. i have not been able to see any growth. There are 2 clubs in Texas, 2 in Tennessee, and 1 in Illinois. there have not been any net competitions at the Midwest & Southeastern Regionals in at least 3 years.
the Southern Regionals (in Texas) still has them... though i heard that turnout was really bad this year. on the upside, the Southeastern Regionals will have net in 2005 for the first time ever! i will be hosting the net events. it will be a rather small scale, but i figure if we can get at least 8 players in each division (open & intermediate) that will be enough for 4 teams to duke it out. also we will be demonstrating net to people that have never even seen it before, specifically young circle kickers. if all goes well it will serve as inspiration to those newbies at footbag.
Net is really cool
Wow this is really the strangest opinion about who's in charge at IFPA, personally I think it's really the opposite. As far as net players not understanding the (sob) poor freestylers, Jeremy, could you be a little more specific?Jeremy wrote: At the moment it feels like the IFPA is dominated by net players and they seem to focus on that a lot more than on freestyle. - At this years worlds it sounded like there were a lot of problems because the net people didn't understand the freestylers very well
The freestyle organization received all the budget that they asked for, the prize money was split even and they had total independance on the content as well as they've got the time frames that they wanted, what else could you ask for.
Anyway I was the first one to want to split up net from freestyle as I considered that net has not been served well at World's since 1998 but some people at IFPA convinced me to keep them both together at the 2004 Worlds. It's of course cool to be able to hang out with your buddies and the scene in Prague in 2003 with all these kickers doing their crazy shit in the same place was great.
But let's face it: It is true that these 2 sports are very different and I would like to use another analogy than soccer and hockey. It would be more like hockey and artistic skating. One has a determined goal and the other is judged.
Here in Montreal we used to have freestyle and net together at our summer tournament and lets say that it was organized by net players who tought that freestyle was cool.
With time and the evolution of the sport a real group of freestylers emerged and they split up in their own tournament in 2001. Do you think that it was detrimental to the net tournament: Not at all, nowadays both tournaments are successfull as the organizing teams have more time to focus on their own thing. It is also very hard to compress all this playing in 2 or 3 days. I wouldn't know how to do that anymore.
I am very happy to see that the freestyle scene is exploding and everybody should be thankful to IFPA for that. As far as net I consider that it's not been supported the same, which locally I don't care as we have a long tradition and a solid club here, but on the international level, give me a break.
It is very good to have them both back together in Helsinki in 2005 as I'm sure that the finn's will do a great job for both, but in the future the question will be back and it's not only a freestylers concern.
Yevez Nut'n'Bolts
http://www.prokicker.ca
Yves Archambault
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