The end of the road for Yevez

Yeah! It looks like it's the end for me as a Pro Footbag competitor. Yesterday I blew my left knee again (2004) while playing a little Peteca with a friend. I must say that I had a great run as I played for 28 years including 25 years as a competitor.

I won my first tournament in Montreal in 1985, then it took us four years to organize another one here. That's when I started a series of at least one win in an open tournament for 20 years in a row, including two open doubles World Championships. I won a lot of East american tournaments at first including Montreal, East Coast and the Funtastik Summer Classic. These three tournaments used to be called the Devil's triangle. I added the Midwest regionals, Southeast regionals, US open, Texas State, New Jersey Spike and Shred, some European Championships and French open to the list as well as my last victory ever at the second South American Championships in December 2008 in Venezuela.

The sweetest victories: Worlds 2001 with Alexis Deschênes, my first singles win at the European Championships 1999 and the 2000 US open with Rob Adams.

Of course there were also a lot of tough losses but we tend to forget more about them right?. Still I'll never forget Alexis and I loss to Allan Petersen and Peter Shunny at the great 1997 Portland World Championships. To this day I still think that we were the better team but nervousness got to us. At least we had the chance to come back 4 years later and win it all in San Francisco.

I was not the most talented player but I worked my ass off. For over 15 years I practiced 6 days a week, 6 hours a day all summer long. In the end I won a lot of matches against better players because I was practicing more than they were.

It's all been a lot of fun but now it's time to move on. I want to wish good luck to all the serious competitors out there and I wish to think that some of you will believe that it'll be a little easier not to have to meet me on the other side of the net :-)