The non sports according to me

I am a Footbag player (aka Hacky Sack which is a trademark), we play over a 5 foot net on a badminton court. When I have interviews with various journalists one question often comes back: Is this really a sport. Well if you have to run to retrieve a Footbag, then pass it and spike over the net I guess it is.

For me it is obvious. What is not so obvious is why people call things like poker, automobile racing, curling and golf, why do they label those things sports? For me sports has something to do with a lot of movement generated by the person, sweating, burning a lot of calories and normally it's a race, on foot, on a bike, a scoring game like soccer and hockey, volleyball, basketball where people move for real.

Poker is a game where people sit down and throw a card from time to time but I find it in the sports section of my newspaper, which enrages me.

Auto racing, the engine does all the work, the driver doesn't even move one inch by himself. Some reply that you have to be really fit to be a race car driver. I had a job once where I had to bend metal corners with a sledgehammer for 12 hours a day. I made me really fit but was I doing sport? Auto racing is not a sport, it's a stupid activity in which grown ups burn fuel for nothing, plus it's so boooring.

I was really laughing when my girlfriend told me that she was traumatized when she was a kid by watching TV and seing some curling. What was the trauma about, she just couldn't understand why these old people brooming the ice were in a sports broadcast. I'm just like her.

Golf now, a dandy game made for rich people to show off their social status. So much fertilizer is spent on the greens alone that it could feed the entire world. Fat people hitting one stroke and then driving a motorized cart to the next hole is that your definition of a sport? Yes Tiger Woods is fit but why doesn't he prove that he can perform something great in a real sport? Why don't they have to run as fast as possible to the next hole? After all it's the only reason why Biathlon is a sport. They have to ski and ski fast to the next shoot.

Well this is a non exhautive list of what I consider not to be sports but (foolish) games.

Fun Footbag Net practice in Montreal today

I have to be fit to a minimum by May 24th. This is gonna be the start of the Green Cup, one of the North American Footbag Net scene main events.(The Green Cup is held in Oakland and San Francisco) After being trapped in a gym, that was trapped under tons of snow in Montreal for 7 months it's really good to finally get to play outdoors.

Our sport doesn't necessitate a lot of equipment: a specially adapted badminton portable court, a footbag and a good pair of sport shoes.

We kicked, we got prepared and no one is better to take the Montreal crew lightly at the Green Cup.

I will play with Berliner Ulli Haase and I expect to have fun. The worst that can happen is to fall in the Tequila bracket after all.

Other references for the Green Cup: Organizing club Chaos
and the mother and father of all footbag sites:
Footbag Worldwide

Results for the 2008 ProKicker Windchill Footbag Net tournament

That's it the 18th edition of the Montreal Windchill is a thing of the past. We had interesting battles during this tournament and I was part of one. My partner Samuel Cloutier and I fought former World Champions John Leys and Emmanuel Bouchard in one of the Doubles semi-finals. We took a 14-6 lead in the first game of the 2 out of 3 but unfortunately we could never close the deal and gave 10 points, having 5 or 6 game points on the way. We scored 10 points in the second game to a final result of 16-14 and 15-10 in favor of John and Emmanuel. Strangely enough they ended up winning the finals against François Depatie-Pelletier and Luc Legault on the same scores!?

Samuel and I managed to earn a 3rd place spot by winning over a disbanded J-F Lemieux and Gilles Demers team.

In the singles action J-F Lemieux earned a second title at the Windchill (after 2006)by defeating an exhausted John Leys.

See the complete results for this competition on ProKicker

The Montreal Canadiens win a second game in the post season

My favorite sports team, the Montreal Canadiens, yes it's ice hockey what do you expect I'm canadian? played with fire tonight against the Boston Bruins. Although I think that Montreal is far superior they went on to win a 3-2 overtime game that was far from being convincing. They played softly during long moments in the game like if they were not taking the Bruins very seriously. The Boston team managed to clinch a playoff spot and that should be enough to earn them a lot of respect.

So Canadiens well done but please wake-up for the rest of the series.

The Chicago Inner Rectangle Footbag Net club web site is alive

My partner Cory Current and I were driving back to Illinois from the Memphis tournament last monday when I learned that the Chicago Footbag net club didn't have a real name or a web site. I decided to help as it is very easy to set up a web site on a blog platform. Cory told me that he had thought about the Inner Rectangle as a potential name for the Club. The Chicago Footbag Freestyle club name is the Inner Circle so as Footbag net is played on a rectangle (badminton court) it was a good joke to be made as well as a relevant one to call the club the Inner Rectangle. So be it and we launched the club's blog/website last monday on http://inner-rectangle.blogspot.com, pay them a visit and leave your comments if you are interested in Footbag.

Here's the link to the Inner Rectangle very first post

Long Haul to the Southeastern Footbag Championships

Tonight's the night. I will leave Montreal around 3 am to ride to Burlington, Vt to catch a plane to Chicago. Once I arrive there I'll meet with my doubles net partner Cory Current. We'll then drive another 8 hours to Memphis, Tn, in order to be present for the warm-up practice scheduled for friday 1pm. Then we'll play in the tournament on the 5th and 6th.

This may seem like a hell of a road trip just for a small tourney but it's gonna be a lot of fun to hangout in the south. It's gonna be warmer for one thing, we're still in sub 0 (celsius) weather here. Then it's gonna be a good time on the road with my good buddy Cory. We saw each other for the last time in july 2007 at the Montreal Tournament and I was pretty busy as I was directing the tournament. We both were at the World Championships in august but didn't have a real chance to hang out.

Then it's gonna be fun to play outdoors as we've been crammed in a gym since september. And the most important thing meet with friends that I don't see too often at all. Viva Footbag.

We had a crazy practice tonight Footbag in Montreal

Our practices on tuesday night are scheduled from 7h15 pm to 8h45 and from 9 pm to 10h30 pm it's pretty cool. I want to thank the 2 unknown that set up our nets every tuesday and thursday for us to spike it down: Norm and Emilie, thank you! You're awesome and without you we wouldn't play Footbag Net.

Montreal Footbag Club