Announcing the birth of FootbagArchives.com

UPDATE, as of March 2025, I'm completely reworking FootbagArchives.com to publish all the videos I ever edited.
The previous material will be gradually re-released as I overhaul it.

The tournaments talked about in this post will be re-posted - All the videos are ready.

I'm presently working hard on producing a lot of Footbag video. Just finished to add the scores to all the following net matches:

2012 World Footbag Championships (Warsaw, Poland)

- Women open singles finals match

- Open doubles finals match

- Open singles finals match

- Mixed doubles finals match

2009 The Bembel Cup (Frankfurt, Germany)

- Open doubles finals match

The site's launch is planned for December 1st 2012.

This is an example of how the scores will show during the matches.

A Footbag teaching appearance at the Quebec's Physical educator's congress

I had the privilege to give a workshop to a group of dedicated teachers at the annual Quebec's Federation of Physical Educators congress. I shared my knowledge of teaching Footbag and I also introduced them to Peteca, a cool Brazilian sport. This year's the congress title was ''Bougeons ensemble'' which could be loosely translated by ''Let's move together''.

I also had a product booth at the convention where I showed my Footbag line and Peteca products as well as Takraws and Handsacks. Overall it was a neat experience and I will certainly be back next year in Sherbrooke.

Another successfull footbag workshop in Blainville

I recently had the opportunity to give two footbag workshops at ''Les Semailles'' school in Blainville (25 minutes from Montreal) . It's the 6th year in a row that I can meet with the motivated kids at that school thanks to teacher Geneviève Croteau.

One part of my workshop is a two minutes consecutive kicks contest. One of the 6th graders, Jonathan Roy, kicked 120 times without dropping the footbag. This is talent and dedication, congratulations Jonathan.

Pro Kicker Footbags were provided for the practical parts of the workshop.

KICK VOLLEY 02 finals game 1

Video of Kick Volley 02 finals game 1, the best moments.

Filmed and edited by Yves Archambault

Great Footbag workshops near Montreal

I had the blessing of being hired to give 8 workshops over 2 days at ''Le Rucher'' school near Montreal yesterday and today. I especially want to commend the committed teacher who made this possible: Diane Bourgeois. Diane is a PE teacher coming close to retirement but she's still extremely involved and concerned about her students.

She's one of the most motivated teachers I've ever met and she's still looking for new ways to make her pupils move. Footbag might not be totally new but there are a lot of myths about it. A lot of people think that it's a poor exercise but of course all the professional level players know better.

I've been offering footbag workshops for decades and I think I really have something powerful to bring in the way to approach the Footbag game. Of course I've been a successful net player for decades and this doesn't happen overnight and without proper technique. I've split the game into very basic principles and developed some very easy drills for beginners. The kids at that school were very receptive about all of it and it was a lot of fun to work with them.

I also introduced them to the game of PETECA a hot sport from Brazil. It surely made an impression. Overall I hope I managed to help Diane to put a few of these kids on the right path or help them to stay on it.

Team work: Pro Kicker designs ways to make kids move, whatever their youth is.

The end of the road for Yevez

Finally, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I ended up playing until 2022 😎

 

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 :-)

The 2009 World Footbag Championships in Berlin, recap

The 30th edition of the IFPA World Footbag Championships was held in Berlin this year (July 20-26) and the finals day was a great success. The ARENA was the finals location and had bleachers with very comfy seats on three sides facing a huge stage.

The day started with the women's singles net finals. This match was scheduled for friday evening but due to different time constraints it ended up on finals day. Maude Landreville won the title over Geneviève Bousquet, both players are from Montreal. Women's singles was the only title missing on the glorious Montreal Footbag net club list. Mission accomplished.

The next match featured Emmanuel Bouchard facing JF Lemieux, both from Montreal, again. Bouchard won the open singles title for the 12th year in a row over JF in 2 straight games. Then the women from Montreal came back to face Irena Marc and Llena Mlakar from Kranj, Slovenia. Maude and Geneviève won their second career doubles title (Montreal 2004) over the very improved Slovenian team. Mixed doubles was next and guess what: Two teams from Montreal were facing each other. JF Lemieux and Maude Landreville won over Luc Legault and Geneviève Bousquet. If we all know how to count right this makes three titles for Maude. Winning the triple crown, very impressive.

The most important title of net is open doubles though and unfortunately this one escaped the feet of the montrealers. Favorites Florian Gotze and Patrick Shrickel from Germany won the coveted title over 2008 champs Emmanuel Bouchard (Montreal) and PT Lovern (Chaos club California) This was a 3rd title for the Germs (2007-07). They had a great start winning the 1st game easily with textbook offence and great defence. They lost it in the 2nd game, probably feeling the pressure of the 1,100 spectators heavily pushing them for a quick victory in their land. The 3rd game started as bad for them, at one point they were loosing 2-7, but they rallied nicely at the end to fly over the finish line with a sweet victory. Congratulations to Flo and Patti, well done. Some very good KICK VOLLEY was played that day but my favorite match of the week was men's semi-finals 2. Luc Legault and Gilles Demers lost a heartbreaker 14-16 in the 3rd set against PT Lovern and Emmanuel Bouchard. Luc and Gilles tied for 3rd place with fellow Montrealers JF Lemieux and Benjamin Rochon.

The doubles match, as well as the next events, was streamlined live over the internet, a first at the WFC. Pro Kicker Impact Footbags were the official net bags for the tournament.

The rest of the evening was all freestyle events. Lets just say that Tina Aeberli won the women's title. I think she started her domination in 2005 (Helsinki) and she is still clearly ahead of her competitors. In men's singles routines Vasek Klouda regained his title brilliantly with the only dropless routine of his bunch (8 finalists) and probably from the whole night.

After that the night returned to music, party and chaos, Berlin style. A solo artist and a band entertained the crowd for a while at the ARENA and then we moved on to the Glashaus on the same site, some to celebrate their victories, some to drind away their losses, promising themselves that next year would be better.

Benjamin Rochon blocks Jani Markkanen's toe reverse in a quarter finals match