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

The 2009 Green Cup, Footbag Net at its best part 2

Finals day at the Green Cup.

We finally get a sunny day and the weather is perfect for playing KICK VOLLEY. As stated in article 1 there are 7 montrealers out of 8 players in the doubles semis, cool. The first semi-finals opposes JF Lemieux and Ben ''Rock on'' Rochon to Alexis Deschênes and François Depatie-Pelletier. It takes a lot of fire power to get past JF and Ben's defence and Alexis and Frinki just don't have enough in them that morning. Winners and on their way to the finals in 2 straight games: JF Lemieux and Benjamin Rochon.

In the second semi-finals veteran Yves Archambault and his partner Luc Legault start the match as major underdogs. They face PT Lovern and Emmanuel Bouchard, the reigning World Champions. As planned Lovern and Bouchard win the 1st game but Archambault and Legault put on a good fight. Then the underdogs won the second game to send this match in an ultimate set. The turning point happened at 3-7 (PT and Manu in the lead) when it took over 20 side-outs to get another point for the champs. The rest of the game was pretty much a walk in the park for Lovern and Bouchard but the match was much longer and tougher than expected. That situation would signify a heavy toll to pay for Bouchard.

The 3 rd place match is played right after this semi-finals and Legault is clearly exhausted. He had to spike so many times in the previous match that he doesn't have much left in him. It shows as he misses a lot of serve receptions, very unusual for him. Deschênes and Depatie-Pelletier cruise to an easy victory in 2 straight sets.

Then the doubles finals started and it promised to be a battle. The first 2 games are a split and moving on to a 3 rd game the red team is very confident (JF and Ben). After 3 points Emmanuel Bouchard has to forfait from the match due to severe leg cramps. The grueling duel of the semi-finals has taken its toll and the Green Cup once again evades the hands of PT Lovern and Manu.

In 2008 they lost at the same stage against germans Patti Schrickel and Florian Gotze.

The new Green Cup champions: From Montréal, Jean-François Lemieux and Benjamin Rochon.

After this match JF defeated frenchis Greg Lima in the singles finals sweetening his doubles victory with yet another title.

In the mixed doubles PT Lovern and Jodi Welch won over JF Lemieux and Lisa Monti.

PRO KICKER footbags were used throughout the entire competition.

The 2009 Green Cup results and picture set on Pro Kicker

The 2009 Green Cup, Footbag net at his best

The Green Cup is always very special for me as it is a good occasion to visit spectacular San Francisco. My partner Luc Legault and I took off for Burlington, VT early in the morning and we flew to San Fran from there, through Philadelphia. Smooth flight, no problem. We then took the public transportation to the city. We were hosted by Footbag legends Eric Wulff and Carol Wedemeyer. They had a real nice apartment and they treated us first class. Viva California.

We celebrated Benjamin Rochon's birthday on Thursday night and it was nice.

On Saturday the tournament started. We were a strong group of 10 montrealers, well trained and focused. Some players came as far as Russia (Sacha and Yulia) to feed the tournament. Once again, nice.

The Chaos players were well trained too, Jack Harris impressed everybody with some of the hardest spikes ever. Wow. I like it. The 2 France representatives were also there to play. Grischa and Greg really made an impression at their second attending, much honor to them and their family.

After a lot of hard fought prelim games in an unusually freezing Oakland. there were 7 Montrealers left and 1 Chaos member in the doubles semi finals. The biggest surprise though has to be awarded to Greg Lima, from Paris, who managed to climb his way to the Singles finals. Good work cousin.

Some upsets happened in the semis but I'll talk about it in another article. The goal of this one was to present you a photograph that totally describes the intensity and the focus of the players in this wonderful tournament. Ladies and Gentlemen meet one of the rising stars of KICK VOLLEY I named François Depatie-Pelletier.

KICK VOLLEY 01 will be replacing The Windchill footbag tournament

The Montreal Windchill Footbag tournament ran For 18 years. The name has changed for KICK VOLLEY for the coming edition. KICK VOLLEY 01 is scheduled for March 21st and 22nd at the Cegep du Vieux-Montréal (easier to google map than an incorrect translation)

I sincerely believe that the much more descriptive name KICK VOLLEY should be used in the future to replace Footbag Net. How many times have I had problems with people hearing ''Football'' instead of Footbag, this is a bad start when your trademark is confused with something else, something much stronger in this case.

KICK VOLLEY conveys the 2 most important parts of our game. KICK stands for the martial arts part, high kicking tae kwon do style smashes and VOLLEY tells you right away that's it's played over a net.

All the information on KICKVOLLEY.COM, you can also look for the KICK VOLLEY group on Facebook. KICK VOLLEY and AKI FILET are PRO KICKER initiatives.

2007 Montreal Footbag Championships Videos finally on line

After almost a year of dedicated work Gilles Demers just came forward with a series of 7 clips rendering the 2007 Montreal Footbag Championships most important matches and best moments. Camera work by Yves Archambault and Dominic O'Brien, footage provided by Pro Kicker

Judge by yourself just follow the link

First Day at the Green Cup

The Green Cup presented by Chaos started today in Oakland. Here are a couple of pictures of the action that happened on the net courts.





The Green cup is sponsored by Pro Kicker and the official footbag for the tournament is the Pro Kicker Impact

A simple Footbag net tale

Footbag net is a really small sport. Not because it doesn't have all it takes to be more in the public eye. It's fast and spectacular, combining martial art moves with ball control that many professionnal soccer players would envy. So what's the problem?

I guess we just didn't find the right person yet to make it to the mainstream. Most tournaments are poorly organized, not because of the organizers intentions, but you can just go so far without money. No bleachers to sit spectators, no publicity or press releases the tournament often end up being a confidential affair between dedicated players.

It's still a lot of fun from all the people you meet but the sport stagnates a little bit too much for my taste.

I organized 3 world Championships and I think I did my best. We have tournaments here in Montreal since 1989 and more and more people know about the sport but it is still a very small fraction of the population. One other reason why it's still so unknown is that pretty much all the newspapers sports section are exclusively reserved to the 'big' sports. There's no room for alternative stuff anymore, is there room for journalists? I always thought that part of the journalist job was to dig for newer stuff, so I repeat the question: Is there still journalits? I mean real ones. (That would be of course according to my definition :-)

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