Joined: 01 Oct 2003 Posts: 210 Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 10:12 am Post subject:
I don't think we're risking to stunt the developement of footbag by having national championships. Reading Jeres post and seeing the players around me in switzerland at the moment I would say we're doing the exact opposite. Right now every player in switzerland, begginner to "open" level player is working hard on his/her routine for the swiss nationals. An enthusiasm the majority didn't show for instance for the FootJam which in terms of media, spectators, level of play, etc. will by far exceed the swiss nationals. And why? Because Jeres "list of levels" just holds true in their minds. So it is a greater motivation for players to become the best in their country before even thinking about becoming the best in the world. Of course one should always strive for the top but only the samllest percentage of footbaggers has the talent of a vasek or ryan. And if you want the competitive side of footbag to grow, you need to give a vast majority of players a motivation to keep playing competitively and not give up because they know they will never be as good as X or Y.
There are enough tournaments in Europe and there needs be no fear that the developement of footbag will be stunted by having additional national championships. As you well know the french had a "French Open" just a few weeks back that was true to the word. So now they want to have french nationals that exclude non french players. So what? I don't see anybody being offended by this. If you wanted to check out the french footbag scene you could have gone to the french open.
Given the feeling of the EFC representative at the last meeting and the feelings of the majority of Europen players as expressed by Jere, I think it is time to stop arguing about weather we have national championships or not and start to think about how we can integrate these championships into the IFPA framework and legitimize them.
Yes, we are wasting a lot of time and breath with this discussion but mainly because the one or two individuals of the IFPA who have been involved in this discussion do not want to realize the sincerety of the claims.
I think there is no way that the process of eventually having national championships in all european countries can be stopped. Already almost every european country that has footbag tournaments has the title of national champion, however they are determined. And sooner or later they will also feel the need to have national championships.
I don't know if you, Steve, think this is an issue of personal whims of a few individuals over in Europe, but it is not. It is a HUGE issue with a vast majority of players and amost all "organizers" involved and I think we should really move foreward on this issue and not stay on the spot arguing all the time and achieving nothing.
Joined: 07 Oct 2003 Posts: 103 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2003 9:53 pm Post subject:
why do you guys all argue about nationals or open tournaments...
i think worked pretty well the last two years at german open...the system was quite easy... make it a final round of ten and limit the amount of foreign players reaching the finals (same idea for semis) to -let`s say- 4.
the winner of the finals is (obviously) the winner of the tournament - and if it is a domestic player, the national champion - if the winner is from abroad, the best ranked local player becomes national champion..
vasek won the german open two years in a row, but german champions were matthias schmidt and this year paul cronjaeger(and they did beat two czechs out of 4 in the finals)... i don`t think they feel as if they are illegitimate national champions because they didn`t win the tournament.... against vasek!
the german open BENEFITTED A LOT from czech and swiss players being there... it just made the tournament bigger and more spectacular... and i think every tournament benefits from a higher level of play and becomes culturally more diverse and therefore more interesting if people from other countries are around ( though differences aren`t too big in central europe )
Wow, huge posts and a lot of to think about.
The worst thing is both patrties are right in their own way. It is truly demotivating for some players to know the best european freestylers will come to a national championship and "steal" all prizes. But on the other hand, it is demotivating (or maybe even useless) for the foreign players to come to a "closed" competition. I consider it a waste of time and energy to organize an event only for native players. We are a tiny sport but a big family and we should not seperate ourselves by nationalities.
I personally don't care about who is or isn't a national champion or european or world champion. I don't care about competitions at all to be precise. My reasons for being involved in organizing and judging are completely different. My vision of footbag freestyle is a completely non-competitive sport which ignores nationalities, races or whatever. And a sport which unites people rather than divides, so my opinion is to have no "closed" competitions. And if a player thinks it makes him a better player if he scores better in a competition, just because foreign(and possibly more advanced/talented)players are excluded, than I really feel sorry for him.
Joined: 01 Oct 2003 Posts: 210 Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2003 10:51 am Post subject:
Nice to see a few more people getting in volved in this discussion
To clarify: nobody is talking about having only closed competitions. Of course it is more interesting/culturally diverse, etc. to have people from other countries coming to a tournament. But must EVERY tournament have
the goal to be as big and international as possible?
What I'm suggesting is having national (i.e. closed) championships in addition to an open tournament. European countries like Switzerland, Czech Rep., Germany, France, etc. have a big enough scene to support both.
To Max's post: What we've been doing at the German OPEN the last two years (and what happened at the first FootJam) was technically not correct because we discriminated agains foreign players by limiting the number of them in the finals. I don't think this is the best sollution...first we make them come and then we treat them unfair.
To Moglum: I do not consider it a waste of time and energy to organize "closed" torunaments. Why? Because it is possible to focus on totally different things in a closed tournament.
The goal of FootJam for instance is: get the best players in Europe/the World to come and rock the crowd. Because this is how we promote the tournament internally and externally, 80% of the intermediate Swiss players only came to watch and not to compete. (Which is ok, they learned a lot had a good time and got tons of inspiration).
The goal for the Swiss Nationals is: Get as many Swiss players as possible to compete. Gather the whole Swiss scene together to get communication running between the single clubs and between all the players, to discuss footbag issues that concern Switzerland, etc. I could go on, but I hope you see my point. It's not ONLY about determening the best swiss player without interference from outside (although that is a valid point too).
I think in order for the competitive sport to grow we need to start thinking in more local terms where tournaments are concerned. Instead of always trying to gather all the good players from all over the place together to make a good tournament we should try to host more tournaments that focus on the new players and get them involved. Again, I am implying additional tournaments to open tournaments that have all the benefits that you and Steve and others have stated.
And a few side remarks:
It's absolutely not about who wins the prizes.
It's not about thinking to be a better player because you placed better in a competition that excluded "foreigners". It's about truly believing you were the best player of your town/state/country on that day and deserving the title of XXXchampion. You know that the stuff we do with the "national" or "european" ranking doesn't work out sattisfactory. Whenever its a close call, just eliminating all "foreign" players from the scoreboard to determine the "national" ranking gives bad results. And then (for instance) you get a european champion (like justin sexton in 2000) of whom people think he didn't deserve the title and who felt himself that he didn't deserve the title (which really is a pitty for him especially). Not because the judges failed but because the system of "european ranking" failed.
So, if we want footbag to be a competitive sport and grow as such I think we would benefit greatly from national championships IN ADDITION to open tournaments.
Joined: 07 Oct 2003 Posts: 103 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2003 12:49 pm Post subject:
Jan Zimmermann (Laxer1) wrote:
To Max's post: What we've been doing at the German OPEN the last two years (and what happened at the first FootJam) was technically not correct because we discriminated agains foreign players by limiting the number of them in the finals. I don't think this is the best sollution...first we make them come and then we treat them unfair.
i don`t really think it is unfair... i think it basically makes sense to everybody and players who come to an open competion won`t feel mistreated because there`s a limit of foreign players for the finals...at least if they`re told beforehand...
Quote:
I think in order for the competitive sport to grow we need to start thinking in more local terms where tournaments are concerned. Instead of always trying to gather all the good players from all over the place together to make a good tournament we should try to host more tournaments that focus on the new players and get them involved. Again, I am implying additional tournaments to open tournaments that have all the benefits that you and Steve and others have stated.
...
So, if we want footbag to be a competitive sport and grow as such I think we would benefit greatly from national championships IN ADDITION to open tournaments.
true. i`m only worried that the national tournament therefore is going to be much harder to get good sponsoring/financing for... which is - at least in most places - hard enough for open comp. . so i`m kind of questioning whether ther will really be more tournaments....
by the way:
i think if every major footbag country will host nationals and open competion, no player can afford to come to every comp. anyways.... i mean:more than twelve tournaments every year!?! +todexon+euros+worlds+ ... that`s not going to happen anyway!
later max
ps: basically, jan you convinced me, i only think it`s hard to do in the end...
Grischa Tellenbach (grischa.tellenbach) IFPA Member
Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 323 Location: Paris, France
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2003 2:25 pm Post subject:
Dear all,
I totally agree with Jan.
We decide last year at the meeting of the French Footbag Association (AFF) that we need to organize an additional tournament for French players.
(An additional tournament, of course we will have a French Open every year, where everybody is welcome to compete. )
Why ? Because we had to realize that local players were demotivated to compete in Open competitions because their skills aren't as high as those of foreign top players.
So, the outcome of having a closed national competition is to get more local players to compete and hence to make the local footbag scene grow.
And as Jan said it is discriminating to limit the places of foreign in Finals and it does not work out just to eliminate foreign players to get the national or European ranking.
(player X was eliminated in the pool by a foreign player but he was better than an other local player Y who advanced to finals and ended up with a better ranking than X and so on ...).
Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 19 Location: Paris, France
Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 5:23 pm Post subject:
Hi evryone.
I think it is a very good idea to have a french open and french championship at 2 different events. People like Moglum who don't care about competitons, are welcome to shred. Let's remember that competition is 2 minutes, 4 min for 8 players out of many more hopefully, on a 5 day event... how many minutes is 5 days...? As steeve repeats, footbag is TINY, I think we got the message. People like me Max and others, already moving to international events will definatly be at the the french championships and open. Younger players, or not as motivated won't travel around europe, but will be at the french champs, so those players in a year or two will hopefully be traveling around europe. Small competitions are good to start with. The french champs concept seems very simple to me. The competition part is to find out the french ranking, than any player is welcome to shred and party for 5 days in the south of france ... I've read that we shouldn't care about hair color, nationality.. for signing in players because it is to early. I think national champs are important and will be even more as the sport grows. Even if making every competition open would make footbag grow quicker( which in my opinion remains to be prooved), I'd rather have it grow slowly on a solid base not ignoring a strong europeen reality. WE LOVE OUR NATIONAL CHAMPS, and they don't stop us from going to international competitions. I would even think that opening national masters is a regression for the sport, it is pretending it's big. We don't care that the french champs are small, they are in fact growing every year and definately making footbag bigger in france. Making it bigger in France is just like making it bigger in any country, contributing to increase the number of players around the world.
Will talk about team freestyle judging sytem next time steeve, but definatly will..
Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 4 Location: Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland
Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 12:10 pm Post subject:
Hello,
I'd like to know one thing. I totally agree that national competition is only allowed for the players from that country. But I also think shred and sick 3 should be open for everybody. So could you guys from France register all the swiss for the sick 3 in Montpellier.
Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 4 Location: Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland
Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 12:11 pm Post subject:
Hello,
I'd like to know one thing. I totally agree that national competition is only allowed for the players from that country. But I also think shred and sick 3 should be open for everybody. So could you guys from France register all the swiss for the sick 3 in Montpellier.
Grischa Tellenbach (grischa.tellenbach) IFPA Member
Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 323 Location: Paris, France
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 4:24 pm Post subject:
The tournament was realy fat.
Execpt intermediate freestyle the level was well above the one from last year's French Open. Freestyle, single and doubles net kicked ass !
The French ConneXion (Fred+Max) participated in the shred and sick3 events. Technically they are the best team players in the world by far !!!
We had a hole bunch of highly qualified and motivated Swiss freestyle judges. They used the "new" IFPA judging system and everything worked fine. The best player won, the second best got second and the third got third. Only Fred and me have to watch our sessions together one time to see if we agree with the judges. But this is just between us two and we totally accept the results of the judges.
The Parties every nite were very cool and the last day's party was the coolest footbag party ever - for sure ! It lasted until 8h40 in the moring. This means approximately 12 hours of hard partying !
One high-light of the evening was the screeing of a footbag video of the 80th featuring Bruce Guettich and his moustache !
This video was edited by the that time French Footbag Association. Apparently some guys did researches on it, but they didn't find anything.
Steve do you know anything about that video - or the former French players ?
The other mayor event was the 4 Square game. This was the frist time we had a 4 Square game at a French footbag competition.
The event was a total sucess and the Icarus team did a great job !
Props for you guys !
Blame all those who missed the 1st French Footbag Championships.
The Swiss guys put some pictures allready online www.footbag.ch
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in the pool by a foreign player but he was better than an other local player Y who advanced to finals and ended up with a better ranking than X and so on ...).
