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[Grischa Tellenbach (grischa.tellenbach)]

Yeah, I want to see Steve do a "15-minute freestyle routine".

Just kidding. Mais comme on dit chez moi : "respires, ou bien le pire est à venir"

G*

[P.T. Lovern (ptlovern)]

Ok,

If you want drama long games cool. But the scoring system now can't allow a three out of five match. Maybe with straight scoring Or the tennis scoring. Our scoring system will have like a 2-5 hour match. You can't expect people to watch that long with any sport. That is not happening. Takraw had a three hour match and it screwed everything up(TV coverage and all). A potential topic could be moving to straight scoring in pools or something. Not from me I am working on CHAOS full time.

As far as net domination, I have been working on crushing Montreal for 8 years hard now and still haven't taken care of business yet. This is different than freestyle. Europe will have its day, not in three years. Keep training.

[Ahren Gehrman (Torch)]

Just thought you guys might like to hear what a non-net player/spectator thinks about all this. I love watching great net matches. Anymore, I enjoy it as much as watching the best freestyle routines. However, most of the preliminary matches bore me to tears. It's even hard to go watch my good friends like P.T. and J. Leys smash their competition like little bugs splattered on the windsheild when you're driving on the freeway. All those matches should be one game and that's it. It would save the winners a lot of energy, the tournament directors a lot of time, and the losers can start drinking earlier than ever. As far as finals go, I would love to see MORE, MORE, MORE. Since you've saved so much time and energy cutting all the bullshit matches in half (or 2/3, even better), you can possibly do 3 out of 5 matches without two much strain. It would be great if you could split it in to two days even. If you only had two games the first day, there could be no winner yet, so you would have to have a second day. This would build tension with both the crowd and the competitors. And I think more attention should be brought to the final matches. During freestyle finals last year they had breakdancers and the yo yo dude, and it was like a fucking party. For net they said, "Ok, come watch and stuff." The only people who wathced were the ones who already gave a shit. Anyway, just some thoughts.

[Yves Archambault (yevez)]

Well, well, well, Steve why don't you stay in the freestyle forum if you don't like what you see in net, I've been bringing the subject of separating the 2 sports and you are ''the one'' who wants to keep them both together. If net is stopping yr beloved freestylers to get all the attention they deserve, well organize them a tournament. I, and a lot of people see it like me, find this under the knee stuff to get very boring too...

I want to say to the Europeans players that I saw a lot of talent in Prague and was very impressed by the athletic abilities of a lot of newcomers. Net takes longer to learn as you need to receive thousands and thousands of serves just to master that part of the game. Personnally, I was very impressed with the german players, Frankfurters mainly, and wouldn't route them out of very early successes. Watch out Finland...As far as nationalism goes it's good to a certain extent, we montrealers like to play together but it's a very good way to get experience to play with other styles. We all learned playing against the americans, but with them too. Think about what's the best possible team as this will increase the level of the sport.

And for the 3 out of 5 topic I can't see why it would make anything better, a close match is a close match no matter what the format is and an unbalanced contest will remain like that too.

[Tricia George (kicking)]

It's about each individual improving himself. And that's where the problem lies.

Wow. Being a freestyler at heart, I beg to differ. Are you insinuating that net players are out to better themselves, perhaps push their game to higher limits? Do you ever see that in a freestyle circle? I am, once again surprised at your misdirected candor.

Your Friend,

Tricia George

PS

and I thought you were so busy..............

[Yves Archambault (yevez)]

Hello Tricia,

I never insinuated anything like that, I thought net was under attack in this thread!!! I just mean that net has a future too. I totally know that the freestyle players are pushing themselves to higher limits too. It just seems that a few people have been coming to the net forum only to despise it. It was a while ago and I haven't seen this recently. I thought it was counter productive but we are able to defend ourselves.

Very surprised that you consider yourself a freestyler at heart but I think I know what you mean. Freestyle as the flow. Maybe not the total virtuosity shred that goes on these days. I like that but probably only the 2 best ones. The artistic value of the routines is on the down side but the difficulty is way up. It's a lot of work of course but sometimes as a spectator I think it hurts the show.

Of course, the net has lost some great athletes in recent years but some young folks are on the way up.

[Steve Dusablon (dusablon)]

Give freestylers half an hour each to perform, see what we care. We would love to see all those pale, sickly, skeletal guys flopping over from dehydration =p

As far as 3 out of 5 goes, I think its too much. At first I thought maybe 1 game to like 50 might be an alternative but that has the possibility of making defeats sound positively hideous, like 50 to 3 or 50 to 7, eeeek!
3 out of 5 would certainly be epic for those competing, I must admit. That would mean 3 hours of up and down drama and adrenaline if the players are matched well or it could wind up more like 3 hours of basically watching paint dry.
I think 2 out of 3 is already the happy medium. Not so short that it isn't decisive and not so long that no one cares but the players. The drama is in the relative brevity where there are no throw-away plays. The clock is ticking and if you are down you better respond quickly... and so forth.

Steve

[James Harley (legend)]

I like the idea of finals being 3-of-5. In fact, all games should be to 15 points as well, for the sake of statistical comparison. In my old league (of 70 net players in a town of 100,000 people) we kept track of scoring and defensive averages, which was very motivating to our players. Of course, we also played under easier rules (including a smaller singles court), which greatly enhanced recruiting success. All of these problems with net are interrelated. The reason that so many net matches are boring is that the game is simply too hard, so not enough people stick with it long enough to become good players. Even those who do are still prone to sponch/shank/slump because it is so difficult. With easier rules and larger bags we could have tens of thousands of players, and the best will always rise to the top anyway. Then, quality matches will occur further down in the brackets, and will be worth watching. As it is, we simply discourage newcomers with frustration, so few players become good players. With more players, there are more good players, and with easier rules, there are more exciting and longer rallies also. Then, 3-of-5 will be great.
Yes, we could train people from a very early age and drill them into fine net players if they have complete dedication to the process. But so far, only Yves has really had much success doing this, and he is to be commended for it. But, we simply need a game that is actually more fun than frustrating, and then we'll have more people sticking with it and becoming more skilled.
As for freestylers performing for more than two minutes, I must say that, like net, there are only a few worth watching for this long as it is. Drops are boring. Finals routines should end on the second drop, period.

[Mike Hansen (wolfpac444)]

Analagously, every net rally should be at least 20 contacts. If you can't do this, then the match should end. Misses are boring

[Martin Côté (martincote)]