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| TheAirHockeyGuy
- 31 Jul 2012
Total Posts: 472
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Now that the dust has settled, and a new champion has been crowned, I just wanted to take a look back at the some of the tournament experience.
Goalgrinder 500 -
One of my favorite pieces of the entire tournament, and not just because I finished second.  As I touched on briefly at the awards ceremony, this event gave several players the opportunity to play in highly visible and exciting matches. We still had exciting matches between top players like Billy vs Danny but we also had exciting matches between Master level players and players at lower skill levels. The example that pops into my head is Travis Luscombe vs Kim Wenskay. Not trying to slight Kim in any way here but on a normal Saturday if these two were to face each other, chances are that most people would assume that Travis would win and they probably wouldn't have watched the match. In the Goalgrinder however, this became a very exciting match that forced Travis to come back from a 6-2 (I think) deficit in every game. My match was taking place at the same time but I could hear the crowd cheering in that match the whole time. My point is that EVERY match was exciting in the Goalgrinder. This is a fact that needs to be looked at very closely because if we want to grow the sport, I think having a Goalgrinder tournament at every Championship event could be an important key to that.
The USAA Board Meeting-
Yes, you read correctly, i'm going to discuss the USAA Board Meeting. Out of all the board meetings I have attended, this was by far the most productive I have attended. In my opinion, we are entering a very exciting time in our sport and within our organization. We have an excellent group of officers leading the organization and the board as a whole is filled with people that have good ideas and that want to act on them. Even better is that the majority of our board members have similar beliefs in regards to the direction we want to move the sport and how we should go about getting there.
Overall
I really think that this tournament was a milestone on the road to becoming a professional sport recognized worldwide. I was talking to Andrew Flanagan and he was saying how each year he feels the Goalgrinder newsletter gets better and better. I totally agree and I feel that way about this event in general. I think this event showed that we are very close to having a finished product that we can market to sponsors. With the addition of Donovan's new scoring technology, our stream looked very professional. I was very impressed by the Doubles final that has been posted on youtube. We had high quality air hockey, live scoring for everyone to see, and excellent commentary. I have to say that I greatly appreciate the approach everyone took that sat behind the mic to do commentary. They all fully embraced the opportunity and completely understood that this time around we had a significant audience that had never seen air hockey before.
Chris Lee
Co-Founder, CEO
Air Hockey Players Association (AHPA)
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| TheAirHockeyGuy
- 31 Jul 2012
Total Posts: 472
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[con't]
I thought that they did a great job of mixing in relevant air hockey history, rules, strategy, and basic gameplay into their commentary. So, big thank you to Don James, Tim Weissman, Wil Upchurch, Billy Stubbs, Goran Mitic, Brian Quezada, and anyone else that sat behind that mic. Just to give you some preliminary numbers regarding our viewership, based on the time I spent watching the feed, we probably averaged between 200-250 viewers at any given time during most of Sunday. We had over 30,000 views of the stream, 24,488 of those views were by unique viewers. In total, on Sunday alone, we had a total of 2,024.50 hours of air hockey viewed. That averages about 5 minutes per viewer. This number may seem small but that probably is equivalent to watching about one full game. For us to get that many people to watch a game of professional air hockey when they had no intention of doing so in the first place is a huge accomplishment in my opinion. We will continue to analyze the numbers but this was definitely very good exposure for our sport. I plan to continue to develop the relationship between the USAA and Ustream and I hope this turns into a valuable partnership moving forward. The success of the stream just proves that anything is possible but you have to try. I had an idea, I tried, and we got a response. If you have an idea, post it or get a hold of a member of the board so we can explore it!
Chris Lee
Co-Founder, CEO
Air Hockey Players Association (AHPA)
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| TWeissman
- 31 Jul 2012
Total Posts: 210
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Chris,
Your contributions to the sport may have some of the most lasting effects of any. Thank you.
Take care...
Tim
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- 04 Aug 2012
Total Posts: 658
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Recap: Starting off the tournament, i was really looking forward to that match with Pedro. And i don't care what you say or think Pedro, you are not going to run over me so easily, just because you think my defense sucks. My challenge match record is pretty dog gone good, and against some good players too, so go suck a mallet if you think i'm just going to lay down against you because you know how to hit a nice right wall over!!!
Ahem....so anyways, my match with Pedro was going to kick off the event, but didn't happen because Mr. Yahoo didn't get his visa green card paperwork passport in order. That stinks! All that preparation and buildup for nothing. The trash talking online was fun though Pedro! Had a good time with that.
Doubles: Great til the end. We had you on the stinkin ropes Danny and Ehab, six times!!!! Damn you! Nice comeback win.
Singles: No i didn't play, but i'd like to make these notations: Tim played awesome. Billy looked nearly untouchable. Ehab finally defeated Danny for the first time in 3 years, and made it to the finals without having to face him. Wil Upchurch was inspirational. Javier and Paulo were awesome too. Jose needs to try and practice more. He is amazing playing so well for never practicing. Davis, glad you decided to go ahead and attend after being so close to not coming ;). Jacob Weissman is showing signs of greatness to come. Collin is getting more and more awesome. I predict a very nice back and forth rivalry with J. Weissman and Collin in the future for years to come.
Chris Lee right now is the 3rd best player in Colorado. He's playing so well. Yes, i'm saying he's slightly ahead of Thomas and Geoffroy. He played great in the Goal Grinder, and in singles he put up a good fight against both Q. and Jose who he lost to. He now needs to challenge Keith.
Interviews and webacasting were fun! I love the added exposure. Great work to the tournament team. Great seeing all the players. Thanks to Ehab for letting me stay at his place and being a good host.
-Nizzi
a.k.a. The Big Beluga
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| Mike C
- 04 Aug 2012
Total Posts: 459
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I am going to continue this thread to give you my recap of the tournament.
First and foremost, I want to tell you that none of this tournament happens if Brian Accrocco does not dedicate as much time and effort into this event. He not only led a team of friends in this whole endeavor, but he put in countless hours into wiring, adding tables, organizing, making calls and promoting this event in order to prepare for developing future events and growing this sport. 3 or 4 nights this week while many were at home watching Olympic coverage, Brian was working on the old tables, moving his table back home, helping to move Andrews table out, and doing other stuff. Thanks Brian. Oh and by the way, he finished again as a Master.
Ok, Recap of the Youth performances. This has been my focus for the past year and special interest. I made a prediction many months ago that 10% of the top 50 would come from the youth players and that 1 of the youth may even break the top 30. Jacob did break the top 30 and deserves great congratulations for getting 23. The result of the top 50 shows 3 youth players in the top 50 and 6 in the top 60. Jacob and Colin are both putting in a lot of time on the table right now and their efforts are showing. Colin has consistently worked on his game the past 2 years and Jacob has made huge strides in his game in the past year. Both of them will be forces in the overall airhockey community this year as well as within the youth. There are Others lurking that want to improve their standing as well.
Sunday's Youth event. After the Zwack event, Brian and I had a discussion about getting better exposure for the youth tournament. Putting the Youth Event on the same day as Final 16 of the big event has proven to provide many benefits. 1) the Youth get to see the best players in the world play 2) More People come out and watch as parents and friends come to see their little boy or girl play, and they get to see Billy, Ehab, Tim, Danny etc. compete. It's a great part of the overall tournament weekend experience. I ran the Youth Tournament in the Arena (improperly nicknamed, The Daycare on Sunday). The kids took over that room of 6 tables plus 9 and 10. The competition was fierce in all 3 age brackets. I hope and pray that there will be many future world champions that emerge from the Arena. The future is not only based around Colin, Jacob and Avery. Other great players that could emerge include Steven Accrocco, Anthony Munez, Peyton Shelley, AJ Ortiz and Chris Gibson in the older bracket. Up and comers include Ben Hayman, Sara Weissman and Holly Candanoza and the little seedlings under 11 have some game including Connor Cummings, Lil Anthony Marino, Adrian Ortiz and Bilal Shoukry, Plus many more! I enjoyed running these 3 brackets and seeing how these kids enjoy spending time together not only at the tournament, but at weeklies and other events.
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| sjrbat
- 04 Aug 2012
Total Posts: 527
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I was not able to make the banquet so I want now to thank Brian, Dianne, Mike, Donovan, Andrew, Marc, and everybody else who put up a great tournament again. It gets better every year!!!
Congratulations to Billy Stubbs for another championship. Beating Danny, Tim, Ehab twice, and Will. That is a great lineup and to run through them on Sunday like you did was amazing!!!
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