Finnish Footbag Championships Results!

(Orig­i­nally pos­ted No­vem­ber 30, 1997, to the IFAB an­nounce mail­ing list.)

I am happy to an­nounce the re­sults of the first ever IFAB-sanctioned tour­na­ment over­seas:

The Fin­nish Foot­bag Cham­pions­hips 1997

It was awe­some.

First I want to thank all the 10+ people who did so much work on ma­king the tour­na­ment pos­sible, and all the ot­hers who where there hel­ping us on one of the best (and busiest) days of my life. We really could not have done it wit­hout the help from you all. You know who you all are.

I also want to thank our spon­sors: Pure, Tele, Mc­Do­nalds, Sy­sO­pen, Black Boos­ter, No­vogroup, Te­boil & Flying Clip­per.

At 5:00 PM, just like the sche­dule said (I still won­der how we made it) in front of huge groud star­ted the frees­tyle fi­nals, which showed to the croud the 6 best frees­ty­lers in Fin­land. I could not be­lieve the rou­ti­nes that I saw, these guys had really wor­ked hard on their rou­ti­nes. In the end the win­ner was Mika Kois­ti­nen with his amazing 1-drop rou­tine.

OK, Af­ter the vo­lun­teers had chanced the bea­ti­ful frees­tyle arena into outs­tan­ding fi­nals net court ext­re­mely quick, The full crowd was about to see the doubles net match of the decade. It was Jukka Pel­tola & Tuo­mas vs me and my part­ner Jesse Fryck­man. We play a lot to­get­her and we have had some real good matc­hes over the years, but that match was just so­met­hing else. I don’t know what went into us, but all four of just played way bey­ond our own le­vel. And the croud which of most people ne­ver even seen foot­bag net game be­fore lo­ved it. I am so clad that we had a a film croup with th­ree ca­me­ras ma­king a docu­ment of the event.

With rage against the mac­hine playing on the background we put up a show with huge spi­kes, blocks and sa­ves that lead the game to un­be­li­ve­bale ral­lyes. We left off the rule of no con­tact above to net, so the croud could saw some really crazy air­fights, and it wor­ked too. The match took th­ree thight sets and al­most a whole Rage against mac­hine cd un­till the stan­ding and yel­ling huge croud got to saw the last serve when the head judge cal­led a match point to Jukka Pel­tola & Tuo­mas Karki which en­ded the set to 15 – 13 and the whole game with ever­las­ting applause from the croud, and an of­ficial vic­tory to Jukka and Tuo­mas, but af­ter a match like that we all felt like win­ner.

Because of the tight sche­dule we had, Jukka & Tuo­mas had only about ten mi­nu­tes to get ready for the Singles fi­nal match. They both really gave eve­ryt­hing in the doubles fi­nals and they were so ex­haus­ted that they deci­ded to make the Singles fi­nals sets only played to ele­ven. Anyway the match star­ted at a time and in end there was Tuo­mas Karki the best net player in Fin­land ta­king two net cham­pions­hips that day. The third place between Me and my part­ner Jesse Fryck­man was tied because we were the two head of­ficials and us both being in doubles net and in frees­tyle fi­nals led as to a si­tua­tion that we just had to tie for the third, because we just did not have time for that match.

Even the long day en­ding awards ce­re­mony was great with the fancy trop­hys and me­dals with freestyler/net player on them and all the stuff we got from the spon­sors was great. So here are the of­ficial re­sults:

Frees­tyle
1. Mika Kois­ti­nen
2. TIED Jus­tin Sexton/Jesse Fryck­man
4. Ilkka Ma­lin
5. Juho Vesa
6. Jiri Au­ramo

Singles Net:
1. Tuo­mas Karki
2. Jukka Pel­tola
3. Tied Jesse Fryckman/Justin Sex­ton

Doubles Net
1. Jukka Peltola/Tuomas Karki
2. Jus­tin Sexton/Jesse Fryck­man
3. Olli Savoilainen/Jesse Ruot­sa­lai­nen
4. Aleksi Öhman/Jani Mark­ka­nen

the Spi­rit of the tour­na­ment award was won by Aleksi Öh­man

In the last two months my res­pect for all of you tour­na­ment di­rec­tors has raise quite a bit, hats off to you all, and keep up the good work.

Jus­tin Sex­ton