Topic: Intercollegiate Foosball

[wittw]

I am currently the President of the GVSU Foosball Club, which, as of 11/18/05, has 60 members on the roster.  I have talked with the presidents of SMC and IU and talked about starting a conference for cross-college foosball.  We are currently in the midst of contacting University of Michigan, as well.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, please let us know.  We could use all of them.

As soon as we get info pertaining to the proposed conference, I will post it ASAP.

Thanks much, and FOOS ON!

Mick Witt,
President, GVSU Foosball Club

[SumnerH]

I am currently the President of the GVSU Foosball Club, which, as of 11/18/05, has 60 members on the roster.  I have talked with the presidents of SMC and IU and talked about starting a conference for cross-college foosball.  We are currently in the midst of contacting University of Michigan, as well.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, please let us know.  We could use all of them.

1. See if you can get the organizers of Michigan States to offer a free entry package to Michigan States to the winning doubles team from your intercollegiate championships.  If not, consider offering it yourself if you can raise the money for the entry fee.
2.  Try to organize your team to go play against good tournament players in the area.

[wittw]

How much is a package typically for Michigan States?  Just so we can figure out how much money we need to raise.  We are figuring that the money raised will go to entry fees, and also hotel costs, transportation (possibly Greyhound), etc.  Perhaps a  relatively small membership fee from each school could, for the most part, handle this.

Also, how many schools do you think a conference should have at minimum?  Would 2-4 schools be enough to grab people's attention, or do you think we need to try finding as many clubs as possible?

Here's an important question, that we, unfortunatley, still do not have the answer to:
How in the world do you start a conference like this?  Does anyone have any idea as to what kind of paperwork that may need to be done to make this official and legitimate?  We are trying to figure out what kind of things need to be done, but we are unsure.

We have been talking more between the colleges, especially between Southwestern Michigan College and Grand Valley State.  Still little word from I.U. and no word yet from U of M.

There are so many ideas flying within the schools, and we are getting extremely excited about something started.  SMC and GVSU are currently talking about an exhibition-type competition in early '06.  This is what we (the two schools) agreed on for the competition:

Each school will hold a league with players that want to be members of the foosball team prior to the competition.  At the end of league play, the players with the best records and/or stats will be the on their team.

There will be 8 players to a team, so 16 total from two schools.  There will be double-elim. singles and double-elim DYP doubles.  Each match is best 2 of 3 in the first round, where each matchup in the first round is a team/player from one college against a team/player from the other college.  The winner's bracket continues to be best 2 of 3, and the loser's bracket is one game, win by 2.  Chapionship is best 2 of 3, as well.

Depending on the placement that a player/team gets in a particular tournament, a player/team is awarded points towards their school, and, once both tourneys are completed, the points are totaled, the school with the most points wins the competition.

For Singles:
1st - 10p
2nd - 7p
3rd - 5p
4th - 3p
5-6th - 2p (x2)
7-8th - 1p (x2)

For Doubles:
1st - 6p
2nd - 3p
3rd - 2p
4th - 1p

TOTAL NUMBER OF POINTS POSSIBLE - 43

For league play, and for the competitions, we intend to abide by the USTSA rules of play.
If you have any other ideas for league, competitions, etc., please let me know.

One last thing:
We have been jugling around with possible names for the conference, and we have one that seems to be agreeing with most of us:
Great Lakes Collegiate Foosball Conference (GLCFC), since it has SMC, GVSU, maybe U of M, and IU, we felt this was appropriate.  Anyone else have an idea for a name?  Let us know.

Thanks, and FOOS ON!

Mick Witt,
President, GVSU Foosball Club

[SumnerH]

How much is a package typically for Michigan States?  Just so we can figure out how much money we need to raise.

The first thing I would do is talk to the tournament director for Michigan States and see if he's willing to donate a package (or maybe just the entry fees to rookie singles and doubles).  Explain that you're just starting out an intercollegiate league, and promise to give out full information on Michigan States to all the players in your league.

This year, a beginner's package deal was $40/player (so $80/team) and allowed you to play in beginner singles and doubles, rookie singles and doubles, and open doubles (against the pros).  http://www.elevatecreative.net/stuff/Michigan_State_05.pdf

We are figuring that the money raised will go to entry fees, and also hotel costs, transportation (possibly Greyhound), etc.  Perhaps a  relatively small membership fee from each school could, for the most part, handle this.

Definitely if you can become a real school club you can ask for some cash to put toward expenses.

Also, how many schools do you think a conference should have at minimum?  Would 2-4 schools be enough to grab people's attention, or do you think we need to try finding as many clubs as possible?

Start small.  Organizing more than 2 schools is going to get complex, the important thing is to try to actually keep things running so people can play.

Each school will hold a league with players that want to be members of the foosball team prior to the competition.  At the end of league play, the players with the best records and/or stats will be the on their team.

There will be 8 players to a team, so 16 total from two schools.

A 16-team singles bracket is going to take a while to run, make sure you know how to call the bracket.

I'd recommend doing BYP doubles, and then a "for-fun" DYP where players could get paired with partners from the other school.  If time is tight, you drop the DYP.

Also, doubles should be worth more points than singles for it to be at all meaningful.  Usually payouts in doubles events are about twice what they are in singles.  There are half as many teams, so the matches have to be weighted accordingly (and if the points are twice as many, it comes out to the same number of points per event).   Unlike tennis, at most foosball tournaments doubles is the main event.

[wittw]

From looking at the poster that was linked on the last reply, it appeared to be that The event was a VIFA event.  I was under the impression that in order to participate in the VIFA events, one had to meet certain requirements, like being a member of the USTSA, and having participated in a certain number of events.  Is this true?

[SumnerH]

From looking at the poster that was linked on the last reply, it appeared to be that The event was a VIFA event.  I was under the impression that in order to participate in the VIFA events, one had to meet certain requirements, like being a member of the USTSA, and having participated in a certain number of events.  Is this true?

The "league doubles", "league singles", etc would require league participation, but the other stuff should be open to everyone.

USTSA membership is trivial, it's like a $20 annual fee with no other requirements to join.  But I don't think this requires USTSA membership anyway.

[wittw]

Here's the latest update on the foosball conference:

I have been given a definate "yes" to join from both Southwestern Michigan Colllege and Indiana University.  So it looks like, for starters, we're going to have a three school conference this coming this Winter!

The numbers are decent between the schools.  There are approximately 30+ members in IU, 30+ members in SMC, and over 60 members in GVSU.

Each of the schools plan to play each other 2 times, for a total of 4 compeitions for each school (GVSU would play SMC twice, and IU twice)

At the end of the season, we plan to have the two best teams play a championship competition.  We intend to have various prizes (including State Champ. Packages) for top doubles teams and singles players, as well as a trophy of some sort for the school (Kind of like the Stanely Cup of foosball, lol)

So that's it so far, will post again soon with more info.

[SumnerH]

Here's the latest update on the foosball conference:

I have been given a definate "yes" to join from both Southwestern Michigan Colllege and Indiana University.  So it looks like, for starters, we're going to have a three school conference this coming this Winter

Awesome!  See if you can venture out to some of the local DYPs if there are any.

[wittw]

We were thinking of naming the conference either the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Foosball Conference, or the Midwest Intercollegiate Foosball Conference.  However, if anyone has any ideas for a bett name, please post it.

Also, we're still having problems firguring out how to make the conference an official orginization.  We're not sure if groups (like NCAA) have special paperwork that needs to be filled out in order to use the name and whatnot.

In addition, we're looking in to seeing if there are requirements and arrangements that need to be made in order to be allowed to represent our school and use the school name for our foosball orginizations when we compete in intercollegiate play.  We're being as careful as possible to prevent ourselves from being open to any sort of legal trouble.

If anybody has any input, let us know ASAP.  In the mean time, we are going to be working extra hard to make this happen next semester.

Until next update, FOOS ON!

Mick Witt
Pres. GVSU Foosball Club