SAY "I DO" AND THEN WIN TWO
For Chicago native Tiffany Billirakis Moore the 1996 World Championships was a foosball dream come true. Not only did Tiff win Women's Doubles with An-gela Sine for the second straight year, she also won her first World Singles Champi-onship, earned the Female Forward of the Year award and topped off this magical Dallas weekend by getting married to fellow table soccer megastar Terry Moore.
On the Thursday afternoon leading into this year's spectacular, Tiff and Terry, arguably the world's best female and male players, tied the proverbial knot in a short but substantial ceremony. With Maid of Honor Lotus Chesbrough and Best Man Louis Cartwright looking on, Tiff and Terry exchanged vows in a heart-felt cere-mony witnessed by friends, family and foosers from around the world. There wasn't much time for a honeymoon for the new Mrs. Moore as she began her quest for the world championship glory on Sat-urday.
In both the Women's Singles and Doubles competitions, Tiffany proved herself to be the class of the field all week-end long. she teamed with the highly underrated Ms. Sine (still a semi-pro?) to again defeat the #I seeds Liz Hill and Christina Fuchs in a replay of last year's final. In singles she held off the challenge of the talented Stephanie Dean (who had an excellent weekend of her own) to fi-nally win her first World Women's Singles title. Last year Tiff lost a final game, two goal lead to Cami Carter to finish second in an emotionally draining women's final.
Tiffany Moore's outstanding performances at this year's World Championships should finally give her the hard earned respect and recognition she merits. Oh, and a new husband.
RAPID ROB AND TWO-GUN TOMMY
For Tommy Adkisson it had been a long three years. Since winning the World Doubles and Singles titles at the 1993 World Championships, the 21 year old Oklahoma City foosball legend had vis-ited the major pro-tour winner's circle just once. In February, Tommy teamed with Liz Hill at the Hall of Fame Classic to win Mixed Doubles. But that had been it. He had come close, garnering runner-up at the '94 Kickoff in singles and at the '95 U.S. Open in doubles with Steve Murray, but he had never fully achieved the super-star status that had been predicted for him after his 1993 performance.
For Arizona native and Colorado resident Robert Mares, his first world title came as a surprise to no one, except per-haps this unassuming, fun-loving west-erner himself. Mares had been steadily climbing to the top of the table soccer totem pole since his 1994 Masters Singles victory in Atlanta. Rapid Rob had won doubles in Georgia the following year, with fellow Coloradan Scott Wydman and had finished in the number-two position in open singles at the 1995 Worlds, losing to Dave Gummeson.
The pairing of the super-qulck Adkis-son and the lightning-fast Mares had elic-ited a similar reaction from most table soccer afficianados, "If they catch a wave of momentum nobody will be able to stop them, but if they don't..." or "Will they be able to slow their game down if neces-sary? Neither of them seems capable of taking their time!" Tommy and Robert did indeed catch a wave and they surfed it all the way to the world championship beach.
In the winner's bracket final, Adkis-son and Mares faced off against Califor-nia's Gregg Perrie and Washington state's Larry Chesbrough. With a slot in the fi-nals at stake, Rob and Tommy proved to be too much for the talented west coast tandem, beating them in five tough games to advance to the finals. Seep and Ches then saw their championship hopes dashed by Terry Moore and Bob Diaz, the #I seeded team. For Moore and Diaz it meant their sixth consecutive open dou-bles final on the major-pro tour, a phe-nomenal achievement.
As the finals got underway it was apparent that Tommy and Rob were still hanging-ten on that huge North Shore breaker. With Adkisson making his first two shots from the three-rod and Rob Mares providing two scores from goalie, they won game one 5-4. Game two was all Moore and Diaz as Bobby scored two of his own from the pits and blocked 7 out of 8 attempted three-row shots. But that would be the extent of it for the #1 seeds. With Mares matching Diaz block for block, Tommy put away game three 5-4 with a front-pin right down the middle. The fourth game belonged entirely to the young winner's bracket champs. Mares again scored two from the goalie (giving him 5 for the match) and added one more from forward. Two-Gun Tommy made both of his three-row efforts including the game-winner to defeat Moore and Diaz in four enthusiastic, entertaining games.
For Terry and Bobby it ended their three tournament winning streak and gave them their second straight second place finish at the Worlds. For Rob Mares it was his first of what could most certainly be many more World titles. For Tommy Adkisson it brought to an end a frustrating three year drought and reminded all of us what a truly great player this 21 year old Oklahoma Sooner can be.
Many in the large pit-area crowd could not believe what they were seeing. "Two lady players are fighting it out for ninth place IN OPEN DOUBLES against Steve Mohs and John Smith on table number one? and it's 4-4 in the final game!" someone exclaimed completely amazed by what was occuring.
Moya Tielens, the aggressive and talented forward from Vancouver, British Columbia and partner Laurette Gunther from Spokane, Washington (who has qui-etly had an outstanding year) would go on to be narrowly defeated in the match against Mohs and Smith, but not before they had pulled off upset after upset, crushing ego after ego along the way to an extraordinary thirteenth place finish. Ac-cording to our research, no all-female team has ever even approached a finish this high in the Open Doubles event.
Moya and Laurette's amazing open doubles journey included an unbelievable 5-0-in-the-fifth game victory over 1996 hall of Fame Classic winners Steve Beine and Don Swan. They defeated former World Champion Chris Starczewski and fellow Floridan Dave Jones to reach thir-teenth place before narrowly losing to the highly seeded Mohs and Smith.
In other interesting open doubles re-sults, two-time defending World Champs Todd Loffredo and Scott Wydman saw their hopes for a three-peat ended by Moore and Diaz in the loser's bracket. Moore and Diaz who seem to have figured out how to beat their 1995 nemesis, fin-ished fourth at this year's event and didn't seem to exhibit the sharpness or confi-dence that they have had the last couple of years.
Eighteen year old Grant Nelson (the 1995 Most Improved Player) continued his upward climb on the table soccer lad-der, teaming with the sport's only active Hall of Famer Mike Bowers to finish in a fifth place tie with accomplished foosball veterans Mike Cody and Eddy Gartman.
Europeans like Frederico Collignon (remember that name) and Guerino Ferrari also played well in the Open Doubles event and will take an impressive ninth place finish back to the continent to prove it. For Collignon it was just one of many outstanding finishes in what was an unbe-lievably successful weekend for the young man from Belgium.
WE ARE THE WORLD
More than ever before, the 1996 Tor-nado World Championships of Foosball could rightfully and legitimately be de-scribed as an International Event. A record-high number of European players attended this year's Labor Day Classic, helping to make it a truly global competi-tion. There were a number of excellent efforts and fabulous finishes provided by our foosball cousins from across the At-lantic, but one individual stands out from the crowd.
Belgian Frederico Collignon had what may well be the greatest World Championship tournament ever for a player from outside the United States (With apologies to Dieter Thiele, the greatest European player ever). Collignon won the competitive Forward Shootout event as well as the Winner Take All Draw Your Partner, teaming with Steve Rogge. He also finished an amazing fifth in Open Singles, third in Mixed Doubles with Ingrid Hauben and ninth in Open Doubles with Guerino Ferrari. But Frederico, only a semi-pro, wasn't fin-ished yet. He teamed with Ferrari to finish second in Semi-Pro Doubles and fourth in the brand new and extremely competitive International Cup. Quite a weekend.
The debut of the International Cup an event that pits the best teams from each state, province, or country was an over-whelming success. Tommy Adkisson added another World Championship title to his resume pairing with long-time Okla-homa rival, Chuck Pistole to defeat his open doubles partner Rob Mares and Scott Wydman, representing Colorado. in the Cup final. With the continued im- provement of the European players along with the sport's rapidly spreading popular- ity worldwide, this event should become more and more interesting as the years go by. _
IN THE MIX
Since the beginning of the 1994 sea- son only one Mixed Doubles team had won a major-tour title more than once. In fact, twelve different teams and twenty- three different players had veen victorious during the previous 14 tour events. Of those, only Terry Moore and Stephanie Dean had earned multiple mixed titles, winning the Kickoff in `94 and the Hall of Fame Classic and Nationals `95. At last year's $100,000 extravaganza in Dallas, Moore and Dean had hoped to win their first world title only to see Adrian Zamora and Caryn Varadinek de- feat them in a spectacular second-set per- formance. This year, Terry and Steph looked across pit-table #l at their oppo- nents, 1994 World Mixed Doubles Cham- pions Todd Loffredo and Tracy Hill, the only obstacles standing between them and world championship glory. In the first game of the finals it was Moore and Dean making a profound open- ing statement,with Terry shooting 100% and Stephanie blocking 6 Loffredo scor- ing efforts while notching a point of her own. In game two, the great Loffredo went 4-6 on the way to a 5-2 second game. But from then on it was all Moore and Dean as they defeated the former champions to win a well-deserved Mixed Doubles World title. For Terry it was his first World Cham- pionship since 1992 when he won Singles and Mixed with Cara Richardville in his big breakthrough performance. For Ms. Dean her Mixed Doubles title coupled with her 2nd place Women's Singles finish made it the best tournament ever for her.
CARTWRIGHT'S CROWNING_ACHIEVEMENT
As the huge pit-area crowd watched Las Vegas, Nevada's Louis Cartwright stroke a long powerful pull-shot from goal to defeat Rob Mares 5-0 in game one of the Open Singles Final it appeared to all in attendance that Louis, the 1996 Mas- ter's Singles Champion, was headed for an easy victory. Mares had gone 0 for 9 on the three-rod and seemed just a bit out of synch. But as we have seen on more than one occasion in recent years, there is no quit in Rob Mares. In game two, Mares allowed his de- fense to get him going. He stuffed Cart- wright for his first point and then allowed Louis only 2 three-row attempts on the way to a 5-2 victory. We were tied-up to one apiece. In order for Mares to win his first World Singles title he would have to beat Loius in two consecutive matches and that would be no easy chore. Louis had ap- peared in nine championships finals in his career and had won seven of them The next three games of this opening set would go right down to the wire, with Mares winning game three 5-4 and Cart- wright taking game four 5-4 (after trailing 3-0). In the fifth game Robert took a 3-1 lead only to see Louis come back and tie it up at 4. Mares then turned the ball over to Cartwright's three but blocked the shot, passed the ball and scored to win the first set. With both players seemingly on top of their game, with the crowd completely into the match and with $6,000 first place prize at stake, the second and final set got underway. Cartwright jumped ahead 3-1 but back came the always-hungry . Rob Mares to once again tie it up at 3 and then 4. In an awesome high-speed display, eight points were scored in less than four minutes, with each player missing only once from the scoring rod. At 4-4 Cart- wright passed it through and quickly snaked it to the near side to win the first game. In game two, Mares came storming back, scoring three in a row from goalie in route to a 5-0 victory. Cartwright euked out a 5-4 win once again to go up 2-1 in games, Mares went 4 for 5 shooting in the fourth game winning 5-3 and suddenly it was one game for everything. Cartwright opened up the fifth game with two straight misses before converting on his third shot attempt to draw first blood. It took Mares two shot attempts to get his first fifth-game point. But after tying the game up at one Rob Mares would never again see the ball on his three-rod. Louis scored on a snake to the near side, followed that with a push-shot from goal and then hammered a left hook and quicker than you can say 'King Rouie' it was 4-1. Louis then stole the ball from Mares and set it up looking for the World Singles Championship. One pull side front-pin later and Louis Cartwright was the champ. And deservingly so. Cart-wright's smothering defense, shooting from goal, five-rod and three-rod scoring ability are second to none when it comes to singles play. So for the second time during this extraordinary world champion-ship weekend Louis Cartwright was "the Best Man."
THE FUTURE'S SO BRIGHT
Another World Championship has come and gone and the future of the sport looks brighter than ever. The goal of foos-ball on television seems to have moved towards the front burner. At this year's event an ESPN video crew spent three days in Dallas compiling footage, inter-viewing players and providing foos-fans with one of the more unique and exciting treats of recent times, the ESPN Goal-Cam. This camera mounted inside the goal provided viewers with a different and exciting perspective of the sport.
The table-level point of view, com-bined with the bank of nine 27" televi-sions stationed across from the bleachers caused many an interesting reaction from spectators as the gigantic pink foosball seemed to come barreling right at you. The footage that was compiled by the ESPN crew will be edited down to ap-proximately eight minutes and shown in December on a show titled "Unbelievable Sports" on the Total Sports Network, ESPN. Check your local listings for exact time and date.
There were several other prominent reasons to feel good about where our fa-vorite sport is headed. Eleven year-old foosball phenom Billy Pappas of Boston had yet another successful pro-tour week-end. Billy, the amazing foosball man-child from New England, finished second in the Forward Shootout competition in a razor-close final match to the aforementioned Frederico Collignon, while also placing second in the 17 & Under event with Chris Rhodes (which he can compete in for six more years). Pappas then capped off his weekend with an impressive Semi-Pro Mixed Doubles title with Las Vegas' Jaymi Heaton. Could we be looking at the first 12 year old pro?
Sixteen year old Joe Rhodes of Kan-sas City, who has had a wonderful 1996 season, claimed victory in the 17 & Under with another young star, Troy Pierce. Joe was rewarded for his fine year at the awards ceremony later in the weekend capturing the prestigious Most Improved Player Trophy. Stardom waits just around the corner for this young man as well.
Not only did Troy Pierce of Houston win the 17 & Under title with Rhodes, he also claimed victory in the extremely tough Semi-Pro Singles event. Keep a close eye on the future career of this young man as well, He's going to be a good one.
Other young-guns producing out-standing performances at the 1996 Worlds (and all season long) included Rossi Fine-gold of Colorado, Corey Jensen from Texas and Alabama's Lee Williams along with the veteran of this foosball "Brat Pack", Grant Nelson. The future of our sport seems to be in good, reliable hands and we have a great deal to look forward to as the world continued to embrace the sport of Table Soccer.