FoosTalk Live | Ep 248 | Foosball Clubs USA

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[00:00:31] FoosTalk Live. Hi, this is Tom Robinson, and I want to personally thank our Patreon pillars for their support of Foosball Radio and FoosTalk Live. Here's to our newest members, Dan Packer. Also, Brad Lorene of Rodlock.com. Also, thanks to Randy Raposo, Thomas Dyke, Mike Veidt, Rob Cutler, Ernie Bischoff, James Sparky Castillo,

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[00:01:51] Visit www.original-leonhardt-usa.com and use promo code FOOSTALK to save 10% off your purchase price. And here we are, live once again on Foos Talk Live. Hey there, I'm Tom Robinson. It is episode number 248. And we're going to talk about foosball as we always do, as we always do, does and do.

[00:02:19] But to talk about foosball, of course, you always got to have somebody with you who wants to talk about foosball and loves the sport. So that would be Randy Raposo. What's up, Randy? Forget about it. Forget about it. So 249 will be next week. That means 250 is going to be in Vegas. Yes, that's right. It's exactly right. We're going to be on the scene for 250. That'll be a nice celebration right there. Oh, that's going to be good, Tom. Oh, I think the numbers will be in our favor. What do you think?

[00:02:48] I hope so. I mean, room full of people. I mean, I think we'll be able to pull at least maybe one or two decent guests for 250. Maybe. Maybe. Fingers crossed. Yeah. No, it's I was just contemplating that today. It's like, well, wait a second. Maybe we should be playing, you know, the slots or something while we're there. Just just because the luck and the timing. But we'll see. We'll see. I promise my wife I wouldn't gamble. Well, I mean, I typically don't either.

[00:03:14] But no, I had to promise her no cocaine, no hookers, no gambling. None of that stuff. All right. OK. All right. You know, life life is we only go around once here. You know, well, listen, she she knows I'm not doing I'm going look, I'm going for two reasons. Well, three. One. See Billy get inducted. Obviously, see Tony get inducted. Yep. Two. Yep. Play some foosball. And three. Do episode 250. There you go.

[00:03:44] Just like that. So I totally I totally get you, man. I think we're we're going to have some fun. There's no question. Oh, yeah. Well, we're going to have fun tonight. We got good guests on tonight. We're going to talk about Foosball Clubs USA. Yeah, it's huge. I mean, we've just got this this this groundswell of support now. It seems like everything is just popping everywhere when it comes to foosball. You know, obviously, World Foosball Tour is well underway now and they're they're kicking some tail.

[00:04:09] And it looks like, you know, Foosball Clubs USA at the helm of, you know, with with with Michael Stahl at the helm. By the way, I think Michael's with us tonight. Michael, what's up? What about it? Michael, can you hear us? Forget about it. Forget about it. There he is. What's up, man? How you guys doing? Great to have you. Great to have you on. What is it like the 12th time now? Oh, man, it's it's a dime a dozen. It's got to be got to be up there, pal.

[00:04:39] We've had some moments. Let's put it that way. This this this podcast always loves Michael Michael Stahl because he's just he's just so enthusiastic about this. The sport and he's killing himself just to make it happen. You know, when it comes to getting these tables in schools and building the clubs, et cetera. And of course, we want to we want to welcome back from last week. Gee, he's getting it. He's getting to be a habit as well. Cam Burroughs is back with us once again from Vancouver. What's up, Cam?

[00:05:09] Yeah. Thanks for having me again. Oh, yeah. Sorry to bombard back to back episodes. Oh, Michael. And I've been making some pretty good progress on some initiatives and excited to share it. Yeah, absolutely. And also, who's who's not on camera this evening, but he is with us nonetheless from Buffalo, New York. Brian Schmidt appears for his first time on Foos Talk Live. Welcome, Brian. Thank you, guys. Good evening. Yeah. What's up?

[00:05:39] You know, just chilling on a Sunday. I missed my nail appointments this week and my pedicures. So the video thing, it's going to have to wait till next time. Oh, that's that's unfortunate. I don't like missing pedicures. Right. Yeah, I know. I know. Especially if you want to play, you know, play foosball, for God's sake. Fong. That's her name. Fong. That's who does my pedicures. Sweet girl. My nail belt canceled on me. Yeah. I think she had something else going on. So it's OK. I work with her.

[00:06:09] Nice. It's not too much of a major setback. I'm going to live. Very cool. Yeah. I've been putting Fong through college. So, yeah. I get it. Well, you know, this is unique because tonight we're covering just about every part of the country. We've got New York State. We've got Alabama. We've got Buffalo. Of course, the western part of New York State. We've got Michigan. We've got Vancouver, British Columbia. I mean, we've got the whole thing covered here.

[00:06:36] This is this is we're talking about spanning the globe. 51st. 50 first. 50 first. 50 first. Cam Burroughs. 50 first date. Are you running for governor? Governor. 50 first date here, Cam. Not a chance. No chance. I saw I saw Dan. Dan. Dan had good results. He finished second in singles. I saw Jake, Jake Barnett won singles at the multi table in Canada. Right. Yeah.

[00:07:06] Yeah. Congratulations to those guys. And it looks like a pretty good turnout. Does anybody have any numbers as to how many people showed up at the multi table? Can you pull it up? Uh, I think in singles. I think I think I saw something like I think it was 54. Yeah. Broke 50. I think in singles. Nice. 85 total. Oh, very good. 85 total. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the first annual. So they can just build from there. You know, that's an awesome. That's an awesome turnout. Great to hear. Michael Veidt was there. Michael Veidt was there.

[00:07:36] There was a couple of American players went up and played. Now, I got a question. When is Michael Veidt not there? The guy's. I don't know. Good question. He's he's in every tournament now, you know? Yeah. Good for him. I'm jealous. Yeah. Yeah. I admire it. A lot of work. I mean, I know he's retired and he's, you know, he's basically doing setup crew and stuff. So that's a really good idea. If you want to get better at this at this sport, go to all the tournaments, you know, do the setup thing, do the teardown thing, but play, you know, play every single time. And he's he's really come up the ranks pretty quickly.

[00:08:06] So kudos to Michael. Get it in while you can. So, but so do you, do you want to start with the question with Brian or do you want to get right into it with Mike and Cam? Well, let's, let's, let's talk about it. Let's, let's talk about foosball clubs, USA. Michael Stahl, lead us into this, man. Let's, let's, let's go. What's going on with you guys? What's what's up? Yeah. Let's crack this thing open, man.

[00:08:31] Uh, so yeah, I, uh, myself and a valid number of individuals have come together, um, to put something before ourselves. And really it's the youth of the country. It's, it's the effort, uh, that we're pushing forward. This national youth foosball program, uh, that you all know and hopefully love as foosball club, USA.

[00:09:01] Um, you know, about seven if months ago, uh, we began to restructure, uh, within the organization, um, you know, given some interest from some, um, you know, some individuals that wanted to see it do better. And, uh, it's kind of come along to a point now where, um, you know, we just, we caught fire and, uh, we've, we've all been making a lot of sacrifices.

[00:09:28] I know Cam and Dan from Canada, Cam Burroughs and Dan Packer, uh, you know, they were running their own initiatives on the, on the North side of the border in Canada. And, uh, and I'm just, I really respect and, and have so much admiration, uh, for the work that they'd been putting in. And so, um, I reached out to Leonhart USA and initially on a deal to try to get, uh, the

[00:09:56] manufacturing opportunity, I guess not manufacturing, but some, um, some opportunity with, with, uh, distributing, uh, some of those Leonhart tables because, um, it's one of my favorite tables. I love Leo. I think it's the hardest table to compete with from manufacturing piece. Uh, you know, I think that they, they've got it down and, you know, the table is just amazing. And also for, for players that are just coming along and learning the mechanics are just right.

[00:10:25] I mean, there's just so many good things about the durability of the table. And so anyway, uh, to make a long story short, it just started as, Hey, I want to work with you guys. Can you give me some opportunity within, uh, distributing some of these tables? To some of our clubs? Um, you know, and, and they, they loved it. And then it began, uh, it kind of started like that. And then it developed into, well, you know, they were working on a curriculum course that, you know, Cam Burroughs was developing.

[00:10:54] And all I can talk about this here in a sec, uh, because it's really, really good work. And, uh, it's just so well done. Um, you know, there's a little bit of work to do on it, but it's, it's, it's pretty amazing work that he put into it, but, you know, they were doing stuff that we hadn't, and we were doing some of the work that they hadn't began to do either. And so it just kind of was a little bit serendipitous.

[00:11:20] Uh, we began working together and just kind of, uh, you know, meeting in the middle, uh, so to speak. And so we just decided that, you know, whatever work we do, we'll do together and we'll replicate it on each side of the border. And so that's how that partnership kind of began, um, and really started to develop into a restructuring of Foozball Clubs USA from an operations piece, uh, which is really kind

[00:11:47] of deep rooted itself into what we feel will be sustainable. We think that we know that the structure that we've created as a team will live into the future long after we're gone. Uh, with the work that we're putting in now. And I'm confident to say that, um, between the board, Deb Robinson, Megan Elliott, uh,

[00:12:12] Mark Droulette, myself, the new operations team, Brian Schmidt, who is actually a fundraising, uh, and community outreach coach. We've got, uh, Josh Sarpy, who's going to be the marketing, who is the marketing coach. Uh, then we've got, uh, Dan Packer, who is a finance and compliance coach. And then we've also got Cam Burroughs, the education coach. Uh, so we've, we've developed these coach roles.

[00:12:41] It's actually a playbook out of the Walmart corporate structure, uh, that has seemed to really work. Uh, Walmart has this total store mentality where they figured we're going to take these assistant managers in the corporate structure and we're going to make them coaches and they're going to own different pieces of business, not just their specific business. And so, um, you know, it's just, it's, it's one of those things.

[00:13:08] It's a total, uh, organization mentality where now we're coaches, we're teaching, we're training. It's, it's the culture we're trying to develop. Uh, and then what extends from that operations team is now a regional coach team as well, uh, where these folks are more dedicated on what time that they have to put in. Uh, it really, the whole team is, you know, we're just going to work as much as we can or as little as we're allowed to with our personal lives.

[00:13:37] And that's just kind of what this is until we get some serious funding to back this, you know, nobody's really going full time yet. Uh, but with our regional coach staff, we've got the West drew Yoder out of Denver, uh, area, Colorado, who's done such an amazing job, just a really big foosball ambassador. And, you know, he's got kids that are junior champions. He's really championed the effort out there in the West to try to help encourage so much

[00:14:06] foosball activity for juniors working with, uh, you know, um, Dan Ham and, uh, you know, some of the other really strong promoters that we have out there, uh, that are, that are pushing the junior effort forward. Uh, you know, we've got Eric Allen and his wife doing such an amazing job. Um, Joy Jensen, they've, they're chanting a junior program as well. And so there's just a cluster of activity, uh, going on in, in such a strong foosball, uh, state.

[00:14:34] And then we've also got, if we move to the Midwest, we've got Aaron Croft, who just started his own, uh, foosball club, uh, and at the Heartland intermediate school district where he's got roughly a hundred kids that play every day on like seven tables, a hundred kids. Uh, we just don't about a hundred different kids playing every day, you know, just touching the foosball table. Um, and that's just in their fifth and sixth grade, uh, you know, classes during lunch

[00:15:03] for the lunchtime social. Uh, and I'll go into the different programs we have in a little bit. Uh, but I just wanted to kind of finish. These guys deserve the recognition. So Aaron Croft doing such an amazing job. He's now the Midwest regional coach. And these regional coaches are really there for support, for communication within those regions, uh, to relay the communications from their specific regions to the operations team, uh, in different ways to keep this thing structured, organized.

[00:15:33] Uh, we're really coming at this the best we can, uh, to take on whatever workload comes our way. Because again, if we have a team that is, you know, that is built strategically and, you know, intentionally, we can really take on the work that it takes to make this thing big and to grow, uh, to really give these clubs everything they deserve to be quality. So moving on to the Northeast, we've got Matt McFory.

[00:16:00] I mean, dude, I don't even have to speak for this guy. I mean, he's probably my favorite promoter in the country. This guy has grown such an incredible player base of new players who really were just inspired by Matt to get involved. And he's created such a strong culture in his region that it's, it's really spanned, not just in Buffalo, but it's grown throughout the state of New York.

[00:16:27] And so, uh, who better to champion that effort as a regional coach in the Northeast than Matt McCory. And then if we navigate to the South, uh, we've got Robert Yates Jr. Robert. Yes. What, what, what a food, what a foosball promoter down there. Like this guy is doing such an amazing job. He's ran his own state championship for who knows how long. Uh, I think it's been, I mean, correct me if you're wrong, but it's been at least a decade that I know of that he's ran this tournament.

[00:16:54] Um, and he's just been such a strong proponent for Bonzini foosball, uh, kind of running his own thing. And just what really got me with Robert is he's a family friendly type of dude. He's going to try to promote foosball, not just for these adults involved, but for kids to get these, get these young people involved. And, you know, he's just such a professional dude, uh, and a really high level player too. So, you know, that is our regional coaches, all four of them.

[00:17:23] And so between the operations team, the regional coaches, that's eight members, uh, that really do a high level on really everything foosball clubs, USA in different ways. And so these roles will kind of change and develop throughout the scope, uh, with, you know, the more opportunity we get. Uh, but right now it's just, Hey, give as much time as you can. And we'll pick up the pieces where we can from an operations piece, uh, and just let's

[00:17:52] see what we can do. So to grow this thing. Um, and then we also have, and I'm sorry for the long-witted, but we also, it's important. We've also got a board of advisors. So on that board of advisors is someone who's really close to me. Uh, an amazing foosball inspiration, Kristen Grogan. She agreed to be on this board of advisors where this board will meet once a quarter. We'll talk about initiatives.

[00:18:19] We'll break down the strategies and get good feedback, uh, to make adjustments in real time with, with the strategies that we have, the organization, how are metrics working? Are we getting the data from the clubs? Is our effort really doing what we say it's doing? Like, and so these professionals, um, you know, we hand selected key people to be on this board of advisors to give us that, that feedback, uh, from a volunteer piece.

[00:18:46] And it's really just, you know, four to six hours a year that they put in, right? We just do a quarterly meeting for an hour. It could last longer than that. So I always pitch them and say, Hey, it could be four to six. If we're really getting into it, it could be eight hours a year. So moving on, we've got Michael Baker. Michael Baker is a school teacher from Charlotte, Michigan, where I actually hail from. Uh, you know, I was born in Lansing, moved to Charlotte in sixth grade, was the most prudent kid in eighth grade.

[00:19:14] Mike was my teacher in eighth grade. He saw me through the worst of it, man. I was suspended for 38 days that year. I was just a, a jerk. Honestly, I was throwing gum in my teacher's hair. I was just being a jerk. And yeah, dude, like, no, dude, I was, I was like a menace, man. I remember like just being a jerk. I'm not going to go into it.

[00:19:42] Like, I know that sounds innocent, but there was some stupid stuff I did in school. Not going to advertise it here, but I was on truancy. They were talking about putting me in juvie if I miss more days. Like it was just stupid. Uh, but moving on, Michael Baker actually just started his own. He's a club coach at the same school I went to and found foosball. We've got four brand new Leonhart pro tables in that school. We just started a Leo club. Cool.

[00:20:10] Uh, so I'm, I'm excited to announce that it's really full circle. It's I'll be going there every Wednesday, uh, to be a part of that program. Uh, literally minutes from my house. And then we have, we've got Doug wood. Who's the executive director of say soccer. Dot org. An organization, soccer youth organization that has a hundred thousand kids playing in their soccer program every year. Wow.

[00:20:38] They're networked with their network with deeply networked with team USA. Um, and their biggest sponsor right now is Dick sporting good. So, you know, we've got such a strong team. I'm actually looking for one more person for this board of advisors. Uh, and I'd like for them to either be someone in the education system or someone from a non background. Uh, because I don't just want foosball folk.

[00:21:06] I want the right, you know, subject matter experts. Kristen Grogan does a lot of philanthropy work locally where she's from. Bless her heart. Uh, you guys may not know that about her, but like, she's one of my favorite people from foosball. Oh yeah. And so, and she's also been a big mentor of mine. So it's, it was really nice to, to have her kind of join as just like a volunteer, you know, nothing crazy, but yeah, that's pretty much the structure.

[00:21:33] Uh, I can pop it over to cam a little bit to talk about his educational coach role. Absolutely. Cam. Yeah, I can pick up on that. Um, as Mike said, we were running independently with our own initiatives. And then after connecting about the lean heart distribution opportunity, um, it just made sense to merge because not necessarily merge, but partner.

[00:22:00] Um, there's not enough people working and putting hours towards foosball. So there's no point of competing with them really like it. We should all be working in the same direction. And like Mike had said, we were working on areas that they hadn't necessarily started and they've done stuff that we still need to do over here. And sharing these assets is the most logical, like it would be foolish of us not to do this.

[00:22:24] Um, so when we connected, I had already put in over a year of thought into what ended up being a curriculum. Uh, it didn't begin there and I don't know, I'm not going to spend too much time going back, like tracing the whole origins of it. But essentially I put myself in the roles or the shoes of a teacher. And I imagine that this teacher received a foosball table from their school board, but they have zero experience. Yep.

[00:22:50] And I just started by listing every question that I thought that teacher would have, like which table is right for me? What are those wrap things? Like every question I could think of. And then I reframe them as solutions. If they don't know what table to decide, the solution is, um, either a pamphlet or a video, but information on how to decide what table is right for you. So with them reframed as solutions, I rank those solutions in terms of value.

[00:23:20] Are they high value, medium value, or low value? Took the same list and I re-rank them in difficulty to deliver. Is it easy for me to deliver medium or difficult or easy? Yeah, anywhere in there. And basically you can filter what are the most valuable that are the easiest to hit.

[00:23:37] And after organizing all of these questions, I realized that the best way to check off as many as I can in the least amount of videos is to give a curriculum to match the length of a semester. So essentially I wanted to make an offer so good that the teachers and the school boards feel stupid saying no.

[00:24:02] And the way that the solution I got to was, I'm going to identify a problem that exists in every school and every country around the world. And that's going to be that there are students that do not have a community. Some play chess, some swim, like there's wrestling teams, and there's always the kids that have nothing. And the solution that I'm proposing, spoiler alert, it's foosball. And I think we all knew that already.

[00:24:30] But basically I'm guaranteeing that some kids will find a community around this table. And we were so confident in that that we were going to give them the table for free for one semester. And at the end of the semester, if they don't have any community built, no problem. I'll pick it up. I'll move it to the school down the road. But if you do have a community built, then they would just agree to then buy the table.

[00:24:57] And with the 12-week or the semester that we're giving them as a trial run, I wanted to basically break down the way that I view the game. I realize that there's a lot of opinions about foosball. So I just used what I've learned. And I frame it in a way this is how I approach it. And I don't expect every student to be interested in watching this curriculum. But I know that every school that I've visited and all the schools that have tables here, there is a small handful of players that absolutely love it.

[00:25:27] Just like us. They're bit by the bug. Yep. And if those students watch it, it's going to change how they play. And that's going to change how the entire school plays. Like, I just need to plant the seed. And if these kids, like the difference in trajectory, if they're just spinning the rods aimlessly versus actually learning like Eric Dunn's fundamentals, like control the ball first. One of the very first things I say in my very first lesson is this isn't soccer. In soccer, someone can run up to you and steal the ball away.

[00:25:56] In foosball, once I have it, you can't do anything about that. So just like even framing it in a way that they can approach it and actually build a proper game. So that's been the goal. And essentially, I lean heavily on everything that I've learned, a lot of it from Eric Dunn's tutorials. But there's many other amazing foosball tutorials out there.

[00:26:19] And I encourage anyone to listen to them because like Tom Spear has his video of him just talking about building series and how he approaches it. Like these are all so valuable. Zeke, Chase, there's so many good content creators out there. Oh, yeah. I just wanted to frame it in the way that I view it. And basically, I started with an overview, essentially what I told you, like control the ball. Eric's five steps are control, set up.

[00:26:47] You want to build a series from the same starting point that can have multiple options. Read their defense, decide what you're going to do, and execute. After doing this, I would add one extra step to Eric's five. I would make it six. And after you set up, adjust your defense. If you're playing singles, you've got to move your defense over to the near side of the five bar. Like just little things.

[00:27:11] But as long as you can build this framework for kids, I think that we're going to see a lot of kids love it more now that they get to that next extra level. And then as the curriculum progresses, I go from very vague overview to very detailed. I go every single rod. So a complete overview of the game, then an offensive overview, like how to build a series, what a series is, and how it can be applied on every rod. Then standard defensive practices, like don't overlap your players.

[00:27:40] Don't go too far. Like understand the paths that they're taking and make sure you're always blocking one of the paths. Then I get more detailed and I go offensive and defensive lessons, three bar, five bar, two bar. Every week is similar to a jujitsu class because I found that it was very – I learned quickly because of their structure. It has a theory for the day, and then you would do a specific drill.

[00:28:07] You would just start – so the drills are – at the beginning, they're just ball control. Just weave the ball back and forth, get used to touching every player with the ball. And then as you get more specific, we get – or sorry, after the drill, there's a game. And that game – I start with two-ball rollerball because I'm biased and I love it. And it's not much more thought in it than that. It's super engaging. It keeps kids, like, attentive. But as you get into the three-bar series, we do forward shootout.

[00:28:37] When we're doing two-bar series, we're doing goalie wars. First, I go through four-on-four. I try to give as many different games. Cutthroat, I couldn't think of a school-friendly name for two-on-one. If anyone has any ideas for it. I didn't want to write cutthroat in that curriculum. Canadian doubles. Canadian doubles. I was just going to say. I was just going to say that. Funny enough, in Michigan too, I mean, it must be everywhere in the country. We call it Canadian doubles, bro. I'm sure it's just me, honestly, but I've never heard of it.

[00:29:04] The one guy who lives in Canada hasn't heard of it? Yeah. The one guy who – Come on, get with me. Hey. Yeah, I just try to give them as many different views as they can get. Like, maybe they really like forward shootout, and that's what gets them into the game. Like, there's so many different – you don't have to just play singles. You don't have to just play doubles. I introduce Roto, two-ball.

[00:29:29] Yeah, every week there's 11 different games, 12 different drills, and 12 different theories. I try to cover as much as I can. Very cool. Wow. Yeah, it's – Go ahead, Tom. Go ahead, Tom. And just plugging this in, in every school district that you approach, I mean, this is brilliant. This is the way it's got to be. You know, it's set up. Well, and the videos – so I haven't had a chance to watch them all, but I've watched a couple, and they're not – they're great. They're compact.

[00:30:00] Cam does a nice job. He speaks clearly. It's very direct. It's him talking, showing you stuff on the table. I mean, it doesn't get much simpler. So it's – I mean, it's good stuff. It's just now I think it's – I mean, you guys have a plan, and now it's just a matter of executing. So – Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I will say if I could, you know, I actually took the course.

[00:30:29] I think I'm missing the last two episodes, but it's already made me a better foosball player, and I've been a pro for like going on like 10 years, man. So, you know, if it can help these kids in a setting that – sorry, I'm still at work. I don't know if you guys can hear some background noise here. We got you. We got you. Yeah, it happens.

[00:30:52] So – but if it can help me imagine, you know, other pro players, other expert players, this isn't just for kids. Like, this is for everybody. And so on the website, we offer free membership. Like, we want this to be available to not just students, you know, middle, high school, college. We want this to be available for everybody.

[00:31:16] And Jam does a fantastic job at communicating the different pieces that are so critical with getting better in these drills. I mean, this is like high-level stuff. Sorry, Ken. Go ahead. No, I just – I agree. I think that any student, if they can – like, let's say we made a challenge to the students. This is something I still need to work through a bit.

[00:31:42] But they could film the drills every day. Like, they could earn badges. They could earn rewards. I know Mike's already got some plans set up for this. But if we have students that can execute all of the drills that I put in there, those students are already expert-level players. Like, obviously, you need the experience and the matches and the time. But imagine we can have tens of thousands of students coming out of school with, like, solid foundational skills.

[00:32:12] Yeah. I just – I can't even imagine what that does to the game in 20 years. I think so. I think so, too. And one thing that I want to add to that really quick is you had talked about the badging on the website. If I could elaborate on that a little bit, the way that the website works is you've got an LMS, the learning management system.

[00:32:32] On the back end of the dashboard, if you take these courses, you will earn these virtual badges, which will be displayed on your personal membership profile. Cool. So from, like, a player piece, like, it's really cool. You'll get to see the different players and what level of badging they are. Like, if they're a kid in a school, they can say, hey, look, dude, I'm, like, you know, I'm a ninja pro. Like, whatever it is. Like, I've got these badges or, you know, whatever it is, man.

[00:33:02] And so they get to compare and they get, you know, hey, man, you didn't get this badge yet. Like, where's your slingshot badge, right? Like, you see the video with Stahl hitting a slingshot? Whatever it is, man. And, like, we're going to be giving these kids a place to be creative, to have fun, and to level their game up. And what better way to do it than with a community that's all networked together, right? Yeah.

[00:33:25] Like, that's the idea, the premise of the website is you go on, you become a member, you've got the dashboard. Eventually, we'd like to, and this is going to take some time, guys. This is going to happen overnight. We don't have the courses uploaded yet. You can go on. You can be a member right now if you want. But we have been working some bugs out. The website did launch last week during the Wisconsin State Championships.

[00:33:49] But, dude, like, in between matches, I was also dealing with so many different things, like, logistically for the website. And so it's just been, it's kind of been tough, but we're getting through it. And, yeah, so it's getting better.

[00:34:08] Brian, if you could speak to your role when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to the idea that your role in this team, you're out there looking for sources of revenue. How does that work for you? What are your game plans? Well, that's correct. But I guess I should start to introduce, you know, how this all came about. Yes. I had met Michael in Michigan at his tournament several years back, probably five now.

[00:34:37] And, you know, started working with some key players and innovators in the sport. And it's just been really inspiring to be part of this and really engaging on all kinds of levels, not just what I bring to the table with fundraising. But I guess my claim to fame would be how I, when I'm passionate about something, I can sell it.

[00:34:59] And when something like this, this vehicle to work from, this foundation that these guys and this entity has created, it's like a shoe-in to be able to, there's no, you can't argue the point of it being a solid investment and an excellent thing to get into for really any entity. It's so easy for me to sell it and become engaging with it. It's really exciting.

[00:35:28] I've never met Cam before. And it just, some of the things that you had shared, I just love, I love to hear it. I can be, I can attest to how knowing exactly what to do is half the battle. So if I can, you know, bring some of that to the table with people that maybe aren't so familiar with reaching out to local municipalities and educators and guidance counselors

[00:35:53] and finding the groups that are really going to benefit best from being part of this organization is what I'm going to try to do best at. So, you know, I'm really excited about Brian being a part of the team. I haven't felt so inspired by someone's story in a long time. You know, this game does so much for us on an emotional level.

[00:36:20] And Brian brings to the table such a high level of emotional intelligence, but also social networking skills that I really can't communicate to be so good enough. Like this guy crushes it. And just watching him engage with, you know, my peers and like other folks, he really does know how to spell the sport.

[00:36:42] And that's such an important proponent if you're going to be trying to get fundraising, like soliciting fundraising and funding from these individuals, these donors. Dude, funding is everything. If we can find funding for this project, who knows? I mean, we've signed 18 clubs since November. We're approaching $70,000 in donated equipment. Wow.

[00:37:07] In just a handful of months, we've got a plan to do 500 donated tables in five years. That's 100 a year. And that's about 250 high quality foosball clubs with the potential to really, you know, inspire tens of thousands of kids. Helping reduce fruency, increase productivity in class.

[00:37:32] Like there's just so many metrics we're hoping to gauge if we get the opportunity from a funding piece. It's just, if we can get this thing off the ground, there's no doubt in my mind we'll do at least 250 clubs. Wow. At this rate, if I was full time, I'd probably do 50 by myself with 18 done. And I'm the one signing up since November. I mean, you know, it really does take a passionate team. And these guys are crushing it.

[00:37:59] Like, I think the best thing that I probably could have done is get the right people involved. Because if you have the right people at the right time with the right mentality, you're doing amazing things. And so I'm really happy to have Brian on board, too. Happy to be here, Mike. Thank you. So I'm curious, guys.

[00:38:20] You know, if we project into the future of the average school program, what are your thoughts, what are your plans when it comes to connecting once a kid has gone through the school system, graduate high school? What is the possibility or how do we keep them in the sport? How do we keep them from, oh, yeah, I did that when I was in grade school or I did that when I was in high school and now I'm off. I'm doing whatever. And I kind of forgot about the sport. What how do we prevent that from happening?

[00:38:50] You know, I hate to take all the questions here, but I'm actually really excited to answer this one. OK. So we've structured the organization in such a way that it can help these folks throughout their journey, not just in school through the education system, middle school clubs, high school clubs, collegiate clubs. We also offer community clubs. And so the goal is to sign a certain amount of community clubs in these five years.

[00:39:18] Well, with it not being the major focus, because the youth development is the focus. But we're hoping to give them a little bit of engagement at every level. And so that they not only have an opportunity in middle school that, you know, really, there's three there's three strategies with the club with planning club seats. The first one is we want to approach these schools and impoverished areas, these these places.

[00:39:47] They don't have the opportunity like, you know, some of the privileged schools might where they have money. So we want to really go for those those places where, you know, there's some poverty, there's some lack of opportunity and then give them the opportunity for clubs. And so that's that's one of the that's about the first strategy.

[00:40:07] The second one is we plant foosball seeds in high density player population cities so that we can grow foosball clubs off the back of local foosball population. Getting these foosball players engaged in these clubs locally, not just in the schools, but also in the community, too, so that these kids, when they go to school during the summer, now there's a place they can go.

[00:40:33] Yeah. Right. So if it's in a bar, I'm sorry, but you can't be a community club or foosball clubs like I don't I don't want kids to have that barrier. And so if it's in a bowling alley, if it's in an arcade, if it's in a rec center, if it's at a private location, you know, sure, that's fine as long as there's supervision for those kids. But, you know, that's that's the whole premise. We want to be able to give them the opportunity to play in every setting, not just at school.

[00:40:59] But that also brings up a really unique opportunity for foosball clubs, which is to engage, you know, these local foosball players in volunteer efforts. And so we're going to have role training video role training. Eventually, where we'll have a video for volunteers, they can go to the website, they can earn their volunteer that their volunteer badge. So they watch the video, they learn how to be a volunteer for foosball clubs, they get their background check.

[00:41:28] And suddenly they're a certified volunteer under the organization. They can see the Club Connect page, which will have all of our registered club. We're actually approaching like it's around 60 foosball clubs that we have registered in our program.

[00:41:43] And so they can look at that network on the map, they can click one of those drop ins, they can see the Club Connect profile for that specific location, it'll have the club facilitators email, they can send an email through the website to say, hey, I'm a certified volunteer, I'd love to be involved.

[00:42:02] And so that club facilitator can, you know, humbly have that volunteer, let's say, you have, you know, Randy Raposo decides to go to a club in his backyard. And he's there as a volunteer and they're like, man, Randy did an amazing job. We'd love to have him back five stars, here's a positive view for his profile. And suddenly as a volunteer in his profile, he has the badge. He also has those positive reviews.

[00:42:29] Now, let's say, you know, we have a bad review, which is going to happen, right? Randy shows up with a machete. You know, dude shows up and, you know, it's not the best, you know, encounter, right? Maybe it's a personality thing. You know, they got disgruntled, there's an issue, whatever it may be, right? It happens. There could be a bad review. That bad review hits the back end of the website.

[00:42:59] The administration team with foosball clubs gets to see that review. It's not public. We see the bad review, right? And then if their rating falls below a three-star rating, then they're no longer eligible to be a volunteer. And they're completely cut out of the system. If we have, and there's going to be zero tolerance for these bad reviews. Like, if we have one, of course, we'll look into it. We'll see, hey, is it a personality conflict? Are we going to give this another shot?

[00:43:27] Whatever it is, these certified individuals need to be on their best, you know, behavior in these schools representing the organization. And so that's going to be a really important piece that I think is going to connect our club systems in the schools and our community. These foosball players that they want to give back, man. Maybe you don't have a couple hundred bucks to donate on the website. Well, guess what? Give me an hour of your time. Come show these kids a snake shot in the school.

[00:43:55] I guarantee it'll be one of the funnest things you'll do all year. Because I've been in these schools. I've been visiting these schools and playing with these kids. And, dude, it's still fulfilling. You know, you open this thing up by saying Mike is killing himself for foosball clubs. It's the contrary. It's given me new life, man. It's literally been so good for me, like therapeutic-wise. So if you guys struggle with depression, if you're having a tough time, man, get in the schools, man.

[00:44:24] Like these kids will make you feel good or they'll harass you because kids can be tough, too. I love beating on kids. It's one of my favorite things. I love it. But that's my pitch on the volunteer piece with foosball clubs. You know, we're trying to be intentional through every piece. I'll let someone else take the next question. Well, so Buffalo Foosball asked a question in the chat. They want to know, can a school work with just one table?

[00:44:57] Yeah. Do you want to take this one? Well, yeah. I guess it depends on how many players are at the school, right? One's better than none. One, in Canada, so we have, like, before this merging of the two entities, we were running independently. And most of the schools here only have one table. I have one high school nearby that has three, and they're packed.

[00:45:24] But the ones where there's only one table, they're usually in, like, a separate room. Sometimes it's an afternoon hangout after class, like between, like when sports are happening. Like maybe some parents can't pick up their students on time. Are there kids on time? Sorry. And they'll be playing in, like, the counselor's room or something. So I guess it all depends on the context.

[00:45:47] If you're trying to run a curriculum through gym and you have a two-week window where you're allowed to use foosball as a sport for that two weeks, you're obviously going to need four, maybe five tables. But, yeah, one's better than zero for sure. You know, and if I could kind of extrapolate on that a little bit, you know, we worked really hard on obtaining a really high-level relationship networking with not just Leonhart USA,

[00:46:17] but we now have a distributed relationship with Bonzini USA. Cool. And we get tornado tables at a special cost for schools that no one else can achieve in the U.S. So Bonzini agreed to give us, they claim it's the closest to cost they can get on brand-new Bonzini tables. So not only do we have opportunity with Leonhart USA, Bonzini USA, we've got Tornado Lockdown,

[00:46:44] as probably one of our bigger supporters right there with Leonhart USA. We're talking to Kettler, which is the North American distributor for Darlando. I'm in the middle of a deal with Kettler, and we're about to have that fourth infinity stone for the U.S. And part of our goal, given the right funding, right, is to support the junior team at the World Cup, right?

[00:47:09] We'd love to one day just pay for a full ride for the entire team. Like imagine these kids playing in these clubs. They have access to multi-table from a foosball club's organizational opportunity with the distributing, and they've got one of every table. They've got four tables in the school, you know, except for maybe the Revolution, because I haven't figured that one out yet, but we will.

[00:47:36] We could be, dude, we could be literally creating like monsters, like little junior Team USA monster players, like Sam DeJohn. I mean, the kid started when he was really young. I mean, just imagine the possibilities. Yeah. And so being a former Team USA member for the junior squad, like I never had that opportunity, man. Like I never had like Jimmy Mitchell, a guy from Michigan,

[00:48:05] drove up a fireball to my house through a blizzard to give me four weeks training before the World Cup when they outed Tornado and put fireball in this, you know, the alternate table. Yeah. And so like that was my, you know, like I had some help, but like, dude, this is big, man. And I can't stress it enough. Like giving these kids an opportunity, and I get it, like a small percentage will want to compete at a high level.

[00:48:32] But let's say we have, you know, in 10 years, let's say we have 15,000 kids playing foosball, and even 10% of them become tour players. Like, you know, and let me also say that's not the goal here. Like the goal isn't to necessarily grow foosball. It's to use foosball as an educational wellness tool to increase the lives of young people through their educational journey.

[00:48:59] And that in itself is a bigger gift to the world than growing the sport. And so when I first started this, like, I'm like, yeah, man, I'm going to grow foosball. It's going to be great. Like, I'll get to play more. I'll get to, you know, beat up on kids in school. It's going to be fun. No, man, like I never realized the gift that was there that I just wasn't seeing, which is I'm actually like we're helping people.

[00:49:25] We're helping kids process things they don't understand and kind of learn to have an attention span and to focus on just to have something, you know, and there's broken spaces in these schools, Ben. And in those broken spaces, if you can create something like a community and a culture, these kids really change. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We've heard this story many times.

[00:49:52] There's quite a few anecdotal situations. I know Mark Drolet, when he's been on the show, he's talked about one student who was absent 70 days out of a school year. And then he got introduced to foosball, and suddenly it was down to one absence a year in about in the space of about six months, which it just that's that's that to me is mind blowing that suddenly this kid had a reason to show up.

[00:50:22] And that can I'm sure that kind of story is probably being told all the time now. Michael and I visited that school, actually. I believe the student that he's referring to has already moved on. He's already graduated. Yep. Well, I don't know if he did or not, but he's too old to be in school. And the superintendent, we sat down with him. We sat down with the principal, the counselor, and they've seen the largest foosball or school foosball club in North America, and they see it firsthand.

[00:50:51] And the superintendent mentioned the price that they spent on their football field and their track ring. And it was in the 30s of millions. Yes. And if you're paying, obviously, if we get funding and there's donations, we could put these tables in schools for free, which is obviously the goal. But even if a school had to pay a couple thousand dollars for something that even if it just changes one student's life, that's worth it.

[00:51:19] And I've said this before, but their years are going to pass regardless. But we can make their time there better. At the end of the day, you're literally improving hundreds, if not thousands, of students' lives every single day. And if you compare the cost to other, not only a cost, but cost and square footage for other sports or activities, I don't think you can beat foosball. It's a no-brainer.

[00:51:49] And if we can pave the road, like Michael had said, not every person that gets introduced to foosball is going to become even interested in competing at the highest level. Right. But if we can pave the road, so if they're interested, they'll walk down it themselves. I think that's all we can do. And at the end of the day, I say every time I'm on this podcast, but I believe in the game. Yes.

[00:52:15] It's worked before in the past, and I don't think that was like a fluke. I think that the game is addicting, the game is stimulating. It's very fun. It brings a lot. And as long as we can just get maximum exposure, those percentages convert. If it's 10% to go on tour, like just Michael's numbers, that's 1,500 people added to the tour. Obviously, we're just throwing numbers out there. If it's 10%, we don't know, but there is a percentage of them that will.

[00:52:43] And if we can just make it as easy as possible to get them from never seeing it to as far down the road as they want to go. You know, if we talk about a five-year span, you know, and how many players that are active, obviously with Ryan's efforts now, like those metrics are going to be a lot more engaging and more interesting to pay attention to, to see like, you know, I know we're going to see increases and everything else,

[00:53:11] but I think this effort actually does more for the growth of the sport than people realize. You know, like from a five-year perspective, if you look at it, if we can hit those numbers, which, you know, I strongly believe we can, you know, we put a foosball kit, we call it a, you know, a foosball kit in every school, a foos kit for kids. In a school, it's two foosball tables.

[00:53:38] They get all the program resources and the follow-up from the organization from an admin side. Like, they're going to want more tables. They're going to want more than just two tables because, you know, looking at one school in Michigan, we added just two tables to start. We're up to like eight tables. And there's like roughly 200 kids playing at this specific school. In one school? Eight tables in one school? Yeah, man. Whoa.

[00:54:04] Yeah, and if you look at it, like, we're going to find ways to gauge those metrics. And I was thinking about maybe having a button that every one of them like walks up and pushes, or like maybe the club facilitator sits there with like a counter. Or through the website, the kids can log on. But a lot of these schools have restrictions for device access. There's different ways we can gauge these numbers and metrics through the visibility program. But these schools are going to want more tables.

[00:54:32] Like, they're going to be overwhelmed with the need to have more tables. And so you give them two tables. You give them the fundraising kit, the package. You know, you have some of the team members follow up with the school. You give them everything they need. Maybe they do a career day twice a year where we invite local EMS, fire, police, the guy down the street running the GameStop. You invite these professionals. You make them pay $250 a booth. And after school for two hours, you run a monster DYP.

[00:55:02] And all of these business professionals play with these kids in the schools that are engaged and learning about actual, like, you know, jobs that they can have someday. Real career paths. Right? And then you're not only engaging, you know, with the students, but you're engaging with the community. And then you're building money to donate. 50% goes to Foosball Clubs USA. 50% goes to the club. But say you make, like, $4,000. You get a new table just off one event.

[00:55:32] And then that's just off one event. Like, you can have organic donations. So, there's going to be a Zephy campaign, which Zephy is the donation platform we're using. It's 0% fees. It's the best donation platform for nonprofits. Cool. We've looked into this, man. We've put a lot of time and effort into making sure we're making the right steps and decisions. Because with nonprofits, dude, that money has to threat. You have to make it work.

[00:55:59] And so, each of these clubs will have its own intimate fundraising campaign. And let's say, you know, Tom, you're like, man, that club in my backyard just started. They only have two tables. Maybe I'll donate $500. Right? So, you click on that drop arrow. There's going to be a donation campaign specifically for that club. And the percentage goes to the organization to continue to push the effort forward. The percentage goes to the club.

[00:56:25] And so, you can choose which clubs you want to help promote, too. As, like, you know, just a community member wanting to help. But the problem will... More local. The problem will surface, man. Where it's like, man, we need more tables. Like, these kids are... They're not all getting to play. Like, we had to do race to threes. Because not enough kids can play. Yeah. Now we have... We still have to do race to threes with eight tables, man. Wow. Wow.

[00:56:54] That's extraordinary. That is a good problem to have. That's for sure. Yeah. Looks like Franco, who's on the Twitch TV feed tonight, he said... Franco. Franco? Yeah. Belpaso. Yeah. Yeah. Belpaso. He says... Belpaso, yep. Eureka, Kansas is in the house. I love the first responder idea. I can pull that off. My wife works for EMS. So, there's an angle. Franco has a...

[00:57:22] He's got a community club. It's at a rec center. And he's got a lot of kids engaged in the foosball. We're actually... We just landed... You know, he's really good at networking. He just landed a deal with Sonic. And so, we're going to be working with Sonic in his backyard. We're going to be a... To promote a foosball event. And it's probably going to be a monster DYP. We're hoping to get some donations to do bikes, skateboards. We talked about scooters and backpacks for these back-to-school campaigns. Yeah.

[00:57:51] But just imagine with the right funding, what we can do. Like, the hype we can build and the visibility we can gain with the right opportunity and boots on the ground. Yeah, yeah. If you guys want to get involved, you don't have the money, you don't really want to donate, just give me a little bit of your time. You know, we'll put you in the right place. Dude, there's a high school two minutes from my house. And... Let's go. It's a big football school. But, dude... Still. There was a couple tables in there.

[00:58:20] I'm telling you, it's literally... It's two minutes from my... Like, I pull out of my neighborhood, take a right, take a left, and I'm there. I would go over there every week and play foosball with those kids. Mm-hmm. I'll tell you what, Randy. I've got two brand-new Tornado T3000s I'll put in that school. Let's make it happen. I'll give you the information. Yeah, get them in there. I'll go to the road. Look, I can pass a background check. It's not an issue. I'll volunteer my time. I'll go over there and play foosball with these kids. Dude. I think it'd be awesome, dude.

[00:58:50] Done. Yeah, yeah. So, and Randy, your wife is a teacher. She's an educator, so she must have... Second grade. Yeah. Second grade. You got some cred. Well, she does. I don't, but she's far more patient with the little ones than I am. So, and beating on second graders, eh, that's no fun. I want to beat on, like, some 17-year-old kids. Some, you know, some kids. High schoolers are.

[00:59:18] Yeah, some kids with some sass, and they think they're good at stuff, right? Oh, yeah. I'm the best at this. Yeah, I'm the best at this. Are you? You want to play for your lunch money? Let's go. I love it, man. I love it. And, you know, the high schoolers, it is a different kind of vibe. Uh, in the high schools. Middle school, it's fun and lighthearted, but when they get into high school, they start, like, talking trash. I personally like high schoolers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Playing together. Let's go.

[00:59:46] You did the Beat the Pro thing this last year for an Xbox. Did anybody win the Xbox? Yeah, so, uh, this last year, uh, we did a Children's Miracle Network campaign at Walmart. We partnered with Walmart here. Um, and what I did is I brought in a G3000, set it up at the, uh, the hotspot in the front where we've got hundreds and hundreds of people walking by. We had over 200 participants raise $500 for DMN, Children's Miracle Network.

[01:00:15] Uh, and no one won the Xbox because I wanted to see how much money we could raise, but it was a race to three. And, uh, yeah. Okay. I beat up on a bunch of locals that don't play football and some kids too. But the year before we did give away an Xbox. Did you? Uh, it was a Walmart associate who was actually like a team lead. Uh, so he was like a supervisor and he, he did beat me. I did let him spin though. Let's be real. Did you? Uh, but it was fun. It was cool.

[01:00:45] Yeah. Um, and so word got around and I had like a line, like a hundred foot line of just, you know, it was employees mostly. And my store manager's like, dude, Michael, like they have to work, bro. Like, so it was funny at the same time, but, uh, no, that was cool, man. I really enjoyed that, that campaign specifically. And we can do that in every Walmart. Like we can do it, dude, the potential is endless.

[01:01:14] If we have the opportunity that people willing to put in time, uh, we can open doors at foosball clubs. We can make these things happen. Thompson high. So Thompson high, they're the best high school football team in the state of Alabama. They've won seven, eight, like four years in a row. They're one of the number one college recruiting schools. Like there are kids that went to this school four years ago that are now playing in the NFL. Okay. A Friday, a Friday night game.

[01:01:43] There's like 10,000 people at a Friday night game. We could put a table at a Friday night game and do a beat the pro at a Friday night game for an Xbox. Right. Like we could make so much money for the club. We can, I mean, it's dude, a lot of potential, a lot of potential. I, I, yeah, dude, we're going to talk off the air. We're going to talk off the air and, um, we'll see if we can make something happen over here. Cause I, I, I love that. Yeah.

[01:02:09] I have no problem going over there and beating on some kids even, you know, no, dude, like, you know, teaching them, doing some lessons and, um, helping them get better running, run some little D YPs and beating the crap out of them. So yeah, dude, I love it. And, uh, you know, the more that I get involved with this organization, uh, like the more skilled I feel, but also the more that I feel like, man, I wish I did it full time because there's

[01:02:36] so many opportunities that I've had to pass up, uh, like conferences, like after school conferences, networking with professionals. Sorry, I can't go. My time off got denied. Oh, Hey, sorry. I'm, I'm, I'm actually like doing an inventory for my Walmart that day. Like, like there's just so many like different little things that I wish I was freed up to go and do. Like even the visibility piece alone, like me and Cam were talking about it.

[01:03:04] Like if we were set loose on North America with, you know, having the time to put into this whole time, like the doors that we can open and the places we can take this organization. I mean, I just can't even imagine. Uh, you know, Cam has done some really important work like on YouTube. He's really talented and, um, where he'll go set up a Leo in public and play the public and like just for visibility alone. Yeah.

[01:03:35] Exposure. Um, Brian, I'm curious. Uh, I know that, um, Matt McCrory in Buffalo has been very, uh, very active with beginners. Uh, I do still have a, a pretty, a pretty decent beginner night there in Buffalo. We do. Um, our beginner nights are Mondays at, um, one of the most amazing venues that you could ever hope for. Cool. Uh, definitely. Um, it's called Riverworks and it seats like 6,000 people. It has two hockey rinks indoor.

[01:04:05] It has a roller derby rink, like one of the first in the country on that, on the main floor. Um, there's multiple levels. It's, uh, alongside the river. So there's, you know, there's, there's dock access for boating. And, um, we just held our last tournament there, um, as a major, a two day tournament. Um, but, uh, so we, we host beginner night on Mondays and it's really the most popular night. It seems like it's Mondays have been the best, the best night of the week for us.

[01:04:34] Um, statistically, since I started working with Buffalo foosball and Matt and, um, yeah, Matt's really, he's, he taught me how to play. I mean, I wasn't a player before I met him. I had a little bit of experience, but similar to what, what Cam does is, is learning the fundamentals and knowing what to do is really half the battle, especially with things like defense. You know, I would struggle with just not knowing where to be or, and, and what to do actually with my sequences and my spacing.

[01:05:03] And, uh, a lot of, I see a lot of players that get bit by this bug and they want to grow their talent and, and their aptitudes in, in, in, in the game. And they almost have to go back to the starting blocks and start fundamentally again to get rid of those bad habits. Oh yeah. So starting, starting, you know, from, from a fresh square with the right routines and the right drills can really, um, advance your game that much faster. And I, and I'm, you know, I can attest to that personally, having to go back and relearn

[01:05:33] things that I wasn't paying attention to when I first met Matt. Wow. So, um, what is the, I'm curious what the, what are the younger other, is there like a youngest player that shows up? What, uh, what age would they be? Well, we're still in a bar. So, um, we, we have, uh, once in a while we'll get a 10 or 12 year old player, but as far as people that are, you know, that are showing up on a weekly basis, I'd say

[01:05:57] we have, uh, more of an older crowd, um, actually as a new players, we have players from 12 to 70 that come regularly. Yeah. Dude. That's a, so it's not that there's foosballs for everybody. You guys have mentioned this before that you don't have to be athletic or have a stature of, of, of, you know, of a frame like football players or a wrestler or a basketball player.

[01:06:24] You know, you can find this aptitude for this game in all walks of life. And, uh, and, and, and that's really special about the sport over others. Yeah. No doubt. I'm curious, uh, Cam, you, you guys have, uh, a big weekend with the multi-table champ, uh, championship in, in, uh, Canada. Uh, there's a good turnout there. Uh, there's another one coming up in the not too distant future.

[01:06:51] Can you tell us more about that upcoming tournament and what that's going to be like? Yeah. I think we're referring to the same tournament talking about in May in Ottawa. Is that the tournament you're referring to? Yeah. The Hall of Fame. It's the Canadian Hall of Fame. Yep. So, for a bit more context for listeners, um, I took over as president of Canada Foozball in 2018. And I'm really happy to see throughout, between now and then we've incorporated the Canadian Hall of Fame.

[01:07:20] This didn't exist before. And I owe a lot of that to Ahmed Taha. He really took the initiative and getting this ball rolling. And it's, uh, it's a really nice thing to see all the players in Canada get recognized. Cause there's a lot of really strong Canadian players. Oh yeah. That I feel like can slip through the cracks of the depth of the American players. There's so many good players from America and Europe, but in Ottawa, they've been running

[01:07:48] the same tournament, the same timeframe for many years. And with Ottawa being the capital of Canada and one of the strongest communities, I know Brian, you were just referring to the location that you have in Buffalo. Um, for the Canadian side, I think that tailgaters in Ottawa is one of the best venues that we have up here. Hmm. Gotcha. It's a gigantic, it's an old Kmart that got converted into a billiard hall and they have, um, I honestly, I, I'm not there.

[01:08:17] I want to say eight to 12 foosball tables. I, I might be wrong on the numbers, but they do have a, a deep stack of tables in there and they have good turnouts all the time. So it only made sense to do the hall of fame in Ottawa and we'll be inducting two new members this year. Uh, I'm not going to announce that today as to who they are, but it's something that we've been working on this last week. Cool. Yeah. I think there's just so many players here that deserve the recognition.

[01:08:46] So is the, uh, I've seen, is the qualification, uh, similar to the U S uh, hall of fame where you have to be a certain age. I think it's what, over 40, something like that. Exactly the same. Yeah. So minimum 40, um, we've had debates about this internally. And like one example is should the players, uh, one, so this year, Tony and Billy being inducted in America.

[01:09:10] And that sparked a debate since Tony is arguably at his prime. He's so good. It's dude. Is it worth waiting until they've, uh, till we've seen how much they can do? Right. Um, we haven't decided that, but it was something in the minds of all of the people on the voting committee. And I believe that we're going to target people that have passed their prime.

[01:09:39] Um, but 40 is the minimum age and you need to be involved in the sport for at least a decade. But I honestly think that decade mark is irrelevant because if you're going to become worthy of your name on that list with, um, some of the people that I can see nominated in the future, like Mario Aragonello, Kane Gabriel, Eric Dunn, we've got Moya, we've got so many, uh, other Mario. There's so many players in Canada that are worthy of that.

[01:10:08] No one's getting there in less than 10 years. And if they do, they might even deserve it already. You know, like if you're going to beat those names in less than 10 years, um, yeah, I can see a good argument for them. But, uh, this actually, if I can just talk a little bit more about Canada foosball, another initiative that has slowly started, it's parallel with this. Um, because like a lot of the communities in America, our player base is very old.

[01:10:36] They played in the peak foosball era and they're still addicted. They still come out, they still support, and they're still fully involved in foosball. And we haven't documented the history of foosball in Canada. And while we still have these players with us, we don't even have all, like we've lost some already and we're all getting older every day. So while we still have this player base, I want to interview as many of them as possible with the same series of questions.

[01:11:04] And after they answer those questions, we'll have more information about the history across the country. And I'd love to one day create a timeline to just show like, this is the first community. This was the first major weekend long tournament. This is the player that brought the rollover. These were the first players to win X titles. It'd just be really nice to document this because we're losing our opportunity here. And it goes hand in hand with the Hall of Fame.

[01:11:31] We just want to, while we're still focusing on the future, we don't want to forget the past. Tell the story. How long ago, how long has it been since Moya passed? Oh, I have to look. I actually, there's a... It's been at least 10 years, right? So 2014? Maybe. Yeah, I was going to guess nine. But yeah, maybe it's 11. And that's what I mean. Like, it goes by so fast, dude. 2015, actually. Clay Toomey.

[01:12:01] 2015, so 10 years. So 10 years. Yeah, so 10 years this year. That's what I mean. So, and she was arguably, I mean, I think she still is arguably one of the greatest lady players of all time, but definitely probably the best female player to ever come out of Canada. Absolutely. Yeah. And no shade on Linda or others. No, no, no. No, no. I mean, I say that respectfully, but, you know, when she was at her peak, and I think

[01:12:28] that's the difference between foosball and probably every other sport, right? Like, you retire, and then they, you know, maybe you get into the Hall of Fame. With foosball, I mean, we have players still competing into their 70s. So, it's like, if you're going to wait until somebody retires to consider them for the Hall of Fame, I mean, you know, Tony and Billy, I mean, they were, they were, they were first, you know, first ballot Hall of Famers. Tony's still playing.

[01:12:58] I mean, if you already have a Hall of Fame career, then why not just put him in and let him keep going? Sure. But, you know, I don't, what do I know? I'm just, I just play foosball. So, but. No objections at all. Yeah. I hear you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, yeah, man. I mean, I, I think any Hall of Fame thing, you know, I, I, I love that stuff. I love all of it, man. Anything foosball. I mean, yeah, there's things about foosball I want to punch people for, but the Hall of Fame

[01:13:28] stuff is, you know, if somebody should be in there, they should be. Yeah. I just think that we also include promoters as well, because. Oh, sure. We know that, that foosball doesn't exist without the promoters. So they deserve just as much recognition. Yeah. Yeah. It makes, makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Crazy. It's been 10 years since Maya. Right. Crazy to think that COVID has been five years. Right. Time marches on, man. Time marches on.

[01:13:56] So the older I get, the faster it goes before I know it. I'm going to, I'm going to look like. I'm going to look like Tom here soon. Tell me about it. Oh boy. Look out. I'll never be that, I'll never be that handsome. Anyway. I wear it well. He's stunning. Devilish. Hey, so, you know, so now that we're talking about promoters a little bit, I just want to give a shout out to those with the Wisconsin crew.

[01:14:25] They just ran the Wisconsin state championship. Yes. Yes. And they know how to run a tournament and they know how to get sponsorships. They have the right media there. They asked me to jump in a media spot and talk about foosball clubs. So we made the media, which is cool. I did have to get up at like 530 in the morning on Friday morning, which is kind of rough, but I went back fed for a few hours, made sure I got some sleep. Right.

[01:14:49] Um, but dude, like what an incredible crew of individuals that do such a great job out there. They, uh, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to them. The guys in Milwaukee, uh, it was, uh, it was quite a, quite a crew with Greg and Rob and Jeff and, uh, and, uh, Roman. They, uh, they did a round table thing with us a couple of weeks ago. Uh, Randy was out of town at the time, but, uh, sat down and it was, it was one of my,

[01:15:16] one of my favorite episodes of, of quite some, uh, quite, quite a, quite a few episodes, just because of the fact that those guys were prepared and they had, they had their pardon the expression shit together. And, uh, it was, it was really, uh, entertaining. I gotta say. And I'd never met those dudes before. And by the time we were done talking, I felt like, Hey, I could just go over to their house and play foosball right now. You know, they were just that cool. And I was, uh, I was hoping we could, uh, you know, get back together again and get a, get a recap of what happened to Wisconsin state.

[01:15:46] By the way, Michael, congratulations on your, what was it? Uh, your pro win pro doubles. Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, that was a lot of fun. I, uh, played with Brady way Rousey at 17 year old. Did you just killer. Yeah. From, uh, Michigan. He's, he's actually, uh, one of the, uh, one of the dudes I've been working with, uh, you know, his dad is his main, uh, guy that he spars with and learns from.

[01:16:13] And, you know, Mike Wierowski has been such an incredible, uh, mentor for me, not just on the table, but off the table and in life. Uh, one of my best friends in foosball and in life. And it's just so cool that I get to see that father son duo, much like I've been so fortunate to enjoy with my dad. And, uh, it just fires me up, dude. Like I want to play with these junior players and just win open doubles and win pro doubles

[01:16:43] in places like, uh, you know, playing with Sam or like just these kids, man. They're, they're just so cool. Like Brady, Brady played clutch. Uh, he was a difference maker. I don't know if you guys saw that match, but you know, he scored a few in the back, made some big blocks. Um, you know, I just, I just was consistent enough, uh, to kind of get the job done, but you know, it was just so fun, like really a great time out in Wisconsin.

[01:17:10] And, uh, you know, speaking of the junior team, um, this might be a good segue, uh, to a project that we have kind of, that we're going to be working on. Uh, so I plan on going to Spain, uh, qualified to play plastic doubles with Sam Dijon. And so I'm going to be there anyway. Cool. Um, of course I'm going to be helping with the junior team a little bit, but we're also going to be documenting the experience of these junior players from a foosball club

[01:17:39] USA lens and perspective. Uh, and so, you know, we're hoping to go there and just film the most comprehensive juggernaut squad that the USA has ever put together. Awesome. Uh, Jacob Valkos, Evan McGregor. We've got Sam Dijon, Brady Wierowski, the Palowskis. Like we've just got this super team of juniors that are just incredibly stellar. We're hoping to get gold as a team.

[01:18:09] Um, you know, I speak on their behalf a little bit there, but obviously, you know, we're hoping to capture those moments, but then to share them, uh, from foosball clubs on our medias and just really paint a picture and a good light on the junior squad, the team, where these kids in these schools could be in two years at the next world cup. Yeah. Right. So we're, we're trying to create heroes in the sport, you know, Lee Pepper, who, you

[01:18:36] know, championed one of the biggest efforts in foosball in 71, uh, you know, his first big tournament was in Missoula and, you know, he, he ran the TS tour, right. Uh, he believed in really like shifting the perspective and reframing these pros as heroes. And so why don't, you know, why don't we do the same with these junior players? So these kids in these schools can see where they could be potentially. Yes.

[01:19:03] And so I think that's going to be a really fruitful piece, uh, to really focus on. And, and I'm hoping that we can get the opportunity to go. I'd like to get a couple of us, um, you know, we've, we've put together from the food club team, we've put together a plan, uh, that we feel is going to be needed to do 250 clubs the right way. And it's going to take some serious funding and I don't know how we're going to get it,

[01:19:32] but I just feel deep and, you know, deep in my heart that it's, it's, it's truly possible. It's very, it's very realistic. It's feasible. Uh, Dan Packer, who is just an insane, just, he's just so talented financial guru. He's also an amazing player and a great guy promoter, but he helped us put together this financial plan that really does so much.

[01:20:02] Uh, there's expenditures and there's revenues and if we can get the right funding for it, this five years is going to be really comprehensive. I don't want to get too excited or speak too much in detail on it because obviously we need, we need the right interested individuals. Like if you want to see this happen, go to foosballclubsusa.com. There's a floating donate tab on the right side of the red tab.

[01:20:30] It's going to be on every page you go to, it's going to follow you around. Cool. Uh, click on that thing, man. Just, just, you know, donate to the cause. If you want to see these kids, uh, have an opportunity that you didn't have when you were younger, right? Maybe you found the sport later, like be the change man. And, uh, you know, we're going to maintain a high level of visibility and integrity with

[01:20:54] this, with the funds and just do such a great job because we have such a great team to do it. Like we really have the right people. Um, it's very serendipitous, this whole thing. And so that's what, that's what we're hoping to do. I mean, it's going to take some serious funding to really do it in a big way, but, uh, I don't know how it's going to happen, man. Yeah. I feel it's, I feel it's going to happen. Uh, we're hoping that we can get there. Franco is asking a question.

[01:21:24] Is there a junior player of the year award? You know, that's a great question. And it's also a tab on the website we just, uh, developed today. It's not an active tab. There's a tab, uh, on the menu bar on the top, it says awards. And so we're going to actually be, uh, recognizing local foosball promoters in the organization,

[01:21:49] uh, that have community clubs, club facilitators and junior stars. Cool. So we're going to be recognizing these folks on a regular basis. I'd like to have a quarterly newsletter that with the right time into it could turn into a monthly newsletter, um, just to keep the, you know, the donors and the members updated on like, what, you know, what have you done for me lately?

[01:22:15] You know, like what, you know, what are we working on, you know, and to keep that visibility at the forefront. But yeah, it's a great question. Franco, we certainly will be recognizing the, it's something we thought about, uh, you know, just so they can see that they're on the main page, you know, they're in the club and they get recognized. It's a big deal. So having, uh, goals to achieve, but, you know, getting to a certain level and achieving that status is, I think that's, especially because we're talking about the video game

[01:22:44] generation where I got to make it to level 10, man, or, you know, I'm, I got to work it. I'm going to work it till I get to 15 and I'm, I'm, you know, kicking butt, uh, when it comes to everybody else, I've got more badges than anybody else. I think that's, that's something that kids just do naturally. They want it. They want to aspire to that. Yeah, I think so too. And just to kind of complete my thought, I just want to thank Dan, uh, there in Toronto. If you guys haven't heard, EFC Toronto foosball club has moved to a new location.

[01:23:14] Yes. And Dan, Kim and the gang, they're doing big things. Uh, probably a page of their playbook. We can take some notes from in the U S, uh, being one of the first multi-table foosball clubs to the public and running essentially a business, uh, for the community to really take advantage of. And wow. Like what a great job these guys do. That's all Dan over in Toronto.

[01:23:44] He's the one carrying the tables, setting them up being like, um, I run Vancouver, or I ran Vancouver foosball for many years here. I'm helping out with the nonprofit and logistics of the shop, but Dan is the one putting in the hours. I'm not physically in Toronto. So there's only so much I can do from afar. So still one of the hats that Dan wears that I, uh, do not. But Kim, you're, you're, uh, you're anything but a casual observer. That's for sure. Yeah. Fair.

[01:24:13] I guess we just have different targets, but Dan, Dan deserves the credit for the Toronto foosball club. Sure. Well, it's, uh, it's, I would say everything we've been talking about tonight fits one of two categories, inspirational or aspirational or both. And, uh, you guys are, you guys are kicking ass. It's awesome. Randy, what, uh, what would you like to ask these guys before we let them back to get back to their busy lives? Am I going to see you guys? I know I'm going to see Cam in Vegas. Am I going to see you in Vegas, Mike?

[01:24:44] Bro. No, I can't make it. I'm sad. I'm going to Spain. And I also, uh, was denied the time off to go to Vegas, uh, as well as a few other tournaments here. Where, unfortunately the corporate life isn't always forgiving. Uh, you know, some of these aspirations that we're trying to tackle. I'm sorry, bud. Brian, what about you? I always love seeing you, but yeah, Brian Vegas, no Vegas. Oh gosh.

[01:25:12] I would love, I've been to Vegas a lot and I, and it's, it's my kind of town, but, uh, I'm not going to be able to make that one. It's hard to get any kind of vacation time these days, but, uh, one of these days I'm going to get out there and, uh, it's really exciting what, what, uh, what Ryan is doing now. And, um, you know, I'll certainly live vicariously through the, uh, the live streams and, uh, and, and the feedback from the tournament as I always do. Cool. Nice. Yeah.

[01:25:42] Yeah. I just quit my job when they pissed me off and won't let me go play foosball. I just quit. I don't care. You don't get it. Do you get another job? You know, as grateful as I am for my job, like, I know I couldn't go to this multi-table tournament and, uh, in Canada, man, I thought about it. I know. I know. I know. Look, believe me, married, mortgage bills.

[01:26:10] It's, it's like, ah, dude, I just want to go play foosball. So I get it. I got to pick and choose. It's kind of the same thing. So it's, uh, if only we could just play foosball, but you know, next best thing, next best thing. I got a couple of tables in this high school over here. I just go beat on these kids. So let's go. Ready to go. I love it, man. Randy's in his glory. Pretty rad, dude. Pretty rad, dude. That you guys might know.

[01:26:37] Once that, that can't foosball be life. And it's like, it can, it can, man. You know, like you never know. If you make it life. Yeah, that's right. That's it. That's right. I think there's, there's spaces that it could be like, there could be jobs created, you know, like if we reframe, if we reframe this as like a tool.

[01:27:04] You know, and like educators are like suddenly needing foosball everywhere. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it could, it could happen. Right. You never know. It's, uh. If I could just teach foosball. Oh yeah. Imagine me. Dude. In a school teaching kids foosball. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Raposo. Listen, um, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I'm late today. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Go to the principal. Detention. Suspension. No foosball for you. Don't hurt me, please.

[01:27:35] Yeah. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? Yeah. No. No foosball for you. That's it. No foosball for you. Get out of my room. Piss off. Yeah. How many stars did I get, Mike? What did I get? Two stars? Did I get? Did they complain? Right? No. You're three and a half, bro. You're just above the threshold. You're not trash enough. No. No, I'm not trash enough. No, I promise.

[01:28:02] I like, I mean, I am a professional in my day-to-day job. So, you know, I understand going into that type of atmosphere, I'll have to act appropriately and not carry a machete. There you go. No. No. No. I'm honestly really excited for, A, you not carrying a machete, but B, for you to see what you could do, man. Because I am really impressed with how you carry yourself. And on an honest note, like, I think you could do a hell of a job, you know, volunteering

[01:28:31] in a school, man. I really do. And you're smart. Like, you know the game. You've been around it. It's helped you. It's been therapy. It's perfect. Absolutely. Thank you. I've actually, you know, so there's a location here at our mall. There's a gentleman. He was, I think he was on one of the Olympic teams or an alternate at least, but in ping pong. Oh. And yeah, yeah. And he's been, you know, he and I talk. He's got some tornado tables there, some coin-op tables at the mall. And I've been in contact with him.

[01:28:58] He's been wanting to run tournaments, but it's just situational. But I've actually done some work with him with the Special Olympics. And I've gone over there and just played foosball with some kids that were in town. And so, I mean, look, dude, anytime I get a chance. Dude, and I beat the daylights out of those kids. Anytime I have a chance to play foosball, I'm all about it. So let's go. But nah, man. Hey, I appreciate you guys coming on tonight.

[01:29:30] All my drugs are kicking in. I'm ready. But it's always fun. Cam, I'll see you in a couple weeks. Mike, you know, if you need anything, hit me up, bro. I texted you the information. Thank you, brother. I saw that. And yeah, let me know whatever I need to do. If I need to go over there or whatever. If I need to strong arm the principal, just let me know. Let's go. I love that. And you know, if I could say one last thing, I just really appreciate everyone's support.

[01:29:57] And it's just been overwhelming, the amount of power that we have in support for this initiative. And if you guys want to get involved, go to foosballclub.com. Become a member. Do it. Eventually, we will have those perks activated on the site. You'll be able to really enjoy these world training courses. Become a volunteer. We'll have a club shop. If you want to really, really help out, you can donate.

[01:30:25] But your time is worth more, in my opinion, once we get these clubs really going. You know, and so just thank you guys. It's been really cool. Yeah. It's our pleasure, man. Anything we can do to help when it comes to getting the word out, we're all over it. So never even, just stop in any time. That's all I can say, right? No, absolutely. Hey, Cam, Mike, Brian, thanks, guys. Thanks for jumping on tonight. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate the time.

[01:30:54] And for me personally. Forget about it. Yeah. Forget about it. Cam and Brian specifically, I want to sing with you guys out for being Patreons. And being a supporter of Foos Talk Live, Foosball Radio, without guys like you, you know, this thing doesn't happen. So, man, I can't thank you enough. But, again, wide open door for anybody here on the panel tonight. Let's get it all together again very soon.

[01:31:21] And tonight you've been listening to this really fascinating talk about Foosball Clubs USA. There is so much on the horizon. We can't wait to see what the future brings. And, again, thanks for everybody being here and turning in tonight on Twitch TV. Stick around because there's more to come. There's a big list on tonight's Foos Talk Live Tournament Beat. Have a great night, guys. Foosball tournaments are everywhere. Foos Talk Live proudly presents a weekly update of events near you.

[01:31:51] With the Foos Talk Live Tournament Beat, here's what's up. It's the Central New York Foosball Spring Main Events, April 4th through the 6th, at Hometown Studios in Cortland, New York. The World Foosball Tour presents the 2025 Hall of Fame Classic, April 9th through the 13th, at the Westgate Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.

[01:32:15] RK Foosball presents the 2025 Florida State Championships, May 1st through the 4th, Holiday in St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Florida. The 2025 Minnesota State Foosball Championships, May 2nd through the 5th, Wyndham Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Canadian Foosball Tour presents the Canadian Hall of Fame Open 2025, May 9th through the 11th, at Tailgaters in Ottawa, Canada.

[01:32:43] The ITSF presents the 2025 Tornado World Series and ITSF Gold Series Finals, May 23rd through May 26th, at the Westin-Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, Dallas, Texas. It's the 2025 Illinois State Championships, June 5th through the 8th, at Poplar Creek Bowl, Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

[01:33:05] The World Foosball Tour presents the 2025 National Championships, July 10th through the 13th, at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, Nashville, Tennessee. Canada Foosball presents the 2025 Vancouver Island Foosball Championships, August 22nd through the 24th, at Courtenay Legion, Courtenay, British Columbia. The 2025 Great Lakes Classic is now scheduled for October 2nd through the 5th.

[01:33:34] More details coming soon. Each week, we do our best to give you the most up-to-date listing of foosball tournaments near you. If you have an event you'd like to add, send us all the details at foosballradio at gmail.com. Tune in every week for the Foos Talk Live Tournament Beat. Foos Talk Live is a product of Foosball Radio. With gratitude, we recognize our Foosball Radio Patreons.

[01:34:01] Our Foos Talk Live sponsor, original-leonhart-usa.com. Tune in again next week for another episode of Foos Talk Live. In the meantime, we'll see you foosin'.