For those of you interested...

VISION

Here is a view chosen phrases from a conversation with our nine year old neighbor who ran in front of my truck the other day when I was pulling into our street from work. 

Neighbor boy: Are we playing floorball this Saturday?

Me: We are, we will play in Tomball

Neighbor boy: WHY DO YOU ALWAYS PLAY SO FAR AWAY?

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Neighbor boy: One day it would be nice to play in the Toyota Center

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Do you know how many people would have to sub...?

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There would be a lot of people.... LOT of people!

What a fun little neighbor boy. Some of you might know who he is and maybe one day we can play floorball in the Toyota Center. It is always good to have a vision! 

Invitation to play!

This past week was a great week for floorball in Houston TX. We had a Wednesday night game and Saturday morning game. Wednesday I had our neighborhood boys come play with us. I had to tell them that I did not have enough room for all of them in my truck,  but luckily I was able to find someone to help me out to get all of them to play that night. After the games they were thinking about inviting pretty much everyone they knew and tell their principal about floorball. 

The picture above is from our Saturday morning group. We had record amount of people show up this Saturday in Tomball. Altogether we had 14 people to play that day (two of them did not make it to the picture). It was nice to play 5 on 5 + goalies and we even had a sub for both teams. Brought back memories, how we played in Finland.

Special thanks goes to Becca who brought three of her friends to play with her. This was only her second time playing floorball ever. She sent me a message, if it was ok for her to to bring 2-3 friends with her. I told her absolutely, thinking in my mind "that's awesome"! If everyone would bring three more people with them the second time they would come to play floorball it would not take long for us to have a group large and talented enough to challenge the Team USA. Or at least to have some or our team members to play for the Team USA women's and men's team!
Here is a simple math for all of you floorball friends in Houston if every new player would bring 3 more new players the following week:

Week 1 = 1  

Week 2 = 3 new players

Week 3 = 9 new players

Week 4 27 new players 

Week 5 = 81 new players

Week 6 = 243 new players 

Week 7 729 new players

Total of 1093 new players within 7 weeks.  

Another developing story is 17 year old Latvian kid. I got a message the other day from a person I have never met before. She told that they are hosting for a Latvian boy for a English language program and was wondering if our floorball group played near by Tomball. What is the coincidence that we happen to play in Tomball out of all the places in Houston. I need to look into different language and exchange student programs and find out more talented floorball players who could be instrumental to help floorball grow here in Houston. 

So lets keep inviting our friends to come play with us and soon we will have enough people to play with us to form our own floorball league and compete in the national level!!!

SWIFT in Austin TX

This is where it all started. Each player was welcomed by a small gift back including a t-shirt. 

Getting ready for our first game by watching the other teams play.

To say the least, this was very well timed and organized one day event. Only if there would have been a second court to warm up and practice with the team. 

This was the first lunch place that we found and had dinner as the whole team. 

After lunch break it was great to watch other teams play again. 

Medal ceremony.

Team Houston - Houston Pioneers

Second place in the tournament ranks Houston number one floorball team in Texas. This tournament left us hungry to come back and fight for the first place next year. Also we are planning on recruiting more players and starting our own league here in Houston. Thank you for all who played in the tournament and for the good sportsmanship. This was a great experience for our young floorball players to attend their first tournament. Thank you for all the people who practiced with us during the short few months that we have played floorball in Houston. This also gave us a good benchmark what to expect when we are ready to organize our tournament. Thank you for the tournament organizers.

Lastly, below are links for the tournament statistics for those who are interested.   

Game Results: 

http://austinfloorballclub.com/floorballstats/SWIFTGameStats.html

Player Stats:

http://austinfloorballclub.com/floorballstats/SWIFTPlayerStats.html

Floorball in Houston May 2013

Last week has been busy with floorball. We played floorball 3 times during the past week.

1. Tuesday night my wife had floorball as an activity for the 8-11 girls at a local church here in Humble.

2. Wednesday night has become very popular for floorball in Eagle Springs. Once again we had three teams playing pickup games till way past 10pm.

3. Today, Saturday was our practice for Team Houston (and others) so we can do well in our upcoming tournament in Austin in June.

Sorry, no pictures this time. I'll promise that I will post some pictures from the tournament in Austin, once we get to that point.

The Swedish Club

I got approached by Sara West to write a story to the Swedish Club in Houston Newsletter.

Hopefully this will bring some of their 150 members to play floorball with us in the near future.

http://swedishclub.org/newsletter/swedish-club-news/doc_download/71-mayjun-2013

SWIFT

This is the next big thing for floorball in Texas. Team Houston has been registered for the Southwest invitational floorball tournament. We will have our tryouts for Team Houston next Saturday May 4th.

It will be hard to choose 9 people to play since we have more players willing to attend the tournament. Personally, I would have organized a tournament with minimum players in a team 11 up to 20 players. Just need to organize our own tournament here in Houston to make that happen.

I know that for this tournament it will be competitive, since only nine players can play in a team. However, in my opinion it would have been better to open the tournament for more people. If more people would be coming to the tournament it would also make economical sense as more players would be paying the tournament fee. And with that extra revenue the little profits that come from it could be used for developing the sport in that specific area where the tournament was held.

Anyhow, I'm excited that we have a team to compete in Austin this summer. We just need some practice on 4 on 4 games and grinding the rules in, since this tournament will have referees and it will be first one for many in our team to play with referees. The rumor is that we might have a team from Jamaica to play with us this summer as well.

If anyone have suggestions for our team name please let me know, as of now we are Team Houston.