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.

 

Story of the GOALS

PAST WEEK

The back lawn has been mowed, the house has been vacuumed, Kai is taking a nap and Katie and Leevi went to film a wedding. This gives me an opportunity to write few updates about floorball in Houston and set the goals for the remainder of the year 2013. 

First of all, Wednesday was a great day for floorball in Houston. We had the cub scouts to learn a new sport and seemed like everyone had a ton of fun. There were some of the youth who had played before who wanted to join the game, but the little scouts almost played till the time it was time to bring the big goals and let the adults play.  

Next week there will be no games since the basketball court will be waxed. 

So in the meanwhile here are few of the goals for flooball in Houston.

STORY OF THE GOALS

These goals have made it from Finland --- Idaho --- Missouri --- California --- back to Idaho --- and then to Texas. Here in Texas the goals are transported every week to Eagle Spings church building and then back to the garage. 

GOALS

1. Arrange Houston East vs. Houston West floorball tournament. 

2. Have a team to play in SWIFT (Southwest invitational floorball tournament) in Austin, TX in June 22nd. 

3. Start a floorball league in the fall 2013. 

(We could already make at least four teams: Exxon, Eagle Springs, Humble and West Houston)

4. Organize Houston open Floorball Tournament the last Saturday of the year 2013. 

(It would be fun to get a team from Finland as well to participate as well) 

It's more likely to happen when you put it in writing and let everyone else know about it, right. 

Humble man shares his enthusiasm for floorball with Houston area residents of all ages - Your Houston News: News

Humble man shares his enthusiasm for floorball with Houston area residents of all ages - Your Houston News: News

I "hired" a newspaper to write my story. I think that I should do that more often since they do a lot better job when it comes to writing.

I'm just glad that my friend in a shirt and a tie made it to the picture again and we had 14 people playing that night. There were also two kids who had their own sticks and they used two tables as goals in one of the church rooms. Those kids are getting pretty good.
 
We are having floorball for the cub scouts in few weeks!

Double the fun...

 This Wednesday we had a floorball for the combined young men's and young women's activity for the Eagle Springs church. 

We started out by lining everyone up and formed four teams.  

In the middle of the game the fire alarms went off, so we needed to step outside while the firemen figured  out what happened to set them off. 

Luckily there was no fire and the games continued. Everyone seemed to have good time. Next time we will do it without setting the fire alarms.  

After the kids were done it was time for adult floorball for the rest of the night. 

Three Weeks

Three weeks have gone by. Just wanted to make a quick post to inform that we are still playing floorball in Houston. As a matter of fact, we have played every Wednesday since the first post, and every time someone new has come to play with us.

Last Wednesday we had 15 people playing. We made three teams and timed 5 min games, which made the game more competitive and faster. The very next day at Eagle Springs they had Elders quorum floorball activity with 15-20 people playing yesterday night.

Yesterday was the first time floorball was played without me, since I took the opportunity to take my wife Katie out for a treat for her birthday. Also, I'm not the only person with floorball sticks anymore. It's exciting to see that we already have people excited about upcoming tournaments and playing multiple times a week...

Another exciting phone call from Lifetime fitness, they are still interested of getting floorball to their schedule and hopefully in few weeks, we'll get to show them what floorball is all about and play on a bigger court, and enjoy sauna after the games!

Till next weeks post!

Floorball in Houston Week 5

The past week was once again successful for floorball in Houston. Wednesday night we had a good turnaround of 10 people.

It was exciting to see 4 new people who had never played floorball before and six "regulars" if you can call them that. 

This coming week should be a great week again for floorball. We will be playing Wednesday night and Saturday morning. Hopefully lots of new people are able to join our group. 

Today I talked to a person who had heard about floorball through someone who plays with us on Wednesdays. He told me that he would try to make it this Wednesday to play.

Word of mouth is a powerful advertising tool!  

TWICE A WEEK

This week was busy and exciting for floorball in the Houston area and I did not have time to take pictures this time. We played twice a week, Wednesday night and Saturday morning.

First, I got an e-mail Tuesday night from people wanting to play floorball the next day. We were able to get 8 people to play within a short notice. Also, we agreed that we would make this a weekly thing during Wednesday nights at 8:30pm in Eagle Springs.

Saturday we played in Tomball on a bigger court. We had a good turn out of nine people to play from which 2 had never played floorball before and 2 of them came to play all the way from Austin. To put it in perspective, Austin is just about as far a way from Houston as Helsinki is from Jyväskylä. I'm glad that our friends from Austin were able to make it to play. Next time when we play Saturday in two weeks we might have even more people from Austin. We had some people who got excited of the upcoming tournaments, since now we have enough people to participate.

Meanwhile at home, my two year old son refuses to play with his own little stick and continues to practice with my stick. Every time he scores he throws the stick on the ground and celebrates.
 

 

FLOORBALL IN A SHIRT AND A TIE

This week we ended up playing floorball on Wednesday night, since Lifetime offered us to come use their facilities. However, last minute, I got a call from Lifetime telling me that we could not play there unless we were all members, even though we had some people in the group who were members of Lifetime.  

I told them that it was not up to me if anyone in our group would sign up for a membership, but it will be a lot harder if they could not play there tonight. 

What I thought would end up canceling the whole thing...ended by 13 of us playing floorball at the Eagle Springs church building. 

From 9pm till 10pm we had a great game of Humble against everyone else. 4 of us had played before and rest of the 9 were first timers. Altogether we have had 25 people playing since the beginning, so the pool is getting bigger. 

Two highlights of playing this week. 

1. Texans love floorball so much that they will even play it wearing a shirt and a tie and sunday shoes (pictures below to prove it below).

2. One of the people who played Wednesday contacted me today and told that they would like to make floorball their weekly activities at the church, so we might have a place to play regularly.  

THERE IS THE SHIRT AND THE SHOES 

AND HERE IS THE TIE

SCORE... AND THE GAME CONTINUED FROM THE MIDDLE

SATURDAY

 Saturday started out rough, when we arrived to the church building to realize that cultural hall was double booked and our floorball activity was in danger to be cancelled. We lost three players but after few calls we were able have 9 players altogether and found another church building to play in. So the game was on for the saturday morning.  

THIS IS WERE IT ALL STARTED

6 OUT OF 9 PLAYERS IN THE CORNER 

BACK TO THE OTHER SIDE OT THE COURT

                FEW HOURS OF FLOORBALL WITH NO INJURIES MADE IT A GREAT WORKOUT

Here is some statistical information: with the increase of one new player a week (as we did) for the rest of the year makes 56 floorball players by the end of the year in the Houston area. Same numbers with a compound interest will get over 2000 players by the end of the year. To make the numbers more interesting, if we had 7 new players (as we did) we would have a lot more by the end of the year, you can do the math for the compound interest.

TILL NEXT WEEK...

8 PLAYERS

This past Saturday was the first floorball experience in Houston. It felt almost like 15 years ago when we would call our friends the day before to make sure that we had enough players to play. 

Saturday we played at a church building on a carpeted basketball court to small goals 3 against 3 with 2 goalies with all the goalie equipment on. 

Even though it was not quite the experience as in Killeri where they have a rink and a nice surface to play on. Still we managed to have fun and it was a new experience to 6 people who had never played floorball before and will hopefully become avid floorball players in the near future.

Next week we are expecting to play on a bigger court with official size goals and on a wooded basketball court! Maybe I'll have time to take some pictures for the next weeks post. 

   

Why Floorball

Floorball might be for you if: 

1. You are a former hockey/street hockey player
2. You currently play hockey/street hockey
3. You like hockey/street hockey or would like to become a hockey player
4. You would like to learn a new sport
5. You would like to play just to exercise 
6. You would like to play in the national level

If you fit any of the above mentioned categories you are fit to play floorball! No skating skills necessary!

Here are few reasons why to start playing floorball: 

• Floorball is easy to learn
• Floorball is inexpensive (basic sticks are starting from $25)
• Floorball gives a great exercise 
• Floorball is just FUN sport to play

The goal for ask about floorball blog is to have anyone who is interested in playing floorball or knowing more about floorball to contact with questions through askaboutfloorball@gmail.com 

It's is also a weekly review of the development of floorball, as a new sport in the Houston, TX area. 

The first pickup floorball will be held Saturday January 19th. Time and place will be announced once available.