a parade of masters

Ok.. so, last night – Thursday is fresh in my mind.

Billy had sent out the emails.. and Wil Upchurch, Don James, and Mark Robbins were all to be in attendance.

Awesome.

From what I could tell Mark has been a staple of pro air hockey for decades. It was going to be neat to meet him.

(you can get some history of air hockey with this documentary… Billy has a brief moment in it as well as a couple others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb2jiLhEYYA)

When I got to the ‘ol BZ, it was abuzz with activity. Everyone seemed to be out. Theon – who’s in the country for a month… a gent I’ve never met was there. Kevin… who I haven’t seen in ages was playing. Just everyone was out.. it was great. I thought I’d have trouble getting any table time at all.

I started out playing Wil… after he got a little warm-up. Wil plays like a demented genius – he uses no standard drift.. constantly moving the puck around back and forth – rarely using a side rail with his drifts… and all of this frantic motion – you have no idea when he’s going to take a shot. Wil has this odd movement with his body.. where he tends to sway forward and back with his body. He’s a big guy – and you’d expect him to have a really powerful game… but he plays with reckless finesse. He creamed me.. I’m pretty sure I got a point off of him, but it was no match. I think I just had way more fun watching him play than anything.

..then I got a set in on Kevin. Normally I do very well against him – but he took the last set against me. He’d adapted to my game from a couple months ago very well and developed a nice cut shot to go with his really good right wall under. I was eager to show him how far I’d come since we last played. There were a couple games where he got an early lead – and in every instance, I came back from the dead to take the game. I played calm and focused – and felt no need to break out some of my other tricks. It was a weird turning point for me – as never before did I feel like I was holding a piece of my offense back because something wasn’t working. The last game left us tied 6-6, and I slowed down the puck.. took my time and focused. I drilled a couple off-goals knowing full well that Kevin would be very, very tense with the game and set on the line. I controlled the puck and I was going to take my time with him. I knew I needed to make a good shot and Kevin has a tendency to flinch and turtle up to his goal. I knew I was going to be making a straight shot to finish the game, and I knew it had to be an accurate shot on one side of the goal or another. Hitting off-goals put Kevin in a bad spot and he got very jumpy… I didn’t even fake a cut shot – his mallet was going right to the center of the goal – and I sunk a straight shot to win 4-0. It felt good.. I felt in control.

Mark Robbins showed up, and I got to see the living legend. He warmed up and played a practice game – and I quickly got the next game. Mark plays a frantic game and has amazing puck skills. He just doesn’t turn the puck over. It seemed like his defense was a little unrefined… frequently blocking shots close to his goal… but it didn’t seem to stop him from blocking all of my shots. He likes to hit off goals and 1-2 shots… very different from my slow and deliberate style. I actually managed to get a lead before he put the screws to me. It was a fun and high energy match… and it just made me feel incredibly lucky to live in a place where I have the opportunity to play against all these great players. It’s really a great blessing. There aren’t many places in this country or the world that has this kind of density of great air hockey players. I mean, really.. what is there? Texas, of course, then what? Colorado, California and then NY? Not only that.. but I’m lucky there’s Billy to teach us stuff and try to improve our games. If he wasn’t around, I’d probably be stuck in my game and I’d probably develop lots of bad habits.

I played another set.. this time against Theon. He’s a little older and spends most of his time in Mexico.. he’s in the states for at least a month and it seems like he used to be a regular player. He was out of practice… but that excuse didn’t keep Wil or Don from beating the crap out of me. I saw him play Mike and Nick – and although he forced Mike into game 7 – I didn’t see him do anything really special. His defense was good… his offense didn’t have the snap or pop that Mike or Nick had. We started out, and I got a quick two games up on him. He made me really work for my shots – and he was determined to cut off my straights. I don’t like to be forced to go to my right wall under, but when it works.. its beautiful… and it worked very well against Theon – especially when I mixed up my timing. I really lulled Theon to sleep with my slow, methodical style… I’d throw a number of creepingly slow drifts up the middle and pause. He was less likely to turtle up with my fakes.. so it seemed natural that my banks were going to be successful. Throughout the set – I was able to get some easy points by shooting very quickly after a turnover. I felt as though I mixed things up very well. I also did well when Theon had the puck and took his time with scoring. He got a couple nice cross straights on me, but after awhile – I realized that I had a good enough reaction time to take care of his banks… they just weren’t coming in fast enough. The one place where Theon really killed me was in transitions. Every time I turned the puck over, and was in an offensive stance – whether I got my mallet back to the goal or not…he nailed a shot. Don told me to not worry about the “fat guy switch”, but Theon was eating me alive with it. That, plus me not being accurate helped Theon win 2 games… but that wasn’t enough to win the set as I took it 4-2.

It was a good day for me. I regained my confidence against players rated worse than myself – and Theon was actually rated higher than me… though I didn’t feel like he had a good chance to beat me. In his defense.. he was well out of practice – and I’ve been playing pretty regularly.

Another really fun night. It was great to hang out with all these great players, and Don said some very encouraging things to me. I can’t let my successes go to my head – there’s always something to work on and there’s always someone out there much better than myself.