2011 International Air hockey – Doubles

Ok, I guess I can begin with doubles. I was considering not participating, just like in Vegas… but I realized that I’ve been playing enough to not be sore the 2nd or 3rd day out. I feel like last year I really suffered from being sore… but a lot has changed in that time. Q has caught up to me in skill, for one… and I thought he’d make a great doubles partner. We’re basically Billy’s apprentices and to see how far we could get (either in doubles or singles) would be a testament to how well he’s advised us over time.

Q and I formed our team: Rainbows, Unicorns, and Pixies. Q’s wife even designed a shirt for us that features Tinkerbell holding back the mane of a unicorn throwing up a rainbow – all on a cloud that says, “My World” on it. We finished it off with rainbow wristbands. I’ve always considered doubles to be a fun event to tune up for the real deal. People come up with crazy names to call themselves for these things, so we thought we’d follow suit.

Wearing “periwinkle” colored shirts and getting ready to play in one of the biggest air hockey tournaments when I was sleeping in Chicago that morning was a bit of a change of scenery. Jarring, to say the least… but here we were and we pulled our draw of Jacob and Avery. I’d been told that these guys have been practicing 4x a week and watching air hockey videos. It seemed pretty awesome to me that these guys have been putting in the effort to get better.

These guys play pretty good. You can see that they’re still working on mechanics and don’t have every shot… or at least with the accuracy and zip you need. I like Avery’s style. He uses the same attack Q and I started with… a simple cut/under attack (as a lefty, cut/left wall under). Mastering this before moving on to more complicated attacks is what has worked for Q and I.

After a shaky start – and really, a very close set.. Q and I overcome these young upstarts.

Our next set was against the reigning #1 and #2 of the sport, Danny Hynes and Ehab Shoukry. Unfortunately, we don’t have this on film. It would have been great to look over this set again. I believe they got up 2-0 before we squeezed a game out of them… and another was close. I know I had a hard time scoring against Ehab – and he scored at will on me. I know I got Danny with a good pump-fake, but was otherwise worthless. Q shined, though. He’s the only reason we came close.

Shot into the loser’s bracket, we met up with the team of Joe Cain, and Travis Luscombe… two master-level players that would test Q and I. I’ve played well against Travis in the past… and poorly against Joe in Vegas. I know Q struggled against Travis’ cross, but we got Travis with a lot of right wall unders. It all kind of evened out, as we played 5 very close games. I wasn’t sure how well I did until I watched the videos, and I counted 19 goals that I scored, vs 15 I scored against me (including the heartbreakers I scored against myself). Almost good for a +1ppg. Of course, all of the pressure fell on Q – when in the 5th and final game, I got us up 6-5, and then scored on myself. Timeout was called, and Q and I talked about what shot he should take. Q’s best shot against Joe was his cut. Q just looked at me and said, “Cut?” and shrugged his shoulders. I looked… hemmed and hawed a bit… and then said, “uhh.. ok”. Q goes right out there and hits his cut, which Joe charged. Talking with them later – they knew we were going to hit a cut, and a charge is the correct thing to do (and very gutsy). Instead of forcing a turnover, the charge sent the puck off the table – and Q was able to recover for the win! Q and Travis had a Chipotle side-bet… which we also won. Yay.

We went on to play another team – Mark Butler and Tory Evans. The biggest thing about playing the two was that the older guy had the softest mallet I’ve ever seen (great for defense), and the youngster had a high density mallet (puts a lot of pop on offense). I don’t recall the scores, but I remember doing well.

Our next match was against Davis Huynh and Anthony Marino. I like both of these guys a lot, and I didn’t think we had a much better chance against them than we did against Danny/Ehab. It felt like I had a chance to score against Anthony, if I could be accurate at all. Davis pretty much shot whatever he wanted (including great lwo’s). Q had his moments, but we got 3-0’d… and shot out of the tourney.

This tourney featured spinoffs… so we got one more chance to elevate us one more place higher. And we got to play a couple very old-school players. They like to play a back rail defense and do some bizarre shit. Tom hit tons of one-twos or just straight up volleyed. Hernandez also featured some great shots… but a defense that should have been much easier to score on. Q and I lost this one, but felt that if we were to face them in the tournament – we would fare very well against them.

…and that’s it. We finished 6th in the tourney. We beat Travis and Joe, which was our highlight. More importantly, fun was had by all.

Oh – and Billy/Tim beat out Danny/Ehab in a very close set.