Lao New Year Tournament

In March we finally made our move over the Wat Lao Buddharan Temple. The learning curve is steep & it's a humbling experience going up against people who have played for so many years. A few of the newbs have managed to step up to the challenge, yet some have dropped off since we started kicking at the temple. When I started the training sessions back at MTSU in Nov. 2010 we were getting 6-8 white boys to show up & kick, now that number is down to 3-4. I want the takraw scene here to be competitive, so I suppose that it wound up weeding out a few recreational kickers & that's really fine by me. After footbagging all those years, I grew tired of those casual kickers that show up once a month.

This weekend we will be taking the plunge & competing in our first takraw tournament. It's the Lao New Year's Festival. The majority of the teams are local, but I think we've got a couple coming from Louisville, so I believe that makes 7 or 8 teams total. My only goal is to not have our team be shut out in any of the games. I've been playing takraw on/off for 4 years now - thanks to footbag. The other members of my team have only been playing for 3-6 months, so I've got to give it up to them for signing onto a tournament. I'll have plenty of pic. & video for the next post.

Unstoppable Tour: 30 Sports, 30 Days, 30 Cities

A single athlete's journey across the country & attempts to compete in sports he's never even heard of. http://eas.com/unstoppabletour Is Sam Tickle game for this?

This is where we kick now

Wat Lao Buddharan Temple

Takraw Shoes

Some of you may be wondering, where can I purchase takraw shoes? Well look no further than http://www.kickersrock.net/ 3 people in our group have already bought these shoes & love'em. I had a pair of the traditional Nan Yang shoes that I wore last year when I played. After a couple months my ankles began to hurt, but only when I kicked takraw. So I ordered the speciality shoes from kickersrock, they are much more comfortable & give better support. On the downside, the soles of the shoes are less malleable or flexible than Nan Yang, regardless kickersrock feel better & certainly look better. I don't care who you are it's tough to act like a badass when your sporting some shoes that look like Keds.

Nintendo DS Includes Takraw + Nashville Update

I don't have a DS, but I just think it's awesome that sepak takraw was included in the new sports package. I did watch the trailer & some kid playing it on youtube & it's doesn't look half bad. It's not that I expect this to do wonders for the sport of takraw. I mean just look at what "California Games" did for hacky sack.... We're 7 weeks into our training now, & there's now 8 of us (total) that have been learning the game. I wish we could get 8 people to a practice, but it's usually 5. No matter... that's still more than we could get to play footbag. I've tried to avoid being too coachy because I just want people to adjust to playing a new game. I also want everybody to have a good time, so we haven't been running many drills either. Well that's all about to change. Starting Jan 1st, we only have 11 weeks till the official takraw season begins. So we're going to be discussing more strategy - - with less "just kick it over the net" - - & running drills like a group of crazy people. It's my hope that this will not alienate any of our players. If we're gonna run with the big dogs, we need to step it up.