Tomah Floorball Tournament
April 14th, 2012 in Tomah Wisconsin we will yet again try to play a 3 on 3 Floorball tourney with goalies - The Tomah Open.
We plan right now to open up the tourney to 3 conferences; Advanced, Intermediate and Recreational. If we have interest from schools we will open up conferences for both Junior high as well as High school teams and perhaps even an elementary session. Floorball was introduced to the WHPE this fall and schools across WI is interested - so we will invite towards emails collected during this conference - we will have a limited set of sticks to borrow too for players without their own sticks.
A conference must have at least 3 teams to take place - or teams will be transferred to other conferences. All groups co-ed. If we have enough ladies - and three female teams, we will open up such a conference too - hopefully. But I am not sure if that is realistic at this point. The cost will stay the same 10 dollars per player - this might also depend upon what we need to spend on "renting" refs, if we are able to do this. - if we have many school age teams we may play these games instead Sunday 15th. Still with the same reflection - I do not think this is realistic yet.
Time for sign-up will most likely take place during the month of March
We will try to improve the quality of the refs. in some way. Maybe rent Hockey and Soccer refs? Dunno yet. We are trying to get at least two real nets this time, still no boards but a good attitude... We also have the flexibility to expand the games to two venues, just a block away if we have many teams. Last year 12 teams played from three states involving about 100 people. In number of teams I suspect Tomah Open to be the second largest Floorball tourney in the US last year, I think there was only one more tourney in Calif, with 16 teams over many more conferences (of course they play full size teams at other tourneys and we do not - but I think this is the way to grow FB in the Mid- West)
Further information, invitations, rules etc will be sent out soon (within a couple of weeks time I hope). Please spread the news and get prepared, I may have missed some emails too. Feel free to already now decide if you plan to come, if you may help us with something in particular and it is also helpful if you decide that - no we will not participate this year - for us to know this to be able to plan this event.
We plan to run concessions, with baked stuff and some sort of food and maybe have a little stick shop too up and running.
This tourney is without boards and each team is recommended to have at least 2 subs and maximum 3 subs. Last year Chicago had one team that tried to play with no subs - they were forced to change their mind since it was too tough on them. We will try to accommodate for single players too, so they will be able to play with some team - everyone must have the chance to play in some way - so teams must have a very flexible attitude. Nets might be homemade - and the refs might still be learning the game - but our attitude will hopefully be with us.
Send us questions and email to others interested - I think we should invite teams from MI and Indiana too as well from Duluth since I think they have something up there too going - but I do not have emails to these groups. It would further be fully fantastic if a Canadian team in some odd way would be able to make it - we have heard some minor interest. FYI, I have also detected minor interest from Sweden - and I would not be fully surprised if we have an International team participating - but this is as you understand fully tentative and most likely not realistic at this point.
The sign-up will be administrated by the Tomah Parks and Rec.
All this is preliminary information and things might change in due course of the planning. But I wanted you all to know that we are mowing forward on this one, today. Most information on this I aim to have posted here
Cheers
Michael Borg
P.S. I have also been in talks with Aaron Fielder at the Wausau YMCA, he is the Youth Director and we are planning to form an interim board for an interim Wisconsin Floorball Federation, most material on this will be found here to start with http://www.floorballcentral.org/p/wisconsin-floorball.html