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2006 CYNOSPORT WORLD FLYBALL CHAMPIONSHIP WINNERS: SPRINGLOADED By Kelly Price (an extract from this article appears in the January/February 2007 issue of DOGSPORT magazine)
“Are you crazy?” We have a modest-sized suburban household that contains two people, two home-based businesses and nine dogs — so this is not an altogether uncommon thing to hear around home. It is often followed by “The last thing we need is another dog!” But about six months ago, it was followed by something altogether different. “You want to drive to Arizona to play flyball outdoors, and on grass ? Just in case it isn’t clear why this might be crazy… Arizona is a 33-hour drive away from our home in Stoney Creek, Ontario. Plus, we had virtually no experience playing flyball outdoors, and what little we did have was not exactly good. For our crew, vast fields of open grass are meant for lure coursing, racing and hunting, not flyball. Nevertheless, as if any further evidence of our craziness were needed, our RV full of dogs and people was Arizona-bound on October 30, 2006. The rest of our hardiest SpringLoaded team members flew down to Pheonix later in the week. The flyers were not necessarily any less crazy than us, mind you, but they were just not able to get the same amount of time away from work. To be fair, I should point out why this craziness was able to win the day. The reason for the long trip was to compete in the CYNOSPORT World Games, which is likely one of the premier dog-sport events in North America. This year, it included agility, dock-diving, disc and flyball competitions, at the kind of venue that few of us ever get to compete in – not to mention lots of cool doggy-shopping at the thousands-of-square-feet-worth of vendor booths ! This year was not the first time for flyball to be a part of the Games (which are the brain-child of the USDAA), but it was the first time for NAFA to play hosts. Working together with the CYNOSPORT organizers, the Championship tournament was designed to pit all NAFA regional champions against each other, along with whatever teams might come out on top of a special qualifying event. The qualifier would be held on Friday, the “World Championship” event would follow on Saturday and Sunday. So, we are were not talking about just any old flyball tournament here ! In addition to Whippet, Moose, and his “Dad” racing with Michigan-based SpringLoaded, the other Canadians to make the trip to Scottsdale were Redline Dogsports. Redline is based in Lethbridge Alberta, and are NAFA’s 2006 Regional Champions for Region 12 (Regular). They have a personal-best time of 16.88 sec., which ranks them in the top 50 teams for all of North America (all the rankings in this article are based on the NAFA database of club best-times run since 1999). Team Captain Mona Johnston said that the Cynosport event figured into their goals fairly early in the season. “When the Cynosport announcement was made, everyone was pretty excited about having the chance to run against some of the best and fastest teams in North America and we made a commitment to get the points to qualify for the Regional Championships and make the trip. We set a new record time for our region along the way of 16.88 and felt we could maybe run fast enough to make the semi-finals on Sunday.” Redline represented Canada very well, right from beginning to end. As Regional Champions, they did not have to run in the Friday qualifier, but they did anyway — no doubt wanting to give the dogs a good chance to work out the kinks before the Championship event. Apparently they grow ’em just as crazy in Alberta as they do here in Ontario, because their team (people and dogs) also drove two solid days to get to Scottsdale. Redline posted the fifth fastest best-time on Friday (with a 17.653), and placed second in the tournament. They used their better seed-time of 16.88 for the next day, which they were eligible to do as Regional Champions. This meant they were seeded sixth overall going into Saturday’s racing. Not too shabby at all for a team that is not even two years old! Unfortunately, when they got to Sunday’s elimination rounds, they found themselves having to race against Vermont’s New England Trailblazers (“NET”) in order to get through to the finals. NET is currently ranked seventh in North America, with a best-ever time of 15.67 seconds. In fact, it was New England Trail Blazers who went on to challenge SpringLoaded in the winner-takes-all final race of the weekend. So, Redline had a BIG challenge on their hands. They ended up a respectable second to NET, with a best-time of 17.427 (eighth fastest best-time of the event). The entire list of “bracket” winners, who went on to qualify for the final round, is listed below. Unlike a typical NAFA tournament, the fastest teams were not all racing in Division 1, but rather were split up in such a way that each Division had a similar range of team times. For example, the seed times in Division 1 ranged from 15.29 to 21.043. In Division 5 they ranged from 16.733 to 24.158 seconds.
Although billed as a “World Championship” tournament, a number of teams who would normally be considered SpringLoaded’s top competition for best-in-the-world, did not attend. This is understandable since about half of NAFA’s 20 fastest teams are based in Regions 1 and 2 (Ontario and Michigan). And, apparently, many of them are perfectly sane; at least when it comes to 30-plus-hours of driving! The teams who did decide to attend were not daunted in the least by the idea of racing against some of the best in the world. “To be able to brag that we raced the fastest teams in the sport — and even won a heat or two is something we’ll never forget ! To meet people we only read about or heard about, was exciting.” This sentiment expressed by Mona of Redline reflects the feelings of a lot of participants who came to soak up the atmosphere, meet new people and, of course, have some fun with their dogs. The entire spirit of NAFA flyball is inclusive, and as such, it recognizes the accomplishments of dogs of all breeds and speeds. Therefore, it’s great that such a high-profile tournament was not limited to the fastest of the fast. A fairly broad range of seed times were submitted… from 15-second times through to the low 20s, and they all qualified to participate both on Saturday and Sunday (due to the number of teams entered). This meant that the spectators got the best-possible exposure to flyball. They could see the game as it is played by some of the best in the world, and also see many dogs who look an awful lot like the one they have at home — having just as much fun! So, it seems likely that an inclusive sort of event would do the best job of promoting the sport of flyball – which I’m sure was one of NAFA’s key goals. This event was a complete departure from a typical flyball tournament where the entrants would be grouped into time-based divisions. Normally, these “divisions” ensure that the super-fast teams will race only against super-fast, and the less-fast will only race against less-fast ones… and so on down the line so that every team (ideally) has a chance to compete for a win against teams who are around their peers. Never would a 20-second team be expected to race against a 16-second team. Instead, this event was designed to recognize only one overall winner, and not a set of winners. There was one great advantage to this format. By not splitting teams into divisions in the conventional way, it was theoretically possible for any team to come out on top. This could have made for some very interesting racing — if the group of teams that entered had been fairly closely matched. That outcome would have been consistent with NAFA’s original vision for the event, which focused on competition amongst all of NAFA’s regional champions. But, as it turned out, there was a larger-than-expected time gap between the fastest and slowest teams. That meant that the quality of the competition did sometimes suffer. The excitement of flyball is the thrill of a close race, and 16 seconds competing against 22 seconds is not much of a race. However, the reviews the event got from the competitors were almost uniformly glowing. And that is something, given that the flyball community at large seems to love a great debate and neither the “pro” or “con” side ever seems to be shy about speaking up. In this case, everyone who was there seems to agree – fast or not-so-fast, they all enjoyed their flyball in the sun with a diverse and friendly group, at a world-class venue (and let’s not forget the great shopping !). “It was exactly the kind of success we hoped for,” said the Chairman of NAFA’s Board of Directors, Lee Heighton. “There is always room for improvement, but the fact remains that we have received just a ton of positive feedback, and we are already getting the sense that even more teams will enter next year. The participants all seemed to have a lot of fun — even those who had no chance to end up in the finals. At your typical weekend tournament, it’s mainly about winning races and doing the best you possibly can in your division. This event was really about something quite different. The entire Cynosport World Games are on such a grand scale that it’s a quantum leap for virtually all participants, even for record-holding teams like SpringLoaded. We almost never get the chance to show off our dogs to huge audiences of spectators, or compete at “centre field” under the lights, with a cheering crowd in the bleachers. And I think that’s why everybody was so pleased with their experience. Even though the game of flyball is the same no matter where you compete, it’s the fact that you get to do it on a really big stage that sets this event apart. According to Mona, “NAFA treated everyone so well -- from the ribbons to the [sets of Team T-shirts they provided] to the hospitality tent to the meet-and-greets in the evenings.” Speaking of those NAFA shirts, Redline also made their mark at the event in one more way. They were the only team to take the initiative to have their own club logo added – no small feat, since they only received the shirts once they got to the tournament site, and therefore had to make arrangements with a local printer to have it done overnight. A little extra team spirit never hurt anybody, and we’re proud that it was the Canadians who showed it! Personally, I’m still of a mind that playing flyball outdoors on grass is crazy — even though, admittedly, most dogs who weren’t used to it seem to have risen to the challenge. As for the trip itself, that seems not-quite-so-crazy now.
2006 CYNOSPORT ® WORLD FLYBALL CHAMPIONSHIP – RESULTS
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Winning Team |
Based in |
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Division 1 |
SpringLoaded |
Michigan |
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Division 2 |
Top Dog Racers |
Texas |
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Division 3 |
New England TrailBlazers |
Vermont |
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Division 4 |
Top Dog Racers |
Texas |
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Division 5 |
Lone Star Roughnecks |
Texas |