Keep on Foosin'

Matt and Joy Steward have an addiction. They try to put it down, but it keeps coming back. And now that their toddler is involved, it'll be sure to be part of their lives for years to come. This addiction, however, helped them take second in open mixed doubles at the United States Table Soccer Association's world foosball championship.

"You know what's addictive? It's hearing that little freakin' ball hit that tin. That dink!" says Matt referring to the sound of the ball striking the goal's metal backstop. "The louder I can make it ... if I can make your ears ring, I am happy." For Joy, her addiction is less about ringing ears than expanding skills.

"It's very competitive and very addictive," says Joy, who also brought home first in USTSA's world's women's doubles, held Aug. 27 in Dallas. "There's so much to learn in this game that it just keeps you wanting to play more and more. You can never not learn at this game."

With close to 3,000 points, earned through placements in pro and major tournaments, Matt climbed to the designation of pro-master, the top of the foosball levels. Joy falls behind at the pro level with just more than 2,000. On the state level, she is ranked eighth and he takes second, trailing behind one of his partners, a local named Terry Rue who is 32nd in the nation. Matt is No. 44.

Yes, you read that right. Foosball, the simple game you thought was just a sideline to hoisting sudsy mugs at the corner tavern, has quite the following in Lafayette and a cult-like status across the world. On a Saturday in late August at Max's Pool Hall - a tournament spot since 1989 - there's a crowd of these barroom athletes hovering over three tables, waiting to compete in what is known as World's Warm-up, a doubles tournament Matt organized.

Like the Stewards, these are not hobbyists. They are serious players who drop lots of quarters and entry fees - the world's championship comes with a price tag in the $250 range - and wrap, rosin and tape whatever gives them an edge at the tables. It's not just a chunk of players in Lafayette, but a chunk of extremely talented players.

"Pound for pound, person for person, the city of Lafayette, compared to the rest of the world, probably has more national and world's champions in this city than any other city in the world, considering per capita," reasons foosball vet Kevin Colligan. For evidence, Colligan points to 30 titles won in recent years that now hang on the walls of Lafayette players' homes.

Just after 2 p.m., the players are already sizing up their opponents for the 3 o'clock tournament. Foosball, it appears, is a game that attracts all shapes and sizes from various demographics. The only physical characteristic they seem to have in common is brawny forearms.

Colligan, a self-professed old school player, shares the back table with three other players. Today, Colligan sports a cut-off, stone-washed denim shirt, unbuttoned midway, and a tiny stud sparkling in his ear. A little party in the back spills out of his City Bar hat. One of his fellow players, 12-year-old Jeremy Coose, can barely see over the table's edge. The only trash talking comes from Colligan and is directed at the boy, his ex-wife's son. The good-hearted jabs range from, "You got that cheating from your mom" to "Oh, you gonna shot when I ain't looking? Show off!"

Other than Colligan razzing the youth and the jukebox thumping out classic rock, the scene is quiet except for the occasional interruption of what sounds like gunfire. It's actually the ball - nearly invisible at this speed as players slap it past befuddled goalies, striking the goals' metal backstop.

With most of them playing doubles or just working tough defense, there are a lot fewer outbursts than at The Bulldog during happy hour.

After the game at table three ends, Harry Milliman unlocks one of the tables - which he owns - and opens it up to remove notepads and a crumpled paper grocery bag. From the papers, he announces the qualifying players, who participated in three previous tournaments. All others must drop a $25 entry fee. Colligan is surprised to learn that his is not among the names called. However, after a bit of peaceful protesting, he coughs up the money and his name goes up with 13 others on the dry erase brackets.

After 3, Milliman announces the randomly assigned table assignments, and the teams scramble to their spots.

Milliman, a man who won't hesitate to tell you about his daughter's band, Superna, is more than just a referee and barker. Based on the comments from players, tournaments like this one wouldn't happen in the Hub City if not for Milliman, who used to own the Quarter 'Till game room. In its heyday, there were about 25 teams playing his tournaments. The weekly Thursday night tournaments at Max's now draw 36 to 40 players.

"He's like the man. I have been playing for a long time, I am not gonna tell you how old I am ... I am not near as old as him, but I been playing a long time," offers Colligan who later reveals he has invested 30 years in the game. "He's like the granddaddy of foosball around here. He's the one that kept foosball alive for 20 years in Lafayette; I got to give it to him."

Matt Steward agrees, calling Milliman "Daddy" and saying that he learned his game from watching him. However, the student surpassed the teacher as Milliman, now more of a spectator, only reached the mark of semi-pro. In an effort to support the home team, Milliman even trekked to Dallas for the world's championship, even though he didn't participate.



Matt Steward's rise through the ranks began 10 years ago at the handles of a friend's girlfriend's table.

"It was a horrible table. We didn't know what we were doing," recalls Steward. He worked his way up to playing in public at Daiquiris Supreme on Johnston Street. "We knew nothing; we were nobodies. On Fridays and Saturdays, all the pros would come in. We put our $10 up and we would get abused. We wouldn't get two points, and me and my friend would just get pounded. I hate losing, so my whole goal was, I need to get better."

With practice, taking pointers from pros and watching tapes, he developed his skill and took it to the next level ... Max's. Well, almost.

"I guess it took me six months to walk in this door (to Max's). And I would play before tournaments and when tournaments would start, I'd leave. I was scared to play. I wouldn't play these guys," he says referring to vets like Colligan. A year later, Matt and a friend took a chance and played the amateur world doubles and didn't come home until after they had reached the finals.

In 1996, back at Daiquiris Supreme playing foosball, he met Joy. She had played the game before at her parents' skating rink, but never knew there was such a thing as foosball tournaments. Matt, still a semi-pro player, took her to her first tournament at Max's. Although most guys couldn't drag their girlfriend kicking and screaming to a foosball tournament, he managed to get her hooked and competing nearly at his level.

"First couple of times, he let me win. I told him not to let me win or I could not get better," says Joy. "He still beats me to this day, but that's the only way I want him to, because that's the only way I will be able to learn. If he doesn't shoot his best on me, then I can't block my best on him. I don't let anybody let me win."

Now the Stewards consider themselves athletes and train between two and four hours a day. Joy, once a force in the women's singles division until hurting her back, now prefers doubles where her iron curtain defense keeps her and her partners in the upper brackets.

The couple agrees that, unlike others on the circuit, it has worked wonders for their relationship.

"I've seen it bad for a marriage, if they are not both in it," relates Joy. "For us it's good, because we both enjoy playing and we do something together. But I have seen it really tear marriages apart, because the husband played and the wife gets jealous, because he's out, she doesn't like it. ... The same as the woman. I have many friends that their husbands don't like it and they play, and they argue back and forth."

Matt agrees stating, "We love playing. She critiques my game, (and) I critique hers.

"Most mixed couples don't get along," says Matt. "It's hard to see a married couple play together, because they start arguing. We play for fun; it's a hobby. Yeah, we're good players, but it's a vacation."

So far, this summer vacation is going rather well for the Stewards. To Matt's delight, he has made a few ears ring with his wrist rocket shot. He says his best shot is the rollover on the five rod, or the middle bar, that skewers five mini soccer players. From watching him, the wrist rocket on the offensive three bar is the one that takes home the money.

It's the definition of new school foosball - a shot more anchored in power than finesse or timing. To pull it off, a player traps the ball with the offensive three bar and executes a reverse crank using the inner wrist.

Most of their matches end when Matt nails a shot to the back of the goal with his wrist rocket. Almost a ritual, the winning point is followed by a shake of their opponents' hands, a low five and a peck on his wife's lips.

The pair, with Matt playing offense and Joy on defense, breezes undefeated through the brackets to the finals where they await the winner of the losers' brackets.



For Kevin Colligan, foosball is an extended-family affair. Other than Coose, who took a national under-17 title six months after he started playing, his stable includes 14-year-old Kara, another child from a previous marriage. She was the first girl to win an under-17 title and took the juvenile doubles at 13 with a 10-year-old partner.

Although it costs him extra money and might hamper the party atmosphere for which the tournament circuit is known, he doesn't seem to mind taking the kids. "Kids deserve to have fun," he says.

"I have been on every vacation there ever is to go on, and I turn down every vacation, every year, to go to the world championship and national championship," he says. "It's way more fun than any vacation you can probably go to."

Colligan, ranked fifth in the state, started cranking the handles in 1972 at a local roller rink. By the time he was 13, he was winning tournament after tournament in Lafayette. At the top of his game, and one of the top players in the state, he met a girl who also dominated the tables. It was only fitting that the two of them later married in Las Vegas at a foosball tournament.

He kept up his winning ways and is currently a pro, scratching at the pro-master door, only shy by about 600 points. In his glory days - the mid- to late '90s - he played five tournaments a week, dropping quarters along the interstates and highways from Jackson, Miss., to Houston. To increase his points and winnings, he travels thousands of miles a year, playing in Vegas every year for the hall of fame kickoff, the nationals on the Fourth of July, the worlds in Dallas and smaller tournaments all over the country.

Colligan embodies the definition of an old school foosball player. He shoots pull shots - a skill shot using the middle man on the offensive three bar - instead of rollovers, even though he says they are the hardest to use and admits rollovers have won scores of tournaments in recent years. His style is more of the shimmy method, which looks like he is trying to wiggle the bar right out of its slot, than the steady hand of new school players.

Both of his protégés play like him. Not only are they good, but they also use the same wiggle method. In the warm-up beginner's single tournament - not somewhere you would often find holders of national and world titles - Colligan's kids wind up playing finals.

"I was an all-star baseball player. I was a national champ speed skater. I raced motocross for 10 years. I have raced cars, played football. It is the single most intense game in the entire world, besides actually putting boxing gloves on and fighting with somebody," says Colligan of foosball.

Colligan doesn't exaggerate. Though they don't move from the same spot, players brows sparkle with sweat as they stare at the tables and work the handles. A look of strained concentration occupies their faces. You would almost expect them to be jimmying a square into a circle hole. Only when a point is made or a time-out called is there any reaction. It's usually self-righteous exclamations, but sometimes expletives are belted out in the heat of battle.

Colligan says that there's no lack of egos in the sport, especially among those who do it for a living. Those egos and the intensity seldom transplant the action from the table to the parking lot.

"When you are playing, it kinda gets ugly sometimes," says Colligan. "But the thing about it is a pro player will really get intense and really get into it and really play hard. But, win or lose, you shake that hand and you leave it on the table. The younger players want to take it outside and fight. The pro players been playing long enough to where you might get pissed off or whatever it is, you shake that hand, you walk away and you be a good sport about it."

Although it's not his full-time occupation, it's a sport he takes seriously. And he doesn't waste time second-guessing himself.

"Every tournament I go to, I go there to win," Colligan says. "I don't go there thinking I might win or I might not. When I get there, my whole mind is to win."

This tournament at Max's is no different.

Colligan and his partner, a Hawaiian shirt-clad Glenn Arceneaux, roll through the tournament until they run up against a couple of cagey, married veterans in the quarterfinals. The winning team takes on the Stewards in the semifinals. The losers must duke it out in the losers' bracket. Colligan's $25 entry fee looks like a waste when the couple advances after a tough match. To regain a shot at the pot, Arceneaux and Colligan take on a couple of the teams they already beat in nail-biting matches.

As he moves through brackets, one of Colligan's ex-wives, perched atop a pool table sipping a beer in the mid-afternoon, heckles him, telling Arceneaux, "You can carry him, you have a big back." After the only team that defeated them loses to the Stewards, it's time for a rematch. At this point Arceneaux and Colligan have played a few straight matches without rest. The sweat pours and their wrists ache.

In another hand-wringer with the married couple, Colligan's team advances to the finals to meet the undefeated Stewards. To take home the top prize they must beat them in two best-of-five matches. Colligan and Arceneaux buy some time with a trip to the bar, the bathroom and a couple of phone calls. Eventually, they belly up to the table and take on the student-turned-master and his backstop bride. And Matt Steward must face Arceneaux and Colligan - a friend, sometime-partner and a man he once feared to play.



For the first time all night, Colligan's ex-wife is pulling for him. Although she hasn't taken to heckling the other team, she keeps her fingers crossed for him, reasoning that he owes her money.

In the first game of the best of five match, the two teams trade points tit for tat, until Arceneaux and Colligan go up by a couple of points.

However, just as quickly as they take the lead, the Stewards rally and hammer the backstop, sweeping the series at 3-0. A handshake, low-five, a kiss and the Stewards pocket the $255 pot, which will help defray costs of future tournaments.

Within four days, the Stewards began play in the world's championships. Despite their success, bringing home the titles and a couple grand, it will be a while before they rule the brackets again. Other than state championships in October, Matt says he plans on spending more time on the treadmill than at the tables, other than the occasional Thursday night tournament. But that can easily change.

"I will get really hateful towards foosball by the end of December. I won't want to play, then there will be a tournament coming up, and I will just get hooked again," laughs Matt.