AFM's Got Balls!

Last week most of the European snowboard screne met in Biarritz for the ”We’ve Got Balls” soccer tournament. We are talking about a football World Cup for snowboarders. The winners received €1,000 to give to a charity of their choice. The concept was really fun, each country pulls together a team of snowboarders and they all play against each other: Switzerland, France, Spain, England, Austrians (aka Innsbruck United) and Locals all came to play in the southwest of France.

I was part of the Swiss team alongside my fellow countrymen Romain De Marchi, David Pitschi, Thierry Kunz, Fredi Kalbermatten, Stephan Maurer, Stephan Probst, Alessandro Boyens and team captain Nicolas Mueller.

Each team had to have a girl on the field at all times... Which meant I had no choice other than run all the time. It was exhausting! Luckily Hana Beaman showed up on the last couple of days and was down to run in the hot midday sun. I won't even mention losing my big toenail, getting major cramps in both thighs, suffering from an eye infection and several crashes at tackling attempts.

We played against the Spanish team first and I was quite frightened by them as their players were all strong and good at soccer. Luckily we made it through with a first victory.

Then we got smashed by the Austrian Team. But it was pretty fun to play against Lisa Filzmoser and Aline Bock. I say play against but actually on the girl's side of the field, most of the action happened right before the game in a fun dance/warm-up session.

We lost our last game against the Frenchies, who were lucky the game didn’t last a couple more minutes. On the French side, Margot (Rozies) was running all over the place, she was super into it so I decided to take advantage of L’Arrogs' mellower running style (and who was actually quite easy to dribble).

The next day was a rest day, with perfect off shore surf all day, so Vanessa, Margot, David and I spent the day surfing. So three 2.5 hour sessions didn’t really give us much rest.

We started the second day of matches playing against the English team, which had won all their games until then. Everyone had warned us about their angry style of football but somehow, against all expectations, we won. We had a pretty good tactic for that game: Romain stayed on defense blocking anything or anyone who got through, in fact most of our guys stayed on defense all the time but Nicolas and Fredi were always ready to run to the opponents' area and strike.

We played the last game against the Locals and my good friend Vanessa was playing on their team after leaving the French team, as they never let her play because she is a girl. They were actually really fun to play against! They were playing for the fun of it and didn't take things too seriously like other teams. We won, by the way. After all the games were played, we ended up in second place after the English team and qualified for the semi-final. At that point I wasn’t even able to walk anymore.

The finals were held on the last day of the tournament. We played against the Austrians again in the semi-final, I almost decapitated one of their players by lifting my foot over his head trying the reach for the ball when he went for a header. Anyways... We won again and were up against England in the finals!

The final was a very long game. We were tied 0-0 at the end of the game, and still tied at the end of extra time. I hated that match, I ran non-stop and spent the whole time in front of the English goal, but every time the guys would try to score, they always chose to take the kick themselves (usually missing the goal by a mile) but never gave me the ball. I had spent the whole week running and hurting myself, and in the last game I was suddenly not worthy of touching the ball anymore. I got really angry and didn’t participate in the penalty shootout.

In the end, England won after sudden-death penalties. Good on them, because they included both of their female players in the game--Jenny Jones and Laura Berry--both of whom did really well. We ended 2^nd with lots of sore muscles.

The whole week was really fun, even if no one could walk anymore after the overdose of soccer. I suggest we choose a less violent sport for next year... Who’s up for beach volleyball? Because meeting all my fellow snowboarders at the beach was super fun, plus it was for a good cause.

Vanessa was still around for a couple extra days after the event, which we spent surfing at the beach. It was definitely easier on the body than soccer! Thanks to Method Mag who helped getting things organized for this event and thanks to all the soccer girls for being such good sports mates: Vanessa, Lisa, Hana, Margot, Aline, Jenny, Laura, Alex, I’ll see you all next year!

Thanks to Lisa Filzmoser, Yoann Hamonic and Vanessa Andireux for the photos.

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