2 major events done. Who'd have thought what we have just achieved was at all possible even just a few short months ago. There's not many organisations that could have done what the BFA has just delivered - and all done on a volunteer basis, so you all, members and officials, should be justly proud of yourselves and our amazing association; the strength of character, commitment and community is simply incredible and we now have an amazing platform on which to launch an even more impressive flyball comeback in 2022, and I for one just cannot wait.
The Outdoor Festival quickly followed on the heels of the Indoor Festival and I have to echo the sentiment in my last blog about the quality in depth of the BFA flyball teams, and I still can't really believe that the Division 1 of the Outdoor Festival was even more keenly contested than the Indoor. For the first time ever we had an entire top division outdoors all racing under 16 seconds, and the Sunday Round Robin saw just 0.3 of a second separating the fastest team from the slowest, unbelievable, literally anyone could have won. The racing and sporting ethic amongst the teams also stood out and is something I hope will endure as we build back in 2022. Congratulations have to go to Lightning Strikes, coming out on top in the most fiercely contested Division 1 battle in living memory, well done - and well done to Commandos for pushing them all the way, Barking 4 Balls for setting an amazing new club record and to Focus for putting their dogs first in the RR and for running the fastest time ever run on grass, in the Speed Trials - 15.09 - wow.
After checking my FitBit which tells me I averaged 28K steps a day and less than 5 hours sleep a night for the 13 days we were in the field putting these events on, I shall mostly be sleeping this weekend! But straight back to business with a Committee Zoom next week as we have a lot to review. Both weekends have given us a lot to think about in terms of format for these events in the future and we have put to test a large number of new rules which we haven't seen in action much yet; there's lots of lessons learned, lots of tweaks to be made as we found out what works well and what doesn't quite work. Thanks for all your constructive feedback and we'll set about tidying up all the issues picked up over the last couple of weeks and start on our planing for what I'm sure will be a Record Breaking year of fantastic events in 2022.
I hope you all enjoyed yourselves and your flyball hangover simply fuels your desire for yet more flyball. Thank you to everyone who was involved whether organising, helping or participating; you have all been awesome. Congratulaions High Flyers and Lightning Strikes, Indoor and Outdoor British Flyball Champions. Flyball is defintiely back!! Gotta love the BFA.
Juddy