Foosiers open 3rd tournament

The IU Foosball Club, the “Foosiers,” host their third foosball tournament Sunday at 1 p.m. in the IMU’s Back Alley.
     
A pair of $20 Amazon gift cards and “IU Foosball Champs” t-shirts will be given to the first-place doubles winner, and refreshments will be served. Members said they hope to have a decent turnout, but most of all, they are there to have a good time.
     
“Basically, we’re just a bunch of people playing foosball,” senior president Sharan Kukreja said.
     
Kukreja, an international student from Dubai, said he grew up loving the sport because it was so big in his country.  He said one of the first things he did when he came to IU was to look for a local club.  Now that he’s a senior and on his second presidential term, he wants to hand off the table.
     
“I’m trying to get as many freshmen members as possible so someone can start at the freshmen level and take it all the way up,” he said.

The problem with that is drawing interest in the club has been hard in recent years.  Marketing officer Jarad Bacon, a senior, said one of the reasons he joined was because he had played a lot before.

“I had a table growing up, so I played a little bit then,” he said, “I brought my table to college and my roommates and I played a bunch.”

Senior events officer Sandeep Belani, also from Dubai, has played foosball for five years and has been on the club the last two years. He said foosball players need the right dedication to stick around.
     
“If people have passion, they have passion,” he said. “But if they’re just learning, it takes a lot to stay around. We’re just trying to encourage people.”

The club had drawn interest when they were on display at the Student Involvement Fair and had their callout meeting, but since then things have gone south.

“It was really surprising that they were not aware that there was a foosball club at IU,” Belani said.

Kukreja said that for the future, he wants to travel to different schools and play foosball.  E-mails to Michigan’s president and club e-mail account have not been responded to, but Kukreja keeps his hopes up.

“We could have interschool tournaments, just small matchups, to make it more competitive,” he said.

The tournament is open campus-wide, for any skill level.  Bacon said the more practice people get, the better player they become.

“It only gets better the more you know,” Bacon said. “It’s a little harder game than I originally thought.”