Ed Poorman and Avalanche

Ed Poorman, former owner of the Avalanche Pro Speedball team tells all in yet another Catshack exclusive. Ed now semi retired tells the Catshack a few of his thoughts and favorite memories of his days in the pro speedball circuit. At the moment he continues to run his own business and leaves the daily team doings to his associate Frank Connell who is now taking care of all the teams details.  As for Ed, he just keeps trying to make a living in Paintball and doing his best to enjoy what he does.

The team used to be called Easy Company back in 93 and early 94 and we played in the Am division of the NPPL 10 Man Series. We were a Colorado based team with mainly locals on the squad. I was one of the few not from the Colorado area at the time. One of our team mates, the infamous Scotty Flint had an idea to change the team name to Avalanche to help pick up more outside industry sponsors. Now we didn’t get the sponsors that we were hoping for but the name did a lot to change our teams attitude.

After changing the name at the San Diego event that year I took over as Captain and I set goals for the new Avalanche. First one was making the pro cut, we did that and so we set a new goal to make the pro cut again in Pittsburgh and then make decision. In Pittsburgh we did make the pro cut again and then decided to finish the event as Pro, we took third and finished in the pro division in that event and the rest is history. Avalanche did not look back, we became a contender in every event and we got stronger from year to year, picking up new players and sponsors along the way.  By 99 we were the spot light team.

We had players from all over the US and Canada and had our sights set on winning it all. With the likes of Chris LaSoya, Rocky Cagnoni, Richmond Italia, Jeremy Salm, Travis Lemanski, Brian Fow, Dave “Weasel” Cook, Bill Abel, Steve Rabacoff, Glen Forster, Mark Knop and Myself we were the rock stars of the league in both the US and Europe. We won the first 2 NPPL events that year, reffed the 3rd took 4th in the 4th and 2nd at the cup that season to lock up the title, we also won every event in the early 7 man series “Millennium” that season and then things kind of went south. Richmond left the team to join Image and the circle was broken.

We still won events after that but it just wasn’t the same. I think it was in 01 that the infamous world cup incident happened that really broke the team up. After that I did my best to keep the name moving in the right direction and picked up young talented players from certain areas of the country, we had our seasons with the Warped Kids, the Farside guys and then went another direction by picking up the Kapp kids for NorCal, all really good squads. I honestly believe that the Dave Bains, Glenn Takamoto, Danny Tiljak, Cowboy Roy Richards and Brandon Mayo team could have won it all again for us but they just were to young at the time and couldn’t be coached, my fault I guess, should have been a better coach. They had the talent but just to many Chiefs and not enough Indians. After that team broke up I was just about ready to hang it all up and Brandon Mayo talked me out of it again, we got Danny back from Dynasty and Roger Henn from Vicious and Greg Pauley was now our coach and Frank Connell joined the team about a year later.

Last year was just to hard for me, we had lost sponsorship dollars and it was to big of a hardship on me personally as well as Warped, so I decided to turn over the reigns of running the team to Frank. Frank is now co-owner of the team and is handling all the details. I think it is still to early to tell if one league will fold and if we backed the right one or not, the off season will tell us for sure and then its up to the guys. With a down economy and less sponsorship dollars its harder to put a winning team in constant contention.

The teams I think that have the money behind them and can cherry pick the players are the Ironmen, All A’s and Vicious right now “even though Vicious seems to get their talent locally” and I think the Vicious program is one that can contend next season in the pro ranks. Those are the teams of the future, they have the money, the leadership and the organization to keep them in the hunt. I was lucky enough to win more than I lost, both on and off the field. I have won championships in the US and Europe, been on the winning old man masters team twice, one even won five and three man events with Avalanche and was lucky enough to get to play in a few national 7 man events with my son Alex Poorman and couldn’t have done any of it without my team mates.

Its always great to hoist a cup and as my old friend Travis Lemanski used to say “its good to be king”, even if its just for a day”. I would love to say thanks to all of my old team mates but their are just to many to name, they were all great in their own way. I will always miss the competition because deep down inside I honestly love this game.

My plans for the future are to sell some property here in Nebraska and move my operations to Florida so I can get out of the cold weather in the winter and hang out with my old team mate Rocky Cagnoni more often. I think Mike Paxson, Rocky and myself make a pretty good fishing team. I would also get a chance to spend more time with another old team mate of mine “Richmond Italia” who is also thinking of relocating to FLA.  Have fun on the field, thats what its all about.

Submitted by Ed Poorman of WarpedSportz

edpoorman@warpedsportz.com
http://www.warpedsportz.com

The Catshack appreciates Ed taking the time to stop by The Catshack and share all this with us…..stay tuned as this is just getting interesting.