As part of a fundraising effort for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Yahoo! recently launched Foosapalooza, a month-long tournament that culminated last week in the crowning of Yahoo!’s best foosball players (well, in Northern California anyway). Our 110 teams (with names like Your Mom, The Old Guys, Foos Your Daddy, 13 Armless Men and a Dream, Peg Legs, Confooscius, and Toooooooooor!!!!!) raised more than $10,000.

Foosball is an old tradition at Yahoo!. All of our offices around the world have at least one table. This wasn’t your father’s foos tournament — we have some formidable players around here. We’re talking wristbands, sweat towels, and strict enforcement of U.S. Table Soccer Association regulations (e.g., no banging the five rod).

For the finals last week, we hosted exhibition games in the Foos Pit with some of the world’s best players, including Rob Atha from the U.K, who is ranked #2 globally. We even had a “Play the Pro” challenge. Live play-by-play commentary of the semi-finals and final game was supplied by foosball pro Mark Torres of Inside Foos.

The following teams made it to the semi-finals:

• Your Mom: Neal Sample, John Van Stralen
• The Euros: Alexandre Deve, Richard Sandenskog
• ehwb3: Daniel Wong, Vijay Raghunathan
• The Rollers: Bruce S. Lee, Jacob Rosenberg

Who won? I won’t spoil it for you — check out the video below. The winners each took home a Tornado foosball table, generously donated by a few of our engineering execs. Check out photos of the finals here and here.

Next year? “The Ocho” may be calling. Oh, and if you’d like to be the proud owner of a three-foot Foos Dude, signed by pro players, bid on our auction through October 12th.

Rich Ezekiel
Foosapalooza Tournament Master
Director of Product Management, Digital Home Products