Local foosball star Moya Tielens is once again on top of the Worlds.Battling pain from a shoulder injury, Tielens won both the women's singles and doubles at the United States Table Soccer Association World Championships in Las Vegas last month. She's now $1,550 richer and on her way to the International Table Soccer Federation Championships in Italy.
While Tielens struggled with a pinched nerve, her doubles partner Gena Murray persuaded her to bring her intelligent pull-shot to the table, knowing Tielens was her best chance to fill the spot in her trophy case.
"I had never been able to win women's doubles so I sought after her," said Murray from her home in Texas. "She really played through the pain. It was an honour to play with one of the best players in the world."
Success is nothing new to thirty-seven-year-old Tielens, who has held the number one female foosball ranking for the last four years. "I was always really intrigued by it," she said. "I don't know what or why or how, and nobody showed me anything. I didn't have a teacher or anything like that it was just, you know, here's this thing and let's see how to make it work."
For Tielens, the game is not about spinning bars with funny looking miniature players attached, it's a puzzle or chess game set in overdrive.
"The whole point of it is really to overcome the obstacles in front of you that your opponents are putting up. "But everybody has a weakness. So you're trying to put up something to find their weakness but you're also putting your offence against them. The strategy and physicality really go hand and hand. I compare it a lot to chess or speed chess because you don't have time to stop and analyze."
Tielens is fully conscious of the "geek factor" associated with her sport. After all, the "geek factor" is common to most activities that outsiders don't understand.
But the atmosphere is charged. Even ESPN covers major championships.
"You go there and it's like you're a little celebrity in your own little world."
Perhaps rightly so. In 2004, Tielens became the first woman to win a major USTSA open mixed (male and female doubles) title while playing the entire tournament in the forward position - the key spot on the table that controls the game.
