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Galliano native Pedro Flores jerks his arm sharply to the right, then flicks his wrist hard in a counter-clockwise circular motion.
Immediately after the wrist flick, Flores hears his favorite sound in the world.
“SLAM,” and then “PING.”
After that, it’s sweet silence. The whole process is as fast as lightning and takes only a few hundredths of a second to play itself out. But it never gets old to Pedro – even if he does it 1,000 times in a day.
“Good shot, Pedro,” says Pedro’s older brother Casey to break up the silence after the quick explosion of sound. “When you hit it like that, you can’t even see the ball move.”
The slam is the sound of a foosball figure crushing the ball on the family garage table at the Flores home in Galliano.
The ping comes immediately after and is the sound of triumph for any serious player. It’s created when the ball rolls past the defense and collides with the back of the metal goal for a successful strike.
It’s a series of sounds that Flores said he hears in his dreams.
But the beauty of it all for Pedro is that these days, he hears them pretty often in real-life, as well.
Flores is quickly rising through the national foosball ranks, emerging recently as one of the top statewide players in the sport’s doubles circuit.
The 29-year-old Galliano man recently won the International Foosball Promotions 2015 Tornado World Championships in Rookie Doubles at a 40-plus team tournament in Kentucky. Together with partner and Ohio native Tim Litteral, Flores’ team outlasted Canadians Alexis Deslauriers and Mathieu Savaria in the finals, rallying from a 4-1 deficit to score a 5-4 title-clinching victory.
To be a world champion is a feeling unlike any other, according to Flores. With the win, he will now be able to be a traveling member of the IFP Tour in the 2016 season – something that will allow him to further accelerate his career.
“I had no idea when I got to Kentucky that I’d be coming home with the trophy and the title,” Flores said. “When I first started playing, I never envisioned anything like this happening. I worked hard, dedicated myself to it and it’s just a great feeling. I’m not going to stop working. I want to keep pushing and see where I can go from here.”
FOOSBALL COMES FROM COMPETITIVE NATURE
“I started like anyone else would start – I got my butt kicked a lot.”
Flores isn’t some sort of foosball ringer. He got where he is today the old-fashioned way – by practicing and playing as often as he can.
“When I played those first times, I was bad – just like anyone else would be,” Flores said.
The Galliano native said he never played the game as a child, because his family didn’t have a table when he was growing up.
He attended South Lafourche High School in the mid-2000s, and was a soccer player – the sport which Pedro said he’s loved for all of his life.
Flores was good. He was an All-District player for the Tarpons throughout his playing career on the pitch.
The decision to test out foosball didn’t come until 2007. Together with his brother Casey, the Flores brothers started to play at tournaments around Louisiana.
Pedro will be quick to say that he wasn’t a good player at first, but his big brother saw the potential all along. He remembers watching Pedro beat veteran players in his early days.
“These guys had been playing for like 15 or 20 years when he’d only been playing for six months – maybe even less,” Casey Flores said. “But Pedro was still winning and beating them. He learned fast and picked it up right away.”
Pedro said his confidence grew in 2008 when he won a beginner’s doubles tournament in Slidell. That was the day that he realized foosball was something that he wanted to be his No. 1 hobby, if not his biggest passion.
“After that day once I saw my trophy and everything, I said to myself, ‘OK, I want this. OK, this is what I want to do,’” Flores said. “I started working hard and practicing and I’ve never stopped since.”
That perseverance led him to the world championship.
UNKNOWN ALLEGIANCE FORMED
“I had never met this dude in my life,” Flores said when asked to talk about his partner at the World Championships. “I didn’t know anything about him.”
Flores is now a pretty avid foosball player who competes in several tournaments throughout the country each year. He attended the Worlds in Kentucky hopeful that he’d compete in the Amateur Doubles Championships division with partner Jennifer Le.
But the team struggled and was eliminated early in the tournament.
“It just didn’t work out for us,” Flores said. “It never clicked.”
So with amateur doubles out the window, Flores pondered the rookie doubles tournament. Flores said he knew he wanted to play, but had no partner.
In doubles foosball, each player works two knobs – one player handles the offense and the other defense.
Flores is an elite offensive player – one of the best goal scorers in the world for his level of competition. But his defense is lacking, so any partner he picks must be gifted in that phase of the game.
Enter Tim Litteral – a veteran player who is known as “Captain” throughout Ohio foosball circles.
Flores said he learned through a connection that Litteral, too, was looking for a partner. After scouting him out, Flores saw that Litteral was a defensive-minded player who was “a beast” with the back knobs of the table.
The two had never met before prior to the start of the tournament. But there they were – together in a tournament bracket. They were complete strangers who were chasing a world championship together.
“It was a little weird at first, because we didn’t know one another,” Flores said. “But we got along fine and made it work.”
Some common attributes helped with that.
Flores said he connected with Litteral right away because when on the table, they’re just alike. Neither is the most gifted player in the world, but both overcome it with sheer will.
“He and I connected because we both play with our hearts,” Flores said. “He doesn’t give up. He’s relentless. I don’t give up. I’m relentless. We clicked right away because he’s as tough of a competitor as I am. It was a perfect match.”
That combined perseverance was needed in the championship match.
RALLY SPARKS TITLE
The Flores/Litteral pairing worked great.
The duo won their early-round games and cruised through the early stages in the tournament.
As the event got to the later stages, Flores said he started to realize that things were getting serious and they had a chance to win.
“When we got deep into the tournament and were in contention for the King’s Seat, I knew that we had a real chance to win,” Flores said. “Before that time, we were just sort-of playing, having fun and seeing what would happen.”
The term “King’s Seat” in foosball is the position that every team wishes to be. To own that terms means that you’ve won all the way through the winner’s bracket and must now be beaten twice in the championship round to be eliminated.
Flores and Litteral earned the King’s Seat after a tough match in the semifinals, which set up a meeting with Deslauriers and Savaria – a pair of Canadians who were each hungry to take home the title.
And it showed. Flores said Deslauriers and Savaria dominated, stifling any offensive attack he made.
“They were just stomping me,” Flores said. “I couldn’t do much. They were so good.”
The Canadian team won the first match, which set up a winner-take-all battle for the title.
In that one, the teams split the first two sets, which set up a winner-take-all set for the title. In that set, the Canadians went ahead four goals to one.
The first team to five wins.
“We were in a huge hole,” Flores said. “But not once did I think we were going to lose.”
He was right.
Flores caught fire once behind in the championship match, putting away three-straight wrist rockets to tie the score at four-all.
That meant that the team who scored next would win it all.
The Canadians had the ball. They matriculated it from the middle of the table to the front. They were in prime position to get a quality shot that would win it.
“The odds would tell you that at that point, it’s all over,” Flores said.
The odds were wrong.
Savaria fired a blistering hard shot toward the goal. But Litteral was up to the challenge, blocking it from getting in.
Then it happened.
The force of the Canadian’s shot was so great that Litteral’s save became instant offense. The ball ricocheted off Litteral’s man and went across the table at a fast clip. Flores was unable to control the ball as it went by, but neither could the Canadians.
“PING!”
It dropped into the opposing goal.
An amazing save, a little bit of luck and the sweet, sweet sound of the ball dropping into the goal won Flores and his partner the World Championships.
“It was the crappiest, awesomest goal ever,” Flores said with a laugh. “It was nuts. Some of the best players in the world came and told us after that they’d never watched a more exciting game in their lives. It was good defense. Tim came through. He saved us.”
After the match, Flores said the only thing that immediately went through his mind was to shake his opponent’s hands.
After he did, he saw Litteral in the crowd celebrating with fans. He joined in and rejoiced.
“It was amazing,” Flores said. “There were so many people from Louisiana, and they were all rooting for us. They motivated the heck out of me. They gave us so much power throughout the match.”
LOOKING AHEAD – BROTHERS WANT SPORT TO GROW LOCALLY
But Flores isn’t done. That’s part of the reason why he’s in the family garage on this Sunday afternoon with Casey. Together, the brothers are practicing offense and also giving a demonstration on the game’s rules and techniques.
“It’s all angles, man,” Casey Flores said.
“Once you get all of the skills and all of the techniques, that’s when it becomes chess,” Pedro added. “It’s your mind against your opponent’s mind. That’s what I love about it.”
With his title, Flores is now able to play even more. He has a traveling pass for the 2016 season, and he plans to use it.
“I want to win more,” Flores said, while looking at his latest collection of trophies.
But maybe more important than the victories is seeing the sport grow. Both Casey and Pedro said they want to get rid of the stigma that foosball is a drunk man’s game that is only played in bar rooms and pubs.
The duo said they would love to start a local league in the coming months to introduce the game to anyone who’d like to learn all of the ins and outs.
“We want to get it out of something only played in the bars,” Pedro said. “It’s a technical sport. It’s more technical that a lot of the sports in the Olympics. It’s not in the Olympics now, but I think it should be. It’s something that’s played and enjoyed around the world.
“I know I love it. I won’t stop. It’s in my mind and in my heart, and it’s something I’ll keep chasing.”
One slam and ping at a time.
