KAOS Dog Sports
New Year’s Eve Flyball Tournament
with tournament paperwork.
Flyball is a team sport. A group of 4 dogs race relay-style against another team to see who is the fastest. Each dog takes their turn to go up the lane, get a tennis ball from a box, and bring it back over the finish line. If the dog crosses the start line before the previous dog finishes, or if they drop the ball, or if they don’t go over all the jumps, then that dog has a chance to go again to do it correctly otherwise the team gets a ‘No Time’.
Teams race against each other, but they also race the clock. In the North American Flyball Association (NAFA), if a team finishes in less than 24 seconds each dog gets 25 points, less than 28 seconds Is 5 points, and less than 32 seconds is 1 point. When a dog earns certain levels of points they get titles such as Flyball Dog (FD), Flyball Dog Excellent (FDX), and many more.
With the pandemic many tournaments were cancelled and once it was safe to have tournaments again NAFA decided to offer double points for a period of time so that dogs could make up the points.
Kaos Dogsports normally has two small flyball tournaments in the year, one in March and one in November. With the double points set to end on Dec 31, 2022 (this has since been extended to June 2023) the decision was made to host another tournament at the end of the year.
There were seven teams entered from five different clubs. This was very small for a flyball tournament so there needed to be breaks put into the racing schedule so that the dogs got enough time to rest between races and still racing was done by early afternoon.
The first day of the tournament was New Year’s Eve, so Kaos provided some hats and party supplies and at the end of the day there was a toast ‘to flyball’. There was even a resolution board with items such as ‘less vet bills’ or ‘get a puppy’.
The event on New Year’s Day was planned to start a bit later than usual to accommodate those who had been up late celebrating. It was a good, even if somewhat small, flyball tournament; there were some new dogs racing for the first time, some dogs who achieved big milestones, and laughter both on and off the lanes.
