HOT NEW! The Heart of Texas ninth Annual HOT Tournament. April’ Fool’s weekend. Petanque Extravaganza. Two Open Doubles Tournament in one weekend. WOW!

Hello everyone and welcome,

You are all invited to Austin TX to come participate at our ninth Annual  Open HOT Tournaments.  Two different tournaments in two different great locations.  First on Saturday April 1 at the Historic Mueller Browning Hangar, a spectacular location in the middle of Austin.  The next  day Sunday April2 at the Zaytouna Lounge, a landmark for international petanque players.  Everyone is welcome, bring your families and friends.  Register early.  A+Love Arsene.

 

HOT NEWS! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hello everyone and welcome,

Here is a recap of 2016. It was a wonderful year for the Heart of Texas Petanque Club. We played and taught the game all over the world. We organized Regional FPUSA Tournaments, organized Qualifiers for the World Championship and had our 7th annual HOT International Open. We made huge international connections with the FIPJP and the FFPJP and with great international players. We were welcomed in Angers, Austin’s Twin Sister City. We were featured at the Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of the America. We played many local, National and International tournaments. We had a player from Austin selected to represent USA at the Triplette World Championship of Petanque in Madagascar. We participated at the Petanque America Open. WOW, what a year! Thank you to all members, families and friends who support HOT. Without you this endeavor would not be possible. Merci.

HOT NEWS! TEAM USA AT THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP IN MADAGASCAR.

Hello everyone and welcome,

Wow, can you believe that we again we participated at the World Championship of Petanque.  But this time we went there first class, because we had a super coach the several times World Champions Marco Foyot to help us to rise to the occasion.  The host Nation this year was Madagascar, our players had to travel half way around the world and break several times zone to acclimate to the beautiful city of Antananarivo, Madagascar.  Marco Foyot was kind enough to invite the team first to go visit him and train in France on the way to Madagascar.  Only 3 members of the  Team went to France it was composed of Juan Garcia, Pascal Corchia and Walt Elder who all had the chance to  visit the Obut factory as well as do some training there and also spend time at Marco’s house in Loubeyrat that is located in the Puy-de-Dôme  in central France.   When I heard that, I knew they were in for a gift of a lifetime.  I had the opportunity myself to experience Marco hospitality and it is grandiose. Merci!

Walt one of the Team member who is from Austin Texas even had the opportunity to play in a tournament in Clermont Ferrand in Doublette with Marco as part of the training.  Wow! How about that! Too fantastic!  The Team reconnected with their fourth player P.J Mallette who traveled strait from Oregon to Madagascar.  Now that the whole Team was complete it was time to be at the opening ceremony among the 48 Countries of the best players in the World.   On the first day Pascal got sick and could not participate at the Tir de Precision so Walt had the opportunity to take his place.  What great deal to do that for him.  The next day the Team got to play their first game against the Italian team with Diego Rizzi, that is a hard team to play for a starter. And they went on to play several other Counties  China, Israel, Czech, Turkey two times, Cameroon and  Norway.   The results were not the best but the experience to be participating at the World Championship  will be engraved in their memories forever.  Congratulations to all of you.  

A+ Love Arsene.

HOT NEWS! HOT AT ST EDWARDS UNIVERSITY.

HOT NEWS! The Heart of Texas Petanque had the opportunity to demonstrate and teach the game of Petanque at St Edwards University in Austin,TX.  The event was during their International Education Week.
It was a glorious day in a beautiful setting right in the middle of the campus. Most people don’t know but the City of Austin has 13 Sister Cities and 3 Friendship Cities. Angers,France (the birth place of Damien Hureau) it is Austin’s newest Sister City, the capital of France’s Maine-et-Loire district, a lovely and historic region and France’s fourth-largest industrial producer. St Edwards University is in part responsible for the merging of the two Cities. HOT had established ties with the Petanque Clubs of the region of Angers and we were welcomed by the Mayor of the City. Every year they even schedule a special tournament when we come to town. Unreal! Thank you to all the volunteers who came and donated their time to teach and support the game Petanque in Austin and a special thank you to Bill Clabby and Cynthia Darling.  Merci

 

HOT NEWS! Bernard Chasseport

Hello everyone and welcome,

The world of petanque just lost a great man. RIP my friend Bernard Chasseport. He was the organizer of the biggest petanque indoor tournament in Europe, Les Trois Jours de Poitiers. I first met Bernard in Lafayette Louisiana where we found ourselves playing against each other in the final of the Lafayette tournament. We became instant friends! I had no idea that he was the organizer of Poitiers he invited the Heart of Texas Club to go there and participate. We were welcomed like dignitaries. I could see in his eyes that the love for the game was burning constantly. I realized how much effort he had to do to organize such an incredible event. All the top champions will never miss it. When I first walk under the dome it was surreal! Imagine what it is the hear the metal balls clicking of 512 Triplettes. Wow! It was like a symphony! Bernard on the top of the tower looking over all the courts was like a maestro. He was conducting the whole thing. He will be everywhere running the show from the gorgeous buffet to giving the medals to the champions. You will be miss my friend! All my blessings to your family. I Love you!    A+  Love Arsene.

HOT NEWS! LE MONDIAL LA MARSEILLAISE A PETANQUE

Hello everyone and welcome,

Well I could not miss Le Mondial la Marseillaise a Pétanque. So I got up every morning at 3 am and watched it live on Dailymotion. Years and years ago I used to be the main clown in the hit musical ”Barnum” in Paris, the producer and director was Yves Mourousi.  He knew I was playing petanque so he told me that one day La Marseillaise will be the Rolland Garros des Boules. And won’t you know when the president of the Marseillaise Michel Montana did his speech to open the tournament, the first thing he says was quoting Yves Mourousi ” La Marseillaise c’est le rolland garros des boules ” I could not be more excited. I knew this 55th edition was going to be spectacular. One of our members Jim Schwobel flew to Marseille to participate as well as members of The Nelson Ranch club and The Legation Boules club. So Austin and Texas was well represented. Jim teamed up with Kirk and Parker Edwards – father and son from North Carolina Petanque. And they did win one game! It is a big achievement in Marseille because you loose one and you are out. There is thousand of teams so the elimination process is strict. If you loose one game you are out of the tournament. Congratulations to the three of you. We had many other friends in it like Shannon Hodge and Celia Crittenden and of course Marco Foyot who was trying to equal Albert Pisapia record 7 times winning La Marseillaise.  But sadly lost in the semi Finals. I watched every games including the Women and the young generation.  What a delight it was!   Enjoy the photos. A+ Love Arsene.

 

 

HOT NEWS! PETANQUE AROUND THE WORLD.

Hello everyone and welcome,

Le Mondial a Petanque la Marseillaise is around the corner.  Many great teams will come from all around the world to participate hoping to finish in the Le carré d’honneur sur le Vieux Port de Marseille.  One player in particular to keep an eye on is Marco Foyot.  He does have a chance to enter the hall of fame of Marseille to equal the legendary Albert Pisapia record of seven time winning the Marseillaise.  This year he will play with Tyson Molinas and Vigo Dubois, a four-time winner of the Mondial.   We have players from Austin going to France to participate.  We have Jim Schwobel representing the Heart of Texas Petanque Club, also we have Peter Gray, Mary Stratton, Rudy Vallee  and Jacques Richard representing the Nelson Park Petanque club, and  many other friends from different club around the Nation like Shannon Hodge and Celia Crittenden etc… Bonne Chance to all!

In the meantime I am playing in Colorado.  Many years ago I helped built a couple of courts in the back of a French restaurant in Colorado Springs.  Those courts are still available today even so many different owners took over the restaurant.   The Pikes Peak Petanque club get to play there all year long.  I also  have the opportunity to play with the Famous Miles High Petanque Club in Denver and  with many talented performers at the Colorado Renaissance Festival.  This is not La Marseillaise but certainly a lot of fun.

A+ Love Arsene.

HOT NEWS! FPUSA NATIONAL IN FRESNO, CALIFORNIA.

Hello everyone and welcome,

The Heart of Texas Club got the chance to be represented at the National in Fresno by Arsene and Jim. It was a fantastic experience on many levels.  It was for both of us our first National in USA, we did many National before but all in Europe.  It was great to see the flawless organization of the Fresno Club in action.  They even did it without their president been present at the event, that does says a lot about all the club volunteers. Thank you so much for taking care of us. It was a full weekend with Women and Men Singles on Saturday and Women and Men Triplettes Mixed on Sunday.

A National tournament usually gather some of the top players in the Nation and this was for sure the case in Fresno.
Jim and I did play in both categories, the Singles and Triplettes mixed with Michelle Healy from the San Antonio Club.  We won the Triplette Consolante!  Let me tell you this is a great achievement regarding the fact that the field of players was unreal.
In the Singles we went all the way to the quarter of finals when I got eliminated by the player who won now 3 times the FPUSA National Singles. So that was real good too.

In Fresno they have a large community of players from Laos, the Hmong people. What a fantastic group, so welcoming and such great players.  For the last few years they won almost all tournaments and that wasn’t different in the Singles the top two finalist in Men were By Vang who played against Paul  Yang.  It was a pleasure to watch such quality players on a very difficult terrain.  By started strong and Paul wasn’t able to catch up even so he put up a huge battle .  In the Women Chia Yang Paul’s wife took it all the way  against Holly Sammons.  The next day on Sunday, the weather again was real hot  but most of the time we were able to play in the shade under those great Californian trees.

In the Triplettes Mixed it was no surprise to see By again in the final this time with his wife May Lis Yang and Fue Vang.  But they had a serious team against them.   A triplette  combination of  Celia Crittenden, Pascal Corchia and Philippe Agnesse.  It was a tense game all the way, By’s team was the favored but Pascal last shot made them go all the way to 13 points and for the first time took away the Championship from the local team.  With an explosion of joy the trio hugged each other on the piste and got a standing ovation from the spectators.  Congratulations to all!     A+ Love Arsene

Results: National Triplettes Mixed:

First place: Gold medal, Celia Crittenden, Pascal Corchia, Philippe Agnesse
Second place: Silver medal,  May Lis Yang, By Vang,Fue Vang
Third place: Bronze medal, Chia Vang,Paul Yang, Jer Thao
Fourth place: Diana Jacob, Mark Greenberg, Artem Zuev
Consolante:
First place: Michelle Healy,Arsene Dupin, jim Schwobel
Second place: Janice Bissonnette, Thomas Moua, Chan Xiong

Results: National Men Singles:

First place: By Vang
Second place: Paul Yang
Third place: Wolf Kurz
Fourth place: Philippe Agnesse

Consolante:
First place: George Bedrossian
Second place: Patrick  Baslet

Results: National  Women Singles:
First place: Chia Yang
Second place: Holly Sammons
Third place: Janet Kirtland
Consolante:
First place: Barbara Kongsbak
Second place:  Xua

HOT NEW! THE HEART OF TEXAS PETANQUE JUST WON THE JEAN LAFONT MEMORIAL.

Hello everyone and welcome,

The Dallas Petanque Club just organized their Annual Jean Lafont Tournament.  It is one of the best in the Country.  The organization is flawless and the welcoming unprecedented.  Even the weather was welcoming we started with a 63 high and didn’t go above 72 toward the end of the day, pretty unreal for this time of the year in TX.  The amount of courts are limited so only 36 players can participate, but composed of skilled players.  It was a hard competition all day long.  We did four rounds of elimination and into the  quarter, semi and final.  Seven games to make it all the way to the Jean Lafont trophy.  The final was composed of a well  known Dallas team, Cesar and Xavier against an Austin team Arsene and Jim.  A big crowd were cheering the local team but Arsene and Jim finished on the top.

Thank you to all the organizer of this great event, thank you to the hosts who invited everyone the day before for dinner and thank to everyone who participated.

A+ Love Arsene.

 

Results: Concours.

First place:  Arsene Dupin, Jim Schwobel

Second Place:Cesar Maksoud, Xavier Grandjean

Third place: Jeanne Marie Browning, Richard Fernandez

Results Consolante:

First place: Martin Johnsen, Remi Prevot

Second place: Salah Kabous, Frederic Nave

Third place: Mikael Malagies, Stephanie Malagies

HOT NEWS! WE MADE HISTORY!

Hello everyone and welcome,

The Heart of Texas just hosted the FPUSA Inter-Regional and our annual HOT Tournament. What a blast!  He took us weeks of preparations but it was well worth it. We had players coming as far as California, Florida and Ohio to try to qualified  for the National in Orlando Florida for the FIPJP Men and Women Championship Qualifier that will be in Belgium in 2017.  Most players participated at both events. It was a monster weekend of petanque. The first day it was at the magnificent historic Browning Hangar. The level of all the players were so strong. It was no way to tell who was the better team. But one team merged out of the pack on both days to make history by winning both events, Amine Najah and Arsene Dupin. No one ever achieved that before in the history of the Heart of Texas Petanque Club. What a great achievement for HOT.  We are still on cloud nine.  Another team who distinguished themselves were Ed Porto and Jim Schwobel who came up second in the Regional and third in HOT.  Dallas and San Antonio were well represented as well with a third place of Karim Moumouni/ Richard Fernandez and a fourth place to qualified of Juan Garcia/ Stephen Johns.  On the women side Gina Dejoy and Shannon Hodge won the Women Regional against a local HOT team who played fantastic, Linda Schryver and Marion Brown.  Also we noticed a  great combination of the San Antonio and Dallas club’s Jeanne Marie Browning/ Amy Bienvenu who finished third and a combination of player from HOT and Dallas Marie Claude Briswalder/ Menzina Churchman  who also qualified to go participate at National Qualifier in Orlando. Good luck to all of you for Belgium.

The next day it was in a completely different setting and atmosphere. It was located at Eastwoods park and we did a sauvage style tournament. Lucky we had a lot of shade and the good weather welcomed us for the whole day.  Again most of the teams were the same to battle this time for the annual HOT Trophy. Christophe Chambers and Walt Elder were the team in the final against Amine and Arsene. They started real strong with a 5/0 they were playing so good that the crowd was cheering them.  But slowly by slowly we were able to catch up until they started again to go ahead with a big margin 10/6 and again we came back to 10/10 and they got 12/11 and by a miracle we finished 13/12. The small crowd who stayed to the end loved it.  It was a weekend  extravaganza of petanque! I like to thank everyone who participated at one or both tournaments and I also like to say thank you to  the board of directors of HOT and all the clubs members and everyone who helped to make those two events a great success.  Merci.  A+Love Arsene.

Results in the FPUSA Regional

Men
First place: Amine Najah/ Arsene Dupin
Second place: Ed Porto/ Jim Schwobel
Third place: Karim Moumouni/ Richard Fernandez
Fourth place: Juan Garcia/ Stephen Johns
Results: Women
First place: Gina Dejoy/Shannon Hodge
Second place: Linda Schryver/ Marion Brown
Third place: Jeanne Marie Browning/ Amy Bienvenu
Fourth place: Marie Claude Briswalder/ Menzina Churchman
Consolante:
First place Rick Armstrong/ Walt Tollefson
Second place: Earl Lovell/ Wielfried Afopa
Third place: Cesar Maksoud/ Xavier Grandjean

Results in the HOT Tournament
First place: Amine Najah/ Arsene Dupin
Second place: Christophe Chambers/ Walt Elder
Third place: Ed Porto/ Jim Schwobel

Fourth place Thierry Amisse/Lucas MC Clure

Consolante:
First place: Juan Garcia/ Richard Fernandez
Second place:Amy Bienvenu/ Jeanne Marie Browning
Third place: Linda Schryver/ Earl Lovell