Kait Vosswinkel
The mastermind, Curt Bjurlin, playing Futpong with his son Ziggy.
Two newly replaced sidewalk squares in the 2600 block of Chamberlain Avenue on Madison’s west side served as the inspiration for “Futpong,” a new skills-based game that former soccer player and coach Curt Bjurlin thinks could become a nationwide sensation. In fact, he’s midway through a Kickstarter campaign in which he hopes to raise $50,000 to manufacture and distribute the game.
Futpong, a cross between soccer, tennis and pingpong, is played with a mini soccer ball and a 16-inch-high net that stretches across six feet. Designed to help soccer players increase foot skills, balance and coordination while also appealing to general users, Futpong
Kait Vosswinkel
What you need to start playing the game.
can be played on any hard surface — including sidewalks, garage and basement floors, and parking lots during tailgate parties.
The game evolved last summer out of frustrating sessions Bjurlin spent with his twin 13-year-old sons, Teddy and Ziggy, trying to juggle a soccer ball.
They decided to incorporate the new sidewalk squares, which were lighter in color than the older ones, as a boundary. Then they placed a two-by-four in the middle as a wooden “net” and kicked the ball over it and to each other. The trio tested the new game at a block party, which initially led to some weird looks from neighbors. “There’s a little bit of a barrier to entry for people who have never played soccer,” says Bjurlin, an environmental consultant who has assembled a business-development team that includes son Teddy, Montana-based entrepreneur Dave Wager, and Rick Davis, a retired soccer player and former captain of the U.S. National Team in the 1980s. “Still, we ended up playing the game for six hours at that block party. I couldn’t even get on the court.”
That kind of early reaction, along with successful Futpong challenges he’s conducted with area youth soccer players, makes Bjurlin confident his team will reach its Kickstarter goal. As of July 6, the campaign had raised more than $9,600, and supporters have the option to donate a Futpong set to south Madison’s Millennium Soccer Club or the Milwaukee Soccer Development Group. The project closes on July 24.
“If this takes off, it will change the way youth players develop and control their skills,” Bjurlin says, adding that a neighborhood soccer culture does not exist in this country the way it does in other soccer-fueled nations. “A lack of juggling skills is probably the number one reason why the United States has not created the elite soccer players we should.”
