5 Year Anniversary Party

5 Year Anniversary Party – First and foremost, thank you to everyone who has been a part of this amazing ride over the last five years. Damn. Five years. Just amazing. I never dreamed five years ago that this league would still be rocking and rolling (see what I did there?!) like it is today. The friends and family that have become the core of this league has made me love Boston more than I ever thought I would.

One thing I will never forgot is how it all started. I posted the first free skee event on a couple calendars online and was assured by a few guys I was working with at the time that a bunch of people were coming. Friends of friends. The best type of referrals. So the night of the event I showed up early, got everything setup and waited. And waited. And waited. Just me and the bartenders (who were clearly not happy to be there). Just as I was about to leave, two guys rolled in that heard about our event. While I was pretty defeated at this point, I told them about the league, we rolled a few games, and I never saw them again. Complete failure. 

I needed a new approach. Something that would spark interest. As all of you know, skeeball sells itself. I’ve yet to meet someone that hates skeeball. Most people just don’t believe there is an actual league out there. But what interests people in Boston? What do I love about Boston? Simple… the sports! The Red Sox. The light bulb went off. How about I give away a couple Red Sox tickets at the next free skee event. It had to work. People love the Red Sox and people love free events. So I re-posted my second free skee event with Red Sox tickets as the prize for two weeks out. That would give me plenty of time to pitch the idea to Boston.com, the Metro and a couple other media outlets.

Crickets. No emails, no responses, nothing. It was such a great idea… how is no one picking up on this? Then finally, a week before the event a writer at Boston.com replied to one of my emails saying that she would pitch the idea to the editor. I thanked her and attempted to provide more information about the event. No response. She went dark and I never heard from her again. So frustrating. Three days until the event and all I can think about is rolling skeeball on the third floor again by myself.

Then my email blew up. Literally email after email starting coming in asking all sorts of questions about how it worked, how to sign up and a million other questions. I specifically remember an email from Brian that I wish I still had laying around that asked about 30 questions. Most were absolutely ridiculous, but it made me laugh. I must have spent 45 minutes answering them all in my reply. One question that stood out was: New York or Philly rules. My response, Boston rules. Apparently that question sealed the deal and Brian, Sam and Marco joined Season 1. I honestly had no idea where all these emails were coming from until one mentioned Boston.com. This was back in the old Boston.com days when the website didn’t totally suck. Our event was featured on the main page. Boom! My breakthrough. The emails continued to flood in. Then the metro reached out. Front page and a full write-up about the league and event on the second page. Jackpot.

Honestly the rest is history. We kicked off Season 1 with 48 teams and haven’t looked back since. So again… thank you to everyone who has been involved. I’m proud to call all of you friends and look forward to building those friendships along with creating many more in the years to come. I hope you can all join us next Thursday and celebrate 5 years!

Duke