Fylde Coasters Flyball Team

About Us

2007 Flyball Memories

The Fylde Coasters Flyball Team was set up in 1996 by Les Chapman, a mobile dog trainer. He attended many courses on how to start and train flyball. After making the jumps and buying his very first flyball box (which we call the agricultural box that we train and introduce new dogs to) and rolls of netting for outdoor use and rubber matting for indoor practice, he got together a small team.

The team consisted of collies and a whippet. The dogs had been doing well in training and the time had come to enter a competition. Having never entered a competition before, Les and the team didn't know what to expect or even how to go about racing. The venue was Nostell Priory 17th July 1999 and what an experience it was to be. So many noises, dogs barking, teams everywhere all in uniforms with their team names and individual logos. Dogs in matching harnesses all lined up ready to race, the excitement and intensity as the top teams performed. In the early days the teams dogs could be relied on to run in any lane but their own..! The time of 24.73 seconds was good considering neither manager nor team had every raced before. A lot of help and support was given to the team in the beginning from other more experienced flyballers.

A lot has happened since the very start of the Fylde Coasters and the team has evolved. The original team split on 5th November 2000 and made another local team called the Blackpool Super Novas, Les saw this as a positive move and another team was formed still under the Fylde Coasters. We learnt from the previous team and went from strength to strength not only did we have 1 team but 4 teams including a multi breed team which consisted of a Collie, a Springer Spaniel, a Labrador and a cross breed. We trained and competed hard and dropped the time down to 19.77 seconds losing almost 5 seconds since the Fylde Coasters was originally set up.

We had two exciting years with this team competing all over the country enjoying the ups and downs of winning and losing and generally taking part. From luxury hotels (ok maybe not the Ritz or the Hilton but still nice and warm with hot running water and a loo..!) to camping in all sorts of weird and wonderful places. Eating in pubs and the famous Little Chefs up and down the motorways, or sometimes having barbeques in the dark..! At the end of the summer season of 2002 we saw some great results, including Multi Breed team of the year. The points mounted up and the dogs gained a variety of awards. Jed was awarded first place in best Springer Spaniel as well as second place in dog of the year. TJ was awarded second place in best Labrador. Bob was awarded third place in dog of the year.

Again the team evolving all the time and another split was made in October 2002, taking 7 members and their dogs to create another local all collie team called the Red Rose Rockets.

The 2003 season saw the Fylde Pick N Mix team win the John Beswick Multi Breed Trophy. It was a big shock when the results were read out at the Anglesey competition in July 2003 as we had been awarded first place. This was a great honour for us to receive the trophy in it's final year of a three year sponsorship by John Beswick. Anglesey was a great weekend as not only did we win the trophy but we scooped four firsts in the same weekend, two sanctioned and two multi breed. During this year Maddy has received flyball dog, Intermediate and Graduate for 200, 1,000 and 3,000 points respectively. Boogie achieved flyball dog for 200 points. Quincy gained his Intermediate for 1,000 points. Emerys gained his Graduate for 3,000 points. Emma received her Advanced award for 5,000 points. TJ, Holly and Jed gained their Silver awards for 10,000 points.

2004 where has it gone! I must be getting old (no comments on that!) Well 2004 was an excellent year for recruiting new members, not only to train but also to compete in our starter teams. Notice I said the word teams as we had the Fylde Hot Dogs and the Fylde Donkeys competing in several starter competitions throughout the season. Both the Fylde Coasters and the Fylde Surfers teams did extremely well. With the repositioning of dogs and tighter passing the teams got some great times. The Coasters with only 4 dogs, with a fastest time of 20.62 and the Surfers with 6 multibreed dogs, with a fastest time of 22.15. During the year a number of awards were gained by our dogs from Flyball dog 200 points up to Gold award of 15,000 points.

What a year 2005 has been, so much has happened. Remember the new starters I told you about in 2004? Well some are doing well in starters and some have progressed to make our 3rd sanctioned team the Fylde Rollercoasters, who over the year got a fastest time of 22.77 not bad for their first year in flyball. Now the famous Surfers also had fun during 2005 keeping up tradition of an all multibreed team gaining their fastest time of 22.61 at the Summer Championships and coming a fabulous 2nd place. The Coasters eventually reached the dizzy heights of division 1 after a lot of hard work. Being in division 1 certainly pushed the Coasters to their limits with our fastest time of 20.06. Multibreed saw us put 2 teams together in the same division! Running dogs from the same family, racing in opposite lanes in different teams. We certainly had fun. The end of a very successful year for all the Fylde Coasters saw our founder and team captain Les Chapman leave the team and sunny Blackpool! For the sunnier climes of the Costa Blanca in Spain. All the Fylde Coasters wish Les all the best for the future.

Think that's it for 2006... I can't believe its over so quickly

In 2006 I was just finding my feet as the new team captain of the Fylde Coasters. Not an easy role to step into after Les had done such a good job, but I do like a challenge. The team have been great and extremely supportive as I adjusted to my new role. So much to do and organise never mind the decisions to be made. Mind you on my head be it, if it all went pear shaped and not being completely perfect I made the odd judgement of error. Yet survived to tell the tale and do it all again the next weekend. You can never really follow on in someone's footsteps as we all have our own way of dealing with situations and how we would tackle and run things. 2006 has been a real learning curve and training and teams have had a re-jig and I feel have produced some great results.

The Fylde Coasters got a best time of 20 seconds dead, couldn't quite break that 20 mark. With a rotation of 6 dogs to include Maddy, Quincy, Jess, Emma, Leo and Bonny with only 4 ever running in the Coasters and Maddy, Quincy, Jess, Emma, Leo, Bonny, Megan and TJ in the Rollercoasters with again 4 only ever running with their best ever time of 20.76. The Surfers have done us proud, by nurturing novice dogs and running steadily throughout the year. Multibreed saw us have 2 teams with a varied mixture of dogs and abilities to produce 2 very sound teams. The Summer Champions saw us qualify all 3 of our sanctioned teams with the Fylde Rollercoasters winning their division with Megan, Maddy, TJ and Leo to scoop the huge trophy and a 1st prize photo.

Already in 2007 we have continued with our 10-week training programme for both the existing team members and new people to the sport. We have been on a training seminar to see if we can improve on our training methods and how we teach our dogs. We are actively updating our website weekly if not be it a bit slow, its hard to find the time in between training and racing and writing race reports. We are currently training at Farmer Parrs in Fleetwood every fortnight on Wednesday evenings (Please see our training dates for more info). Our 3 sanctioned teams, 3 Multibreed teams as well as our 1 starter team, can't wait for the summer season to start.

Let the season begin and racing commence and if it's half as good and enjoyable as last year, I couldn't ask for more. Good luck to all my team.

What can I say but 2007 has already been a fantastic year for the team with numerous wins for all our teams. The cream of the crop has to be at the 2007 European Championships when we took 3 sanctioned teams. The Fylde Coasters Division 8 winners, Fylder Rollercoasters 2nd in Division 11and Fylde Surfers 5th in Division 15. All of our teams did brilliantly. We met our European neighbours from Germany and Belgium and what great racing they gave us.

2008 better watch out as this will be the year the Fylde Babies will be set free, is this the 3rd or even a 4th Multibreed team? We will hopefully be training Tia and Tasha the Boxers, Poppy the GSD, Dillon the Border Collie,Nushka the Australian Shepherd, Jethro the Sprocker, Mika the Jack Russel, Bobby the Cocker and Esky the Australian Shepherd Working Sheepdog cross . Thats how many puppies!

We are actively training and encouraging new members and hopefully these will become active and enthusiastic BFA members. For more information regarding the British Flyball association go to our links page for a direct link.