NEPL Presidential Elections
Meet Your Candidates
Results at the bottom of the page!
Chuck Webster
Current NEPL President & Wicked Pissa Pinball Pit Admin
Chuck's Pitch
What does the New England Pinball League mean to me?
The simple answer is the league means A LOT to me. As one of the original members of the league, I can count on one hand how many weeks I’ve missed of the 30 seasons.
It would be difficult to find a person in the league that has played at as many locations as I have. Getting to experience all the different sites, games and meeting people from every corner of New England is the absolute best part of the NEPL. I’ve taken full advantage of it.
Beyond my love of playing in the NEPL, I’ve also have given my all to help shape the league into what it is today. I started hosting during the 3rd season at my place (The Wicked Pissa Pinball Pit) and have been doing it ever since. I’ve helped co-host at many other sites and have been instrumental in recruiting new locations and helping them get off the ground.
I’ve played and/or volunteered at every league finals since day one. Many times, working on games to make sure they were in tournament ready shape or even bringing in my own games when we’ve had locations that need additional machines to make finals work. Directing a 160 person tournament is no small feat and I’ve been fortunate In recruiting some awesome help to make our finals run seamlessly and always finish on time.
So to answer the original question- the league means a ton to me and I want to be sure it continues to thrive and help take it to the next level.
What can you bring to the table as the NEPL president?
I don’t think anyone will question my dedication to helping to make the league such a success. Over the years I’ve worn many hats while assisting in league duties. Since the early days I’ve been particularly involved in helping with organizing/hosting our Finals.
Among the things I’ve assisted with at finals include registration, running the matchplay software, tech support, TD’ing, site recruitment, providing games and pretty much everything else involved in making finals work.
I’ve also put in countless hours of my own time preparing and organizing the raffles and merchandise to keep these fun benefits within the league’s budget. Many of you saw me recently at your location as I crisscrossed New England delivering the league shirts. Another thing I’m particularly proud of is helping to organize the fund raiser for the victims of the Schemengees tragedy. Together we raised over $5000 for the Lewiston Auburn community.
A less visible but extremely important role I’ve played is the formation of NEPL LLC. An organization of our size requires some type of legal status so we can do all the things that people have come to expect from the NEPL. Forming the corporation and keeping in compliance is a crucial part of the day to day business of the New England Pinball League.
Outside of the NEPL I hosted many other tournaments. Some of the more memorable events are the Trash Talker invitational at Pinburgh & Pintastic. Numerous charity tournaments, high stakes events and even casual pingolf. Altogether I’ve easily hosted over 300 events with about 30 of them being events with 100+ players. Even during the Covid shutdowns I managed to keep pinball alive with the Family Flip Off streaming events. Directing so many and varied tournaments provides me with a unique perspective on what it takes to host successful pinball events in New England and manage large crowds.
What you would like to achieve during your term, including how you will continue to grow the league and serve its current members?
Since 2012, the league has seen phenomenal growth, but that doesn’t mean there’s not room for more. There are plenty of areas that are underserved, and I would like to see the folks in other parts of New England have the same fun as we currently have. I’ve already arranged for three new sites to come on board for Season 31. With the support of the NEPL reps, officials and players, I feel that we can continue to spread the pinball love to underserved areas.
An area that I’d like to see improved is a more centralized way of decimating information and collecting player feedback. Because of member requests we added Discord, Instagram, and Twitter but we aren’t using them to our fullest potential. With constructive player feedback and some additional volunteers to manage the flow of information we can make this happen.
Official State Championship – NEPL LLC is already in the early stages of sanctioning our own State Championships. I intend to work on making this a reality in 2024. Due to the sheer size of the New England Pinball League our standings are unquestionably the best ranking system of players in the northeast. It’s time we use this data and host real annual state championships.
Growing the NEPL streaming channel on Twitch is also on my agenda. This season the league has invested in a wireless streaming rig to share between sites. The goal is to provide the equipment at no cost to our hosts so that they can learn how to stream while promoting the league, their sites and pinball in general.
How you plan to achieve those goals?
The short answer is through team work with our elected officials and our fantastic hosts. With over 600 players and dozens of locations, it's impossible to be all things to all people at all times but the team is dedicated to doing what’s best for the members and keep it fun for all. You can help shape the league too- At the end of every season we review comments and suggestions for new ideas. With that said- We’re human, sometimes we make mistakes. When we do, we’ve been quick to fix, recover and improve.
Anything else folks should know when making their decision?
I believe that most anyone who has been in the league more than a year or two knows me and my desire to make the league the best it can be. I’ll continue to do my best to live up to the New England Pinball League mission statement and work with the Admin Team in making the New England Pinball league fun for all.
Ty Ueda
Pop's Pinball & BearMoose Brewing Site Admin
Ty's Pitch
What does league mean to me?
NEPL has been a place that has grown my love for the hobby, spoken to the slightest bit of my competitive side, and made friends all along the way. In my early years playing, it was a great way to get hands-on time with new games I hadn’t had the chance to see or reason to understand. Lots of long nights hunched over a single machine to figure it out the best I could and weekly league nights at Tokens Taproom and Jim’s Realhouse in New Hampshire and Maine.
Fast forward half a decade and I am now half of the dream team running NEPL sites Pop’s Pinball and BearMoose Brewing. The script has flipped and now I get the chance to be the host that brings communities together. Making a space where people can find themselves and find their friends has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. League is a place where complete strangers can come together, find common ground, get in touch with their friendly competitive side, and go home feeling good.
What you can bring to the table as NEPL President?
In addition to having a firm commitment to league and location play, I bring a fresh set of eyes and energy to the NEPL administration. I have been involved with the league as a player outside of the leadership structure long enough to know how it feels to be on the receiving end of information and now have had a few years being on the site admin side as well.
I think NEPL is in need of new ways of being more accessible, friendly, and enjoyable to all players, new and old. I am committed to listening to suggestions, taking them into account, responding kindly, and have no problem saying I have made a mistake or done something wrong.
What would you like to achieve during your term, including how you will continue to grow the league and serve its current members?
While NEPL has seen incredible growth in recent seasons, it has also fallen short of adapting and adjusting to criticism and suggestions from members. In the past two seasons, we have seen a record number of players, locations, and even states drop affiliation with NEPL all together. This could have been prevented with better communication, reception to feedback, and striving to reach compromise against the odds.
I would like to grow the league by finding common ground amongst all players and locations, and by making the proverbial room one we can all enjoy.
How do you plan to achieve those goals?
While I would like my campaign to focus on opening communication and maintaining better practices for inclusion of all players, there are a few hot button issues that I would like to address more directly:
- Finals format, registration, and qualification
- Discussion and accommodation of WPPRs/IFPA Points.
- Distillation and centralization of pertinent NEPL information through an effective singular channel.
- Allocation, use, and transparency of dues.
The current finals format and process has overgrown its capacity to run smoothly and have competitive meaningness. The biggest pieces of feedback I have received as a site admin is to focus on reducing overcrowding, fixing the broken registration process, and increasing length of play for those participating. This can be done by things like re-introducing division splits, reducing overall number of divisions and competitors, and introducing things like a change of play format to a double elimination bracket or changing finals format altogether. There are no easy or obvious answers, but a cohesive solution can be found through polling, exploring options, and not dismissing feedback.
WPPRs are a contentious issue and their inclusion or rejection has ostracized both evangelists and adversaries. Personally, I have a decisively neutral emotional attachment to the issue, but feel that the current dismissal and non-negotiable attitude towards the topic is both belittling and unkind to WPPR enthusiasts. I think that through some direct conversation with IFPA officials, some small changes to how we operate as a league, and some small extra administrative leg work that I, as your President, am willing to take on, we can reach common ground amongst all players. I am not willing or interested to make major changes to how we operate as a league in order to accommodate WPPRs. However, I am willing to take on a little extra work and encourage site admins to do the same to include those who feel strongly on the matter. It is a good thing to remember that different things are important to different people and different players in different states may not have the same opportunity as others. It’s important to think outside of yourself when contentious issues arise.
The league has grown significantly in the past few years and that means that we all receive information in different ways. In the past, standings and site scoring was kept in an archaic but charming Excel-like website that took a handful of minutes to load if your browser didn’t timeout loading the request. We have made incredible strides with a new website that is both fast and cohesive on the admin side. The website still has a long way to go, but with some creative input from some of our talented staff and players, we can make the website a centralized location for scores, information, updates, and administrative functions. I think everybody is on board when we say nepl.org is awesome, and is ready for a facelift to make it our central home and smooth out some of the challenges we face.
The budget, allocation, and distribution of dues should be public information to all participating members. Those details should be readily available to anybody who has joined the league. That is extremely standard protocol for any union, non-profit, or organization that collects regular dues. Following my previous point of streamlining information, we should make this information more readily and easily accessible. In addition, it would behoove the league as a whole to save space in the budget to pay qualified individuals for things like website design, graphic design for merch and assets for web and social, and any other basic infrastructure costs to support such a large organization. Budgets are tough, but they are always an equation worth balancing, which may mean finding more efficient ways to handle things like the sourcing and distribution of merch and allocation of funds to the finals prize pool.
Anything else folks should know when making their decision?
I’m a new face to some but I am also a warm smile to many. To those who I have not met, I look forward to visiting your home sites, getting to know you, and play our 3 or 5 balls of fun. To those who I see regularly, I’m looking forward to representing you and making positive change happen. Let’s do this!
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