Eurolanche

Epilogue

What a ride! Eurolanche changed my life. Eurolanche changed the lives of a lot of other fans as well. We’ve been through so much during these 10 years. If someone would’ve told me back in 2003, when I saw my first live broadcast of Colorado Avalanche hockey on TV, that I’ll be among those little heads and arms one day, right there sitting in the Pepsi Center and cheering the players of my favorite teams in person, I wouldn’t have believed him. The Eurolanche Invasion I was when it all happened, when it all became reality. I didn’t even know how, but I really sat there, cheering and shouting for the Avs to defeat the hated rivals from Detroit during the first game attended by the Eurolanche Fan Club.

The most beautiful thing about the Fan Club during the past ten years has been that the entire project expanded from uniting only a handful of members. More and more people had the chance to venture to Denver and other US states thanks to Eurolanche. Would they ever get the chance to go there if it wasn’t for Eurolanche? The vast majority certainly wouldn’t. Another group of Fan Club members were those, who haven’t had the opportunity to travel overseas yet, but have attended several events in Europe organized by Eurolanche. This is how they could spend at least a couple of hours with fanatical North American hockey fans just like them.

Eurolanche taught me a lot. First of all, I improved my English. No school could’ve shaped my mind like the Fan Club did. I learned to edit photos and videos, write official press releases, send newsletters, communicate with official representatives of clubs and organizations, learned to not be afraid of conducting interviews with anyone and learned to give them myself, organize trips in Europe and to the other side of the world... Thanks to Eurolanche, I’ve been to places I most likely couldn’t have gone to any other way.

Eurolanche became an integral part of my life and the life of my family. It will never make money like Apple or Microsoft, which were created on the basis similar ideas and coincidences like Eurolanche. Undoubtedly, the biggest profit of Eurolanche will always be to fulfill the dreams of regular fans, who once told themselves that the Colorado Avalanche would be their team and no one could convince them otherwise.

I’m grateful to Eurolanche for one important thing. It taught me that nothing’s impossible. Literally. If something seems impossible to us, it’s only impossible in our minds. It’s only up to each one of us to get over the imaginary impossibility and to fulfill everything we dream of. Personally, my dreams came true thanks to thorough, long-term planning. For example, back in August 2016, I already knew exactly what I’ll do in August 2017. I knew that I’ll be at Eurolanche’s anniversary meeting. And before that, I knew that I’ll participate in the Eurolanche Invasion IX. And in Invasion X. Excuses like I don’t have time, I don’t know what I’ll be doing, it’s way too soon never applied to me. I consider them to be subconscious barriers standing in the way of achieving your goals.

It may seem like we’ve achieved everything we possibly could during our ten years of existence. Yes, we did, we simply couldn’t achieve more. We put all our cards on the table and won round after round. My words are proved by everything I described in this book. It’s no self-praise, but mere a mere fact and the result of teamwork.

Existence without goals would be meaningless. I would like to continue the tradition of the Eurolanche Invasion project if there continues to be interest in it. Furthermore, it would also be great if we could continue to organize member meetings, as well as meetings with Colorado Avalanche players. All my hopes and dreams ultimately depend on European Avs fans. I’ve fulfilled every dream I could. Now it’s your turn. Eurolanche is here for you and will gladly help you.

My long-term goal and biggest dream is to achieve the status of the official Fan Club of the Colorado Avalanche. After 10 years, I only know one thing – that it certainly won’t be easy and I don’t know if it’s even possible in the horizon of the next 10 years. I know that our team did everything it could to achieve this and put in a great deal of effort and hard work in recent years. Now it’s their turn. We can only promise them one thing – to continue the fantastic work of European enthusiasts, to help them gain new fans and to further strengthen the European fan base. Eurolanche is here to help the Avalanche. This is our priority. We have a long road ahead of us, but we’re in no rush.

We’re still determined and dedicated in the spirit of the motto gracing the walls of the locker room in the Pepsi Center – It’s all about commitment. We’re not giving up and we still believe. Because nothing’s impossible, right?

In case you’re interested in the unabridged, colored PDF version of the book, contact us at eurolanche@eurolanche.com. The physical copies are all sold out.

 

The Eurolanche Fan Club wouldn’t be in the state it’s currently in without the help of other people. Even at the deadline for this book, our website www.eurolanche.com publishes at least three articles in Slovak/Czech per day during the regular season, which makes it the most active Colorado Avalanche fan site in the world. A big thank you goes out to the entire current editing staff, as well as to former editors, who created and continue to create content for our website and social media accounts without pay. Their dedication, reliability and punctuality are truly exemplary.

Despite the editing staff working as one group, I’d like to single out several tenured editors in alphabetical order, because I couldn’t appraise their contributions otherwise. Brano Bukovy is one of our longest-tenured editors and he watches the majority of Avalanche games in order to write game summaries, no matter the result or team performance. Michal Hezely has the best English amongst all of us, which is why all our original English articles and all official material for the media, or directly for the Colorado Avalanche pass through his hands. Aside from his hard work figuring out and correcting our mediocre English, he also deserves a big thank you for the translation of this book. The role of Jakub Kantor is also irreplaceable. As a professional graphic designer with an own company, he creates the entire graphic identity of Eurolanche and all its projects. All banners, infographics, logos, as well as flyers, guides and various other things are the fruit of his labor, which is why he deserves my gratitude. Jakub Klos is the nervous system of Eurolanche. He’s been our chief programmer since 2011. He continually improves our main website, or creates new sister websites. If it weren’t for his work as a professionally-trained programmer, we would have never gotten this far. Rudolf Sery is the Vice President of Eurolanche and, aside from our betting competition Eurolanche League, has been supervising all activities connected with the functioning of Eurolanche that I can’t due to my lack of time. He also deserves a big thank you, as does our former editor Norbert Gruber and Tomas Vnuk, who has helped me with our promotional material on several occasions.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank all friends and acquaintances of the Eurolanche Fan Club, who have supported us throughout the years in many different ways. Either with regular meetings in the US or Europe, media reports about our activities, but most of all, with words of support, which motivate us to continue to be even better. In alphabetical order, I would like to thank Josef Cafourek, Adrian Dater, Nicholas Daviscourt and his family,Terry Frei,Mike Chambers,Andy Kaya,Kyle Keefe,Conor McGahey, Peter McNab, Marc Moser, Petr Novotny, Nicole Sharpe and Jake Schroeder. A group thank you goes out to Filip, Petr and their team from the Czech restaurant Sobo151 in Denver, to Taylor, Gabe and their team from the official Avalanche shop Altitude Authentics, and to Pat, Debra and other Pepsi Center employees.

I’d like to thank all journalists, writers and reporters, who wrote about Eurolanche during the past 10 years. If it weren’t for their willingness to publish our story, significantly fewer people would know about Eurolanche.

A big thank you goes out to all Colorado Avalanche fans, who continue to support us. A special thank you to fans from Colorado, who gave us their game tickets for free on several occasions and to those, who invited us to their homes. The list would be really long and I wouldn’t want to forget someone, which is why I didn’t choose to name them. I’ll remain grateful to them forever.

Last but not least, I’d like to thank my family and friends, who’ve gotten used to my regular trips to the other side of the world and aren’t scared to allow me to go away so far for so long (at least on the outside). I’d also like to thank my mother, as her attitude and benevolence allowed me to become a fan of a team on the other side of the globe and to lay the groundwork of this unique Fan Club.