[TEntwistle]

As for the orbit balls last year, our team went out the day of kickoff (or one day later) and scouted for orbit balls and found very few in existence in the north west part of Philadelphia. Actually, the ones we found had not been sold because the price tags were missing and the manager had planned on returning them to the manufacturer for credit. The other thing that we heard was that the manufacturer was discontinuing them anyway.

In short, there were almost no orbit balls around last year at kickoff, but the explanation may have to do more with the future of the product rather than FIRST snatching them all up. On the otherhand, the lack of blue-red soccer balls is very interesting. If this holds true and we are using blue and red soccer balls in 2 weeks, I would have to rate this as the best bit of sleuthing so far for the 2010 season.