The eXtreme Croquet Society (ECS) was formed in 1995. The origin of our game came about as an eruption of ideas while trying to play croquet in the East Texas woods. The Charter Members were on a retreat in the Piney Woods. We had been introduced to croquet by our Sunday School teacher at the time, Ed Sherril. So we thought it would be fun to bring the croquet set with us and play a little game while we were on the retreat. Of course the East Texas forests are not well suited for playing a standard game of croquet. As we were thinking about how we were going to play, we decided that it might be more fun to just play in the forest and place the wickets in places that would be more difficult than simply hitting the ball through the hoop. As we began laying out the course, more and more ideas flooded into our brains. Then we began playing. Again, ideas and suggestions were bursting forth from all involved. Rule changes that were necessary. Unlimited course length. No whining. Yelling indiscriminate phrases while hitting. Our version of Extreme Croquet was born that very weekend. We came home infested with chiggers and we began writing down the laws and by-laws for Extreme Croquet.

Once we had all our rules and amendments and by-laws and traditions figured out, it was time to start playing!! The first official ECS event was held late Summer 1995 at Frankie Carter Randolph Park. Four of the five Charter Members participated in the tourney. Back then, we differentiated between Invitational Tourneys and Open Tourneys. So this tourney was officially named the 1995 Frankie Carter Randolph Invitational. Ed Sherril had been named as our official equipment manager since we were using his croquet set and he was on hand to take pictures and offer encouragement and advice. All of this occurred before we even considered a web site, but because Mike has a photographic memory, the stats from the tourney were saved when we finally got a site up and running two years later. Chief was the big winner that day and as it happens, he was consistently our best (and luckiest) player throughout our heyday. Between the Summer of '95 and the Summer of '97 the ECS hosted 21 different tournaments. Little did we know the growth that the sport was about to encounter.

In 1997 we launched our first web site. It was hosted by my ISP at the time and I was just learning HTML. Considering its limitations, the site did its job quite well. It had all the info one could ever hope to find about our newly created sport. At the time we were unaware that we were not the only crazy croquet lovers in the world. Other like minded individuals contacted us and we began to adopt "Local Chapters" for the ECS. The first was the Lakewood Croquet Club (LCC) based in Washington. They had a very great looking site and they were quite obviously kindred spirits when it came to having fun with a croquet mallet. More and more people began finding our websites and soon we had a good number of Extreme Croquet clubs all linked together through these various websites. Tom over at the LCC came up with the cool idea to just have one central site to promote the sport and have a unified ranking system. Extreme Croquet Online (ECO) was born! Several ECS members were ranked in the top 25 world rankings on the ECO with Chief achieving the highest rank of any of our members by making it all the way to number 2 at one point. A croquet equipment manufacturer noticed the rumblings our litle sport was making and actually created some Extreme Croquet equipment specially designed to withstand the rigors of extreme play. Extreme Croquet seemed to really be making a rise and we were at the crux of the movement.

What happened next was probably pretty predictable. All the Charter Members had been married a few years. Some had moved away to different parts of the area. Some had moved away to different cities. Some had moved away to different states. The ECS hit a wall. We were having a hard time even getting together once a year to have a single tourney. We forged forward having a few select tourneys at opportune times, but things just weren't the same. We all still had the spirit, we just didn't have as much time to devote to the sport as we did in the early days. The years 1999, 2000, and early 2001 were fairly dry years for the ECS. In those 3 years we probably played only 3 or 4 tourneys. Two of the five original Charter Members lived out of town and could no longer participate. One became a father. We all had careers of some variety going by this time. Things were looking really bleak. I must admit that at times I thought about officially disbanding the ECS and looking forward to times when we may be able to get together, play a tourney, and remember the good old days.

In the Summer of 2001, I was able to go be a leader with our church's youth group. I got to know a few of the older high school kids and introduced them to Extreme Croquet. BOOM!! An ECS revival! They loved it. We played two matches that Summer plus another one (in falling snow) on our Mid-Winter Retreat at the beginning of 2002. So the ECS came back to life with the same zeal we had when we started, only with different members. I purchased four Extreme mallets from Oakley Woods Croquet and one of our new players purchased one as well. We played several tournaments from 2001 to 2003. In March 2002, Sean started an Extreme Croquet club at Texas A&M called Aggie Croquet. However, by mid-2003 the ECS was again in decline. Even so, Aggie Croquet was just taking off. Their web site launched sometime in late 2003 and by that point they had 24 active members and a regular tournament schedule. Their first annual Fall Classic was held in 2003 and I was able to attend as referee/photographer/videographer. At one point they were an official club on campus, had upwards of 150 members, and were featured on the local news! They continued operations even after Sean graduated and it appears they finally fizzled out sometime around 2007.

Since then things have been very sporadic. We've played a few one-off games with some of the college guys at church, but nothing coming close to a consistent schedule. In 2016 there was a flurry of interest from several of the college guys about playing more often. So the Extreme Croquet League was born with the goal of having an annual summer schedule to look forward to.