On Wednesday, the IFPA announced a series of organizational changes following last year's OBX Fall Flippers incident—the fallout of which led to the resignation of the Women's Advisory Board in November and months of community scrutiny over leadership and communication failures.
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Kaylee Campbell has been competing for nearly ten years and created the Carolina Pinball Championship Series, a traveling circuit that helped rebuild competitive community across the Carolinas post-COVID. She's served as the IFPA North Carolina State Representative for three years and continues running leagues and tournaments at Super Abari Game Bar in Charlotte. Professionally, she's a Senior Director in IT.
Travis Murie started competing in 2017 and moved to the St. Louis area in 2022 to join The Pinball Company. He's traveled across the US and internationally for tournaments, helped run events focused on welcoming players of all skill levels, and co-hosts the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast.
Ashley Weaver discovered pinball and competitive pinball at the same time—a charity toy drive tournament in December 2016. She took over the weekly tournament at 8-bit Arcade in Renton, WA in 2018 and still runs it today.
These three join existing staff: Josh Sharpe (President), Zach Sharpe, Andy Bagwell, Adam Becker, Germain Mariolle, Michael Trepp, and Brian Woodard.
I asked the IFPA what each new member would be focused on. Their response:
"Kaylee, Travis, and Ashley are joining the International Flipper Pinball Association as staff members, and each brings a complementary set of experiences that will help strengthen the organization as it continues to grow.
Collectively all staff members will be working on new initiatives focused on improving policy clarity, strengthening competitive integrity, and ensuring that IFPA-sanctioned events are welcoming, consistent, and well-supported worldwide. Their work will span internal process improvements, clearer guidance for tournament directors, consistent and fair reported-incident response, and thoughtful updates to how the IFPA supports and communicates with its community.
While each staff member will naturally take ownership of specific projects as needed, the broader goal is collaborative: bringing fresh perspectives and operational experience to help the IFPA evolve in ways that benefit players, organizers, and volunteers alike."
The phrasing around "incident response" and "clearer guidance for tournament directors" reads as a direct response to the communication breakdowns that plagued the OBX situation.
Previously, the mission focused on positioning the IFPA as "the governing body for pinball as a competitive sport," with language about pinball being "dormant for far too long" and goals around generating "media coverage and corporate backing" through partnerships with "location owners, operators, distributors and the entire coin machine industry."
The new mission statement:
Mission Statement: To steward the sport of competitive pinball by empowering volunteers with the resources to host fair, inclusive competitions that unite players of all backgrounds through our official world rankings.
It's both simplified and softer. More focused on enablement and infrastructure than fighting for a place in the world. And notably, it explicitly centers on volunteers and uses "inclusive" language that wasn't there before.
You can learn a lot about an organization from its mission statement—how it sees itself and what it's built to achieve. So I had questions about what these changes signal for the IFPA's direction.
First, I wanted to know if the IFPA no longer sees itself as a governing body, and whether that meant prior objectives had been achieved.
"The updated mission statement represents an evolution of focus, not a departure from the IFPA's role as the governing body for competitive pinball.
When the IFPA was re-established in 2006, competitive pinball lacked global structure, consistent rankings, and broad legitimacy. At that time, it was necessary for the mission to explicitly emphasize awareness-building, sport legitimacy, and revitalization. Over the past two decades, those goals have largely been achieved. Competitive pinball is now active worldwide, supported by a standardized rankings system, international championships, and a deeply engaged community of players, organizers, and operators.
The new mission statement reflects where the IFPA's work is most impactful today: supporting the volunteers and tournament directors who run events, maintaining fair and consistent competitive standards, and ensuring the long-term health of the competitive ecosystem. Governance remains central to that work, but it is exercised through policy, sanctioning standards, rankings, and guidance rather than promotional positioning.
In short, the mission statement was updated to better describe the IFPA as it operates now—an established governing body stewarding a mature, global competitive sport—rather than one focused primarily on reintroducing pinball to the world."
Considering all of this alongside the OBX fallout, it starts to feel like a new phase of the IFPA is beginning. I asked what they thought of that interpretation.
"We think that's a fair and exciting interpretation - considering that pinball has achieved the sort of success we discussed last question. Obviously we still strive to further our original core ideals of raising awareness and legitimizing competition, but we feel our new mission statement reflects the new goals we have associated with supporting the established, global, competitive sport of pinball."
What's Next
I also wanted to know if we could expect additional changes in the coming weeks and what this new team is prioritizing.
"We are currently working on multiple documents, including resources to offer beginning TDs, venue requirements, and better support for the incident reporting processes. Our goal with these documents is to empower TDs with the tools to resolve incidents, and if necessary provide them with clearly defined instructions on what to do if a resolution cannot be found.
One of our goals for 2026 is to reestablish a directing team for WNAC and WWC. We have seen some concern that these events will not happen in 2027, and we want to address those fears by assuring everyone that we are committed to continuing these events with qualifying throughout 2026 and the championships in 2027 and beyond."
That last point is an important one. The January update committed to continuing WAB duties, but this gets more specific: a dedicated directing team for WNAC and WWC, with qualifying in 2026 and championships in 2027 and beyond.
Taken together—the new staff, the mission statement rewrite, the promises of clearer TD resources and incident processes—this feels like an organization turning a page after a difficult few months.
The proof will be in the execution, but the direction seems right.
Colin is the chief pixel pusher at Kineticist. He's a lifetime gamer who became enamored with pinball after taking in a family copy of the 1979 classic Joker Poker (the EM version). Since then he's bought, sold and repaired many machines, competed in all kinds of tournaments, and contributes to This Week in Pinball, the New England Pinball League, and Pin-Masters of New England. Previously, Colin spent over a decade working in marketing for agencies and tech startups. He also started and ran a music blog, happy hour website, and wrote a regular craft beer review column for Central Track in Dallas. Once aspired to be an artsy film director.
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