We are father (Erio), son (Eric) and now grand daughters that race our pigeons from separate lofts at our homes in the Tampa, Florida area. The breeding lofts, including 15 individual breeding sections, are on 3 acres in Lutz, a suburb of Tampa. We call ourselves Team Alvarez because we do everything together with the pigeons. Additionally, I have been president of the Greater Tampa Bay Racing Pigeon Concourse, and I have generally been a club officer. Eric is a president of our club at the time of our greatest growth in membership.

Born in Tampa, Erio started racing pigeons in 1957 with the All Tampa Racing Pigeon Club (THP). His father raced the pigeons while he was in the army from 1966-1968. Eric grew up racing the birds and has never stopped, and now his daughters are doing the same. We are Team Alvarez!

Over the years our lofts have won from 100 to 600 mile races, special young and old bird races, average speed, champion bird, champion loft, AU President's Cup, etc. We have visited top fanciers in Belgium and the Netherlands, and we research race results, top racers, and breeders, and we study and refine our methods.

For us to breed from a bird it must feel right to us in the hand, have a performance pedigree up close, and ultimately produce performance pigeons. When we select imports, they come from lofts that are winning today; they must be winners or from top racers, and from birds with generations of winners in the pedigree. We select for pigeons that excel at middle distance, and at long distance. Then we test our results for performance. Added to our high quality imports, we have our old family that has passed our performance test and requirement to breed performance pigeons.