[Travels] TOKAY at Tom’s Tourney

We were very excited to be at Tom’s Tourney this year, in part because Tom’s happens to be an important marker in TOKAY’s short history. In 2017, Tom’s was the first tournament that we attended with some of our earlier prototypes. We only had two pairs there for players to trial, but even then we already had a great weekend talking to players about our project.

This year we returned with the first generation of TOKAY cleats: tester pairs in 18 sizes and many boxes full of cleats for sale! The compare and contrast below fills us with joy at how far we have already come with this project.

TOKAY Booth at TT2017 vs. TT2018

We’re looking forward to the work ahead (and there is plenty of it) to continue to grow and build TOKAY, but we also took the time to sit down with a tasty Belgian beer and revel in what we have accomplished so far.

Tournament hosts the Freezzz Beezzz made some history of their own, winning their own tournament for the first time in Tom’s history! A huge congratulations to them, for the win and for putting on such an incredible tournament. Both the level play and the ambiance of Tom’s were fantastic once again. Great ultimate, weather, food and drink were available the whole weekend long; and the waffles even made two appearances much to Ingeborg’s delight!

Spectacular performances in the Open Division 1 Finals

We also want to shout out Tchac for their silver medal finish. This team holds a special place in our hearts and they were a delight to watch. Ingeborg in particular is a huge fan of the defensive Seagull chear: *flaps arms like wings* “kakaaaw kakaaaw.”

YAKA put on a dominant performance in the Women’s Final

Another French team close to our hearts is the spectacular YAKA of Noisy Le Sec. They won Tom’s Tourney this year for the first time since 2007. Despite losing to Iceni earlier on in the tournament, they shut them out of the finals.

It was great to see their international pick-ups gelling well with the rest of the team and an honour to meet the incredible Robyn Wiseman in person. For those of you who have not read her very positive review of our cleats, click here. For those of you more curious to see the dominant performance we saw, check out Fanseat’s coverage of the finals here (Fanseat subscription required).

We ran another disc giveaway at Tom’s Tourney, and while the Callahan Catcher disc was claimed within the first few points of the first round of games, the Greatest Thrower once more went unclaimed.

(right) Andris Otisons of Force Elektro, winner of our Callahan Catcher Disc Giveaway

Andris Otisons of Force Elektro was the talent that caught the Callahan. In their game against DMB (Deine Mudder Bremen), Force Elektro rushed down to set up after the pull. While Dommi worked his magic on the mark, Andris Otisons played some nice tight dump defense on the open side handler. After said handler cut up field and diagonally back, Andris snuck a peak at the disc heading his way and deemed it his catch to make. A layout was required, but landing successfully in the endzone Andris got himself a Callahan score! And a TOKAY disc for his efforts!

We were super excited to see increasing numbers of TOKAY cleats rocking around in all three divisions. We saw them on the feet of individual backers, teams that made club orders (special shout out to the Flying Rabbits as well as ZUF and Gentle Ladies), as well as players who purchased them at Tom’s and immediately ran off to play games in their new cleats!

We had an incredible time at Tom’s Tourney, and hope to be back next year!