Students and teachers from SOLS turned the event into an awesome party!

It was a noisy carnival of cheers, drums, songs and dance as 24 teams took to the courts in Elevyn’s inaugural Fair Play for Fair Trade Futsal Tournament held at the Challenger Sports Centre in Petaling Jaya today.

The event was held to raise funds and awareness to support poor artisans that Elevyn works with on www.elevyn.com.

A total of 16 men’s and 8 women’s teams battled each other in their respective group games held in the morning session. The top 2 in each group would qualify to the knock-out rounds.

The day kicked off with a warm-up session conducted by PushMore, who put up two teams in both Men’s and Women’s categories.

When the group games started, they were thick, fast and furious, as players soaked in the energetic atmosphere and put in their best performances.

Heart-break for Crazy Gang (red) in the Quarterfinals as they were edged out on penalties by GanForHire (blue)

In the Women’s category, favourites SIB (A) beat PushMore in a heart-pounding penalty shootout after a 1-1 draw in full time. SIB (B) took third by defeating Starbucks in the 3rd/4th tie.

The Men’s category saw Maxis FC romp to the title with ease, winning every game with an average 4-goal margin. They defeated 1Malaysia 4-0 in the Final.

Maxis FC had, however, came perilously close to crashing out in the semi-finals after going 2-0 down against GanForHire AllStars, before rebounding to win 3-2. GanForHire eventually finished third while CLC FC took fourth.

Partner Yoga demo from BEyoga

During lunch-break, players were mesmerized with an amazing display of balance, strength and flexibility with a partner yoga demonstration by Ninie Ahmad and Azmi Samdjaga from BEyoga.

“I think the tournament turned out really well. Everybody went home with an experience to remember”, said tournament organizer and Elevyn co-founder Mike Tee. “In fact, things went so smoothly that we were able to schedule matches AHEAD of time to minimize waiting between games. We managed to finish the tournament at 3pm, more than 2 hours earlier!”

“It was great to see teams from such diverse backgrounds getting together having so much fun and played in such good spirits. Forget artificial slogans – sports is the one thing that can truly break barriers!” Mike added.

A special mention goes out to the students and teachers from the Science of Life Systems (SOLS), who travelled all the way from Malacca in the morning. Their noisy, boisterous cheering and drum-beating turned the tournament into an infectious samba carnival.

A warm note to our volunteers Eileen Chiang, Stanley Sridas, Jonathan Cheah and Jesse Wong – thanks for the support! Also to Amy Tan, Sharanjeet & Shafie for the pre-event assistance. It’d be impossible to run the event without you guys.

Lastly – a big thank you to all our sponsors: Starbucks, Spritzer, PushMore, BeYoga, Ureka Ideas and KLue. Not forgetting the individual sponsors, namely Dr Yeoh Seng Guan, Ms Puah Ser Sze and Mr David Chiam.

We hope to see everyone again in next year’s edition!

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What did you think of the event? How can we do things better and take this further? Give us your thoughts!

Photos and results will be published once we’ve sorted them out… over 1,500 photos in all. Wait for announcements here!