Newtown Pride FC wins inaugural TST championship and $1 million prize

By Pat Welter

Cary, NC - "Newtown, Newtown, Newtown," the crowd cheered at Wakemed Soccer Park in Cary Sunday afternoon. The home stadium for the NC Courage had adopted a new team for the day. The semi-professional Newtown Pride FC based in Sandyhook, Connecticut won the inaugural The Soccer Tournament or TST on the foot of Kelvin Nunes.

"I've played a lot of championships at high level, but this goal means a lot for me," Nunes said. "I'm just happy."

The goal gave Newtown a 2-1 victory over Canada's SLC SC and earned the team a $1 million dollar prize.

"This has been the most amazing soccer experience I've had in my life," Newtown midfielder William Eskay said. "I'm coming back to this tournament every year no matter what, even if I'm not playing. This was one of the best weekends of my whole life."

Following the success of The Basketball Tournament (TBT), TBT Ceo Jon Mugar created TST along with Alecko Eskandarian and TBT co-founder Dan Friel. The tournament featured 32 teams and was played in a 7v7 format and had several unique rules like a target score. At the end of regulation the target score was set by adding one goal to the leading teams total.  Whoever hit the total first would win and one player from each team would be removed from the field after every five minutes of play.

"I thought the format was awesome," Sawyer Stone, a soccer fan from Cary said, "I thought having all the different fields and the accessibility, on some of the fields you could walk right up to the pitch and be a foot away from an awesome player."

The tournament which began on Thursday, brought in 35,000 fans according to a TST representative. TST split the Courage game field in half so that two games could be played at a time in the stadium. They also utilized the adjacent practice fields for games.

"I'm really pleased and the rest of our team is really pleased with how everything has gone," Mugar said. "This is the first time we've ever put on this version of the sport."

Mugar and his staff now shift their focus to the TBT which begins in July. Following a debrief with TST staff, players, coaches and general managers, Mugar is interested in taking the steps to bring TST back to Cary in 2024.

"Cary and Wakemed have exceeded all of our expectations, they've been a phenomenal host," Mugar said. "We have a great relationship with all these fans here and know we are sending out thousands of evangelists now who will speak highly of this event and talk about what it is so we look very much forward to building on it in future years."