The Samoa Tag Incorporated has ended their Taula Tag series on a high note and are looking at continuing the success in the upcoming annual Teuila Tag Tournament in September.

Samoa Tag Inc. President Faaofonu'u JP Leota said they have already begun preparations for the upcoming tournament in a few months time and vowed to make it bigger. 

"Now that our Taula Tag Series has ended on a positive note we are already beginning preparations for our upcoming Teuila Tag Tournament in just a few month's time," he said. 

"Our annual Teuila Tag Tournament has always been the most highly anticipated event on our tag calendar each year and we aim to make it bigger and better each time and are looking forward to September."

The Taula Tag Series is the first ongoing series tournament and is the first of its kind that Samoa Tag has ever run. The inaugural tournament was held 1 August last year, thanks to a partnership with local company Taula Beverages.

Faaofonu'u says the tournament this will run for 10 weeks with the teams playing one game each every Saturday starting from 27 March 2021.

"The series this year ran for a total of 10 weeks (beginning March 27th) with teams playing one game each Saturday. 

"Each week one of these games would also be a shield match where two teams in each division both compete for the shield. Last year the two divisions were open men and open mix. 

"This year the board and committee decided to change the divisions to open women’s division instead of mix division."

But there is a push for more women participation with Faaofonu'u revealing that they are pushing women athletes to form their own tag team clubs. 

"Even though mix division was our most popular division last year with the most teams this Samoa tag really wants to focus on our female athletes and really push them to form their own all-women clubs and teams," he said.

"Samoa Tag has always had women's teams but we want to further develop that division and really focus on strengthening and growing our women’s clubs.

"This is only the second year of running our taula tag series and already we’ve seen a growth in numbers with 17 teams in total taking part. (7 women teams and 10 men)."

The men's teams were: Tau Cazuals Senior Res, Tau Cazuals Premier, Tau Knights, Shakers Pink, Shakers Blue, Tau Warriors, YWAM, Tau CaBella Avengers, Tau Originalz, and Samurai Samatau. And the women's teams: Tau Titans, Samurai Samatau, Tau Shakers, Tau Cazuals, Tau CaBella Avengers, Tau Warriors, Tau Originals.

The overall shield holders for the series were Tau Titans (women's) who won six consecutive shield matches right from the start of the series, and Shakers Pink who won the shield match in Round 2 and then went on to hold it for the remainder of the tournament.

According to Faaofonu'u, they 've great improvements, not only in the men's division but as well as the women in the Taula Tag series.

"Samoa Tag has seen a great improvement in both tag athletes and teams since last year with the level of competition being so much higher this year. 

"One of the things we were very proud of this year was seeing the huge growth in our women's teams and seeing some players who were fairly new to tag really getting amongst it and realizing their potential.

"We'd really like to acknowledge and extend our sincere thanks not only to all the teams and clubs who took part and made this year's series memorable but also to our Main Sponsor Taula Beverages - Samoa for making it all possible. 

"Taula has been a huge support to Tag right from the beginning and is always getting behind our local talent and athletes, and making it possible for all of us to enjoy the sport of Tag here in paradise.

"A big thank you also to Urbansound Samoa for kindly providing our sound system throughout the series and making sure we had amazing sound for our games each week." 

For the overall series itself the results were: 

Men:

• Shakers pink
• Tau Warriors
• Shakers Blue
• Tau Knights 

Women:

• Tau Titans
• Tau CaBella Avengers
• Tau Shakers
• Tau Cazuals