There was a slew (okay, a good amount) of media coverage on this Saturday’s 1st Annual New York State Yo-Yo Contest & International Yo-Yo Open, for which YoYoNation was organizer and Presenting Sponsor. This included some fantastic blog commentary from Geekanerd. Sampling of items:

Photos and Video [Geekanerd]
The yo-yo, once down, comes back [Downtown Express]
Spinout on South Street [New York Daily News]
Spot on WNBC [WNBC]

AND, a live interview with Pat and 2007 International Open X-Division Champion John Ando — along with 1A Division Champion Paul Han, 1A Division 2nd Place Mark Montgomery, X-Division 3rd Place Eiji Okuyama, X-Division 4th Place Kentaro Kimura, Hadrien Bennaceur (French National Champion), Andre Boulay and Devon Frederick (Team YoYoJam), and Tsubasa Onishi (2004 World Champion and 2005-2006 US National Champion, 4A) — aired nationally on NBC’s Weekend Today! We’d love to track down some of this footage.

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John Ando, 1st Place, International Open X-Division, 2007 New York State Yo-Yo Contest and International Yo-Yo Open

Mark Montgomery, 2nd Place, International Open 1A Division, 2007 New York State Yo-Yo Contest and International Yo-Yo Open

Many thanks to Kurt Wilberding for sharing these and other wonderful shots from today’s contest with us! More photos to come.

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Awesome, awesome day - thanks for all who participated and helped in this extravaganza of a yo-yo event! We had a great time and this was exactly how we envisioned this contest to be from day 1!! Couldn’t have done it without our friends and sponsors!

New York City got a taste of what the yo-yoing scene is like…and they loved it!!

Congratulations to YoYoNation’s intern, Howie Chu, to be the NYS 1A Yo-Yo Champion!! And congrats to Andrew Bergen, NYS X-Division Champ!

Also big congrats to Paul Han and John Ando for winning the IYYO 1A and X-Divisions respectively!

More to come later. For now - here are the results:

IYYO 1A Division:
1. Paul Han
2. Mark Montgomery
3. Sebastian Brock
4. Justin Weber
5. Danilo Packer

IYYO X-Division:
1. John Ando
2. Ryusei Saito
3. Eiji Okuyama
4. Kentaro Kimura
5. Atsushi Yamada

NYS 1A Division:
1. Howie Chu (YYN’s own intern - no…we did not bribe the judges)
2. Jovanni Crespo
3. Mike Kutzler

NYS X-Division:
1. Andrew Bergen
2. Jack Lester
3. Richard Pickett

Sport Ladder
Ages 11 & Below:
1. Tyler Mollan
2. Sebastian Conybeare
3. Andrew Chavez
4. Yohji Kusakabe

Ages 12 - 28:
1. Jake Hooker
2. Solana Bethel
3. Josh Ellis
4. Josh Qian
5. Eric Veber

Ages 28 & up:
1. John Shea
2. Andy Brant
3. Peter Berlinghoff
4. Charlie Windstrom
5. Tony Basch

We are ALREADY looking forward to next year’s event!!!

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Can’t make it to New York City for the 1st Annual New York State Yo-Yo Contest and International Yo-Yo Open? Not to worry!

YoYoNation.com will be presenting a live webcast of the ENTIRE day’s events from the opening ceremonies all the way through to the awards. So check out the webcast and don’t miss a thing!

The festivities begin at 11:30 AM EST on Saturday, August 11, 1007.

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Congrats to all the competitors and winners at this weekend’s 2007 World Yo-Yo Competition, who brought some staggering and incredible game to Orlando.

THIS GUY! Left: Pat with reigning 5A World Champion Tyler Severance. Right: Tyler’s third Duncan Freehand Mg, or a really expensive place to store Runts.

We hope to see a lot of you back in New York this Saturday. If you can’t make it out to the Big Apple, tune into our live webcast, which will be linked to here.

The festivities in New York have already begun. With today’s arrival of Takeshi and Brazil’s Rafael Matsunaga (2003 World Champion, 5A, and Brazil National Yo-Yo Master), Marcelo Bazani, and Danilo Packer (two-time Brazil National Champion, 1A), YoYoNation and yo-yoers headed straight for the 53rd & 6th Halal Cart for some wonderful, greasy dinner in a tin. This stuff is mind-blowing (but watch out for the hot sauce).

Above: Miracle makers.

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Below, a Blair Witch-esque video of Pat and Kentaro’s 2A yo-yo performance at Weber and Lillian’s wedding, obviously taken on our point-and-shoot digital camera. A brief glimpse of the lovely couple at the very end.

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