World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley shows off the creativity that got him the title, and the newest version of his signature edition yoyo. Solid.
Yoyo used is the CLYW Borealis.
YoYo Related News From Around The World
By Steve Brown
World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley shows off the creativity that got him the title, and the newest version of his signature edition yoyo. Solid.
Yoyo used is the CLYW Borealis.
By Steve Brown
2015 World YoYo Champion and CLYW team member Zach Gormley reminds us what you can do with a plastic yoyo, if you practice hard and are 1/8th wizard, on your mother’s side.
Yoyo used is the CLYW Big Dipper.
By Steve Brown
2015 World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley will hit the stage in a couple of weeks to defend his title, and now we have a sneak peek at what we can expect. Filmed in Seattle by Alec Campbell and edited by Zach, this video showcases Zach at his absolute best, with tricks that have to be seen to be believed.
Yoyo used is the CLYW Borealis.
By Steve Brown
We’re incredibly excited to announce that 2015 World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley will be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Cleveland Indians baseball game the night before the 2016 World YoYo Contest begins!
On August 2nd the Cleveland Indians will play the Minnesota Twins at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio, and Zach Gormley will kick everything off with the first pitch and then stick around for a quick yoyo routine during the 7th Inning Stretch. (Progressive Field is just a 15-minute walk from the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, the venue and hotel for the World YoYo Contest.) The 2016 World YoYo Contest runs August 3-6.
Tickets for the game range from $10 – $84, and can be purchased online here:
By Steve Brown
2015 World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley has an entry in the Doritos “Crash The Super Bowl” competition, and if his commercial is picked it could air during the Super Bowl!
Hit the link below to watch, click those little stars to rate the video, and then share with all your friends! Go, Zach!
By Steve Brown
2015 World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley made an appearance on NBC Channel 9 this morning, and showed off some of the tricks got won him the gold in Tokyo. Nice job, Zach!
Yoyo used is the CLYW Borealis.
By Steve Brown
Brandon Vu posted a nice trick breakdown video from 2015 World YoYo Champion Zach Gormley! Filmed at the 2015 Bay Area Classic, this trick definitely shows why Zach is one of the greatest yoyo players of all time.
Yoyo used is the CLYW Scout.
Iori Yamaki, Zach Gormley, and Shion Araya
Zach Gormley is the winner of the toughest and greatest yo-yo contest in history!
In a final round filled with favorites, Zach Gormley brought his best and was crowned the new 1A World Champion last night in Tokyo!
2A was equally exciting, with Shiji Saito winning the battle of World Champions against Shu Takada and Takuma Yamamoto!
In 3A, Hajime Miura had no trouble whatsoever, finishing almost 20 points ahead of runner-up Alex Hattori!
We also got a new 4A champion! Naoto Onishi won offstring in an incredibly balanced division!
In 5A champion, Jake Elliott, won by the tiniest of margins: just 0.03 points ahead of Takeshi Matsuura!
Finally, AP was a delight to watch, but ultimately it’s a competition, and Shaqler won with a jaw-dropping routine! Check the full results and commentary below!
With the new seeding rules in place, only the current World Champion was granted a spot in the final round. The result was a final round completely stacked with the best of the best who were able to make it through the qualifying rounds!
In such a high-level contest, predicting a winner was no easy task, reflected on the final scores, where there was only 1.5 point between the 2nd and 7th place finishers, but the online chatter correctly predicted Zach’s win! Another strong candidate was Iori Yamaki, who also had strong popular support, but ended up in 3rd place.
Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the young Shion Araya, who, despite competing at the World Yo-yo Contest for the first time, showed an amazing level of play and maturity, managing to do well not only in the qualifying rounds, but also in the grand final, earning a much-deserved second place!
Last year’s champion Gentry Stein had a great routine, but a single discard cost him the three points that would have put him immediately in second place, and perhaps even first considering the time spent switching yo-yos, and thus he finished 6th overall.
A few other strong contenders had discards as well. World Champions Marcus Koh, and Hiroyuki Suzuki, Ahmad Kharisma, Colin Beckford, and Ryota Ogi were all penalized for the yo-yo switch and ended up in the lower half of the placings.
János Karancz had several unbelievable tricks, as usual, but was unable to go as clean as he hoped, while Anthony Rojas had a fantastic routine, but ultimately without the trick density to achieve a high Technical Execution score.
A fierce battle between World Champions took place in 2A, with Shinji Saito emerging victorious with a high-level routine we expect from the now 13-time World Champion!
Shu Takada brought some very innovative tricks to the stage, that combined with his usual top-notch choreography and music use, were enough to bring his pre-deduction score on par with Takuma Yamamoto’s, even though Shu’s Technical Execution score was almost 8 points behind Takuma’s.
What ultimately decided the final placings was Takuma’s Detach penalty. Hiraku Fujii also suffered from penalties and was unable to place this year.
If there were any doubts about Hajime Miura’s supremacy after his fourth place finish at Japan Nationals, there surely are none left after his outstanding performance in Tokyo!
Finishing almost 20 points ahead of the second place with an unbelievable score of 96.5, Hajime Miura earns his second World Title and becomes a very young legend in 3A play!
In second and third places were US players Alex Hattori and Hank Freeman, respectively, both with very clean routines, but without the extra refinement and difficulty of Hajime’s freestyle.
Be sure to watch Patrick Borgerding’s routine as well! Pat himself stated his goal is not to win, but to bring insane tricks to the stage, and he did not disappoint, hitting all his bangers on the stage in Tokyo!
World Champion Minato Furuta had a very unfortunate run. His tricks were amazing, and he would have been a serious contender had it not been for two disastrous double discards that cost him 12 points in penalties, and a lot of downtime on stage.
Naoto Onishi won the 4A World Champion title in a division where the final standings were decided by the penalties!
While Naoto’s routine itself was completely clean and deserving of the title, it was Takumi Yasumoto’s 2 penalty point that knocked down the latter to second place, and amazingly, Rei Iwakura’s astonishing 6-point penalty that cost him the World Title!
The next spots were taken by the three American players. 2013 World Champion Michael Nakamura had a solid routine, but his Performance Evaluation scores prevented him from getting a better placing. Ben Conde was certainly the crowd favorite, and while he managed to hit his unbelievable tricks, they were not in large enough number to guarantee a better Technical Execution score. An epic performance, nonetheless!
Jake Elliott did it! The new World Champion becomes the man who beat Takeshi Matsuura in 5A! What everybody thought was impossible now becomes true as Jake Elliott raises the bar for 5A play, bringing a whole lot of new tricks to the division!
And check out the final score! This is the closest score ever to determine the World Champion! If this is any indication of the future, we can expect truly legendary contests with these two beasts of counterweight play!
On the human side of things, Sora Ishikawa repeats his third place finish from last year with another entertaining freestyle, followed by Hideo Ishida and Bryan Jardin, who went slightly less cleanly than they hoped.
Shaqler! Wow! The AP division this year was truly amazing, and every performance there deserves to be watched several times, but Shaqler’s freestyle is truly epic! Their 2010 routine is already a classic, but this takes their teamplay concepts and skills even further!
The addition of Shu Takada brought even more energy and acrobatics to the team, and making them only the second team ever to win two World Titles!
Shaqler also took home the Entertainment Award, while BeatPoint’s beatbox/yo-yo combo was awarded the Artistic Award, and Taiwan’s WHO Theatre got the Creativity Award for their fantastic team offstring performance!
By Steve Brown
By Steve Brown
By Steve Brown
Check out this solid single trick video from CLYW player Zach Gormley. Always cool to watch Zach breathe new life into an element as well-worn as a Green Triangle.
Yoyo used is the Advance Scout by CLYW.
By Steve Brown
The results are in, and Zach Gormley is the new 44Clash champion! This years event was absolutely amazing, and my first time attending this prestigious contest. The yoyo scene in Japan is overwhelmingly stacked with talent, and the addition of top-level players from around the world made this one of the best contests of the year.
Full results are listed below. Congratulations to all the winners!
By Matt McDade
Zach Gormley is without a doubt one of the foremost names in modern yoyoing. His innovative, genius tricks have not only gained him recognition within the yoyo community but actually outside of the yoyo community as well. Zach is a double threat in his combination of innovative and competitive tricks on stage, all the while remaining pretty humble and just being a pretty nice guy in general. If technical, well-developed tricks are what you’re looking for, Zach Gormley is definitely the yoyoer to watch. I had the opportunity to interview Zach and was super excited to learn more about one of my favorite yoyoers!
Hey Zach, thanks for doing an interview! First of all, how did you start yoyoing?
I got into yoyoing when I received a Yomega Brain as a party favor from my friend’s birthday party. After that I began looking up Youtube video of professional yoyoers and was hooked. I then purchased a FHZ and started to learn more advanced tricks. However that yoyo broke and I didn’t get back into yoyoing until a couple months later when I bought a Throw Monkey at a toy store in Japan.
We definitely had some of the same first yoyos. So, what’s your creative process like behind your tricks and videos?
My creative process behind my tricks are always changing. Someday I may look at a mount and think about where to send the yoyo next compared to other times where I will already know how I want my trick to look and I’ll work to make it happen. Lately I have been trying to make tricks that feel natural and make sense composition wise. Inspiration from other players certainly helps too. I think we naturally yoyo more and more like the players we always watch. When it comes to videos I try to portray my tricks in a way that are easy to see and also work to make the video in a way that will create interest in the hobby itself.
I personally think that the two biggest factors for making up good tricks is originality and trick composition. By trick composition I mean the way you order each element in your combo. In this current generation of yoyoers I think trick composition will be huge for standing yoyoers apart from the rest. So many players right now have good ideas but when those ideas are put together in an order that makes sense and flows it becomes all the more impressive. Takeshi Matsuura, Tatsuya Fujisaka, Sebastian Brock, and Charles Haycock are all great examples of players with good trick composition.
I totally agree. How do you prepare for all of the contests that you always seem to do really well in?
For me the hardest part of making a good freestyle is just finding the right song haha. Once I do that I can just start putting my tricks in places that fit the music until I have a complete routine. I try to have this done around a month before so I can practice during that extra time but it doesn’t always end up being that ideal..haha.
Nice! As a super creative yoyoer, who are some of your favorite yoyoers?
When it comes to 1A I have many yoyoers that I like, but my absolute favorites are Yuuki Spencer, Takeshi Matsuura, Charles Haycock, Tatsuya Fujisaka, Takahiro Iizuka, Anthony Rojas, and Shinnosuke Miyamoto. All of these players have an outstanding mix of tech and creativity in their yoyoing. They manage to tie those two components together into clean, aesthetically appealing tricks. I could watch them for hours! I also really enjoy watching Shu Takada, Shinji Saito, Rei Iwakura, Ben Conde, and Hank Freeman.
I would assume that you said yes! You are also one half of Innovation Movement, which is kind of exactly what the name implies in regards to yoyo tricks. What’s the story behind Innovation Movement?
Innovation Movement was a project that Isaac Sams and I decided to start up to try and get players thinking outside the box. We wanted to feature a wide variety of players and have many players from all over the world including Russia, Japan, Hungary, and more on our channel! If you would like to see you can visit our page at InnMovement.com.
I wouldn’t say that I am too picky when it comes to yoyos. Lighter, more nimble playing yoyos can be more fun but a very solid yoyo you can rely on can be nice as well for that reason. You don’t have to try as hard to keep the yoyo centered or spinning fast. Of course you’ll always want to be trying to do so when in competition.
Absolutely! Speaking of which, what’s your favorite contest to compete in?
This is a no brainer. My favorite contest to compete at would have to be Worlds. Nothing can beat the roaring crowds and level of competition at that contest!
You can next see Zach compete at the 2014 US National YoYo Contest in Chico, California and at 44Clash in Kanagawa, Japan. His signature model yoyo, the Arctic Circle: 2nd Expedition, has another release scheduled for Thursday, September 11th at 10 pm EST.
By Steve Brown
Former National Champion Zach Gormley destroys modern yoyoing in this new video, combining practice and performance footage. His latest signature model, the Arctic Circle: Second Expedition, dropped this past weekend and most of the run sold immediately. This redesigned Arctic Circle is maximized not just for general competition play, but to keep up with Gormley’s unique and unstoppable combination of technical and creative play.
This video shows why Gormley is one of the most influential 1A players in the world right now. Settle in for three minutes worth of tricks you need to learn.
M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
« Feb | ||||||
1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |