Our December again started in the best possible way: once more the local tech scene got together in a combined humanitarian, holiday, and athletic spirit! 😀

The fifth edition of the humanitarian cage ball tournament Split Tech Cup took place on December 2 in the Mačak Sports Center, where the following 24 teams competed and had fun together:

Adriatic.hr, AGILO, Aspira, Blank, Caelor, CloudSense, CodeMage, Dotien, DRACO, Ericsson Nikola Tesla, FEG, GetByBus, Gol u gostima, HILLS, IT Sistemi by ASEE, Kàko Magazin, Laplacian, Maurer1, Maurer2, RE.SPLIT, Sharp Agency, Studion 1, Studion 2, and Vizual.

The purpose of this year’s tournament was to collect funds for the purchase of laptops for children cared for by the Maestral Community Service Center, and, considering the record number of applications, we collected 7200 euros in the end!

We can’t wait for the laptops to reach the hands of Maestral’s children, which we will, as always, inform you about on our website. 😀

Thanks, Mačak!

In addition to being grateful from the bottom of our hearts to all the teams, our special thanks go to the Mačak Sports Center, where we have been using the fields for free on this occasion since the first edition of the Split Tech Cup.

“We recognized the good intentions of the Split Tech City team, which does great things for our city, so we are happy to support them from the beginning in this great charitable endeavor. We are glad that we can contribute in our own way and make the little ones happy at this time of the year”, said Jurica Debak from the Mačak Sports Center.

We are all winners!

Although we emphasize every year that we are all winners at this tournament, only two teams went home/to work with the prized cup.

Blank, defending last year’s title, once more won first place!

The players from Blank did not hide their enthusiasm, which is why we caught up with their captain for a short interview.

Đani Machiedo admitted to us that, during the year, he and his colleagues maintain a competitive spirit through internal virtual football competitions, while for playing the “real ball” they mostly get together only for the Split Tech Cup or the DUMP tournament.

However, out on the field, they seemed like they practiced in person at least once a week!

Đani shared the following: “Gathering the team was relatively easy considering the very idea and humanitarian character of this tournament, and the defense of the title from last year and the format of the tournament, which requires only 3 players to participate and lasts one afternoon, definitely gave us extra motivation to participate.

Kudos to the organization – every court was used, there was no feeling that there was a lot of waiting time wasted and the tournament itself was concluded much earlier than last year. Enjoying coffee and watching football matches on television between our more ‘important’ matches on the court, meeting up with former college colleagues, and generally hanging out all afternoon is, of course, a plus!”

After the tense final, which ended with penalties against the Gol u gostima team, Đani could not believe that they repeated last year’s success: “Although we entered the tournament with that in mind, after watching a few games we saw that the competition this year is even stronger than last year.

However, we went step by step, left everything on the field, pushed to the end, and reached the top with dramatic endings, reversals, and penalties, all with the support of the biggest fans in the form of our colleagues and directors from the company, without whom there would not have been that extra bit of motivation for us to push to the very end”, said the captain of the winning team of the fifth Split Tech Cup, noting that he is looking forward to the next editions of our charitable cage ball tournament.

Rino Dugonjić, Jakša Milanović, Svetin Pavlov, Toni Žuvela, and Tomislav Jukić, members of the second-placed team named Gol u gostima – who were also the only ones that did not represent a company, but individuals (mostly) from the IT sector – are also looking forward to new sports gatherings for a good cause.

“Our team shares a common passion for this. We got together to support this humanitarian initiative and contribute to raising funds for a selfless cause. Our motivation was to provide a high-quality sports performance, but also to contribute to the charitable cause of this tournament”, explained Rino Dugonjić, the Gol u gostima team captain.

Rino has only words of praise for the organizational aspect of the tournament: “The organization of the Split Tech Cup was extremely professional, and all praise goes to the organizing team for their dedication and commitment.

The atmosphere at the event itself was even more special knowing that we were part of something bigger, and we all enjoyed the competition, hanging out with other teams, and supporting the humanitarian campaign.”

We asked Rino how it feels to win the silver cup, and he honestly answered: “I must admit that we approached this event with the ambition to win first place. Although we were filled with regret at losing a 3-0 lead, the core of our participation was to support the community, regardless of the result, so we quickly accepted this loss. Now we’d like to invite everyone to support future editions of the Split Tech Cup and join us so that we can all have a good time together!

Once again, we thank all tournament participants and organizers for their support. This experience was not only athletically challenging but also emotionally fulfilling, knowing that together we contributed to a charitable initiative. See you next year!”

We have nothing to add to these words of the Split Tech Cup participants. 🙂

A big thank you to all participants and collaborators!

Article by: Romana Ban