The earliest accounts of organized takraw in the United States involve a group of students from Northrop University (Greg St. Pierre, Thomas Gong, Joel "big bird" Nelson, and Mark Kimitsuka) in 1986 in Inglewood, California, learning about and playing the sport in Los Angeles. In the early 80s, Southeast Asians held soccer tournaments that had takraw events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and California, especially within the Lao, Hmong and Thai communities. Malaysian students attending the university often enjoyed playing the sport on a court on top of the dormitory cafeteria. They taught a handful of curious American students how to play, which in turn inspired Malaysia Airlines to sponsor a US team from the university to attend the National Tournament in Kuala Lumpur in November 1987. The Northrop team played in a bracket of international new teams with Korea, Sri Lanka, and Australia. The US team beat Sri Lanka and Australia to bring home the gold.