Here's a place to chat about local tournaments in Minnesota (or even neighboring state). If your team has played any local tournaments over the past couple of years, let us all know about the competition, refing, fields, organization and fun factor.
I know historically, NSC Cup is one of the larger early season tournaments. The "USA Cup Weekend" has grown as many local teams don't want to pay the big bucks or commit to 5-6 days of playing (probably at the expense of the EP tourney.) They also get many of the international and east coast and west coast teams as they come in early to play a warm up tourney before the cup.
24 comments:
TRSA ELk River has a pretty good rec-competitive tourney towards the end of May. Good preseason warm -up. http://www.trsaonline.org/docs/tournament/2007_TRSA_Letter_of_Invitation.pdf
Oh great this is going to become a forum for tourney directors looking to fill their fundraiser.
Bangu mom - I have had teams at plenty of Metro area tourneys the past 12 years. By far, year in and year out - I think Burnsville puts on one of the best. They do a very good job at making sure you don't end up playing your district competition. Extremely well organized and they look to do other activities to keep the players interested.
Although I did have a referee still wearing his pink top at one game... I think he came out of retirement to help fill in some voids. But I have rarely had poor officiating at Burnsville (except the pink top guy)
The city emergency response was excellent as I had a player taken away by ambulance but the care he received before the ETM's arrive was great.
Burnsville gets my vote (oh yeah great hot dogs and burgers too)
The other reason a lot of MYSA teams do the USA Cup weekend is the conflict with MYSA Districts the following week.
If your MYSA team makes it into the playoff bracket at USA Cup, there is nothing worse than having enough time to shake hands with the other team, and run like maniacs to the vehicles to get to a district match. The kids are tired, hot, hungry and dehydrated and the traffic is lousy.
I have to agree about the Burnsville tourney, don't htink we have ever had a poor ame there. How about the Tonka Splash. Someone mentioned it last year but I don't know much about it. Any feedback?
I say go ahead and give your own tourney a plug. This is a large part of the fundraising for many if not all of these community clubs.
halfback - agree on that point about the timing of USA cup and Districts.
bangumom- Splash is still fairly new (third year I believe) and I think it has steadily improved each year. I will know more after having to do my volunteer time there this coming summer.
imo - they can if they wish. I hope they don't. I was going to keep it positive on those tourneys that have done a good job, but if tourney directors want to promote - I will give the negative thoughts too on those that deserve it.
I say have at the critisizm I am in support of any youth programs keeping thier clubs afloat. This keeps kids on the pitch. Smiles everyone its friday.
The Schwans cup has this noted on it's home page: "ATTENTION MINNESOTA TEAMS: Metro Area Districts, North, South, East, West, will not begin MYSA District Play until 5 pm on Saturday, July 21."
Maybe this means that the organizers have figured out that more MN teams would particpate if it didn't conflict with Districts.
Hopefully they have finally figured it out...
Schwan's USA CUP and MYSA met at length last year in April and May to work out a calendar where teams would not have to choose between USA CUP and Districts and could be enabled to do both. To get this information out about the calendar, NSC posted the notice on our web site to inform MYSA teams that Districts won't start until after 5 p.m. on June 21. Many teams are concerned because of past experiences of confict. MYSA has also updated their districts calendar to say the same. Plus MYSA will reinforce this message at their mandatory coaches meetings this weekend.
Currently, MYSA and USA CUP are meeting again to discuss the calendar for next year. It is my hope that we can again devise a calendar that enables teams to play in both USA CUP and Districts if they want to.
Part of Just For Girls is this weekend. Despite the complaint that teams travel a couple of hours to play MN teams, teams continue to go. It is a well run tournament and a great way to get players to bond before the season starts up.
I will have a section about the Oryx U15 girls and their thoughts on the tournament.
http://www.gosportslife.com/oryx/
Tomass, don't jump. My son played in the TRSA tournament last year and it was fun for him. It is also pre-season at a time when C1-C2 coaches should be wanting to see how to line up their players.
To conclusions, that is.
Anon
No problem - I would rather have players, coaches and parents commenting than Tourney directors selling
I personally use scrimmages that I arrange for preseason team work - I have 4 lined up prior to the start of the district season. All spaced with recovery time and practice sessions inbetween. You can play longer and also put different conditions in place to gain more out of the scrimmages
I am personally not a fan of tourneys because of their format but understand the club's need for fundraising and the kids liking them (kids do not always know what is best for them)
I would prefer no more than one (burnsville) but my players insisted on two - however I then make sure I don't have games on Mon/Tues after a tourney.
I was just looking at the Wings web site and saw that they are referring a realtor as a fundraiser...how cheezy is that?
The guy is giving up 10% of his own commission to be donated to the Wings or a charity of his client's choice. On a $500,000 dollar home sale that would be a pretty good donation. The dollar and sense from a business standpoint is solid. The club's outlay is $0.00 and the return if 3 people participate creates fundraising greater than 99% of what most clubs do with a tourney.
what is even more questionable from a business standpoint is TRSA spending money on a radio commercial on a lower rated country western station advertising their soccer tourney - oh yeah great target audience, They just happened to get on at the end of a great George Strait song and I didn't change the channel quick enough before hearing it. Besides me, how many of you soccer coaches listen to country? And of course I wouldn't be influneced by a radio commercial to participate in a tourney. I plan around the team's need.
Of course maybe it was a public service announcement they got for free. I hope so or else that was cheesy and ill-advised from a business sense
Most of the tourneys I've been to as a coach are well run, what stands out to me are the fields.
The Wings tournament has quite a few of their games in Brooklyn Park off Hwy 610. Great fields, some of the best around. I think Maplebrook also uses them for their tournament.
Eau Claire and St. Croix have some great fields in their complexes also.
Blaine fields for the TC Fire event this past weekend were CRAP!
The fields at NSC have been going downhill for years.
That and the fact they're too stubborn to put up netting to keeps balls from going into the streets or into the muck and water behind the goals make these fields the last place I want my teams to play. I've heard similar from coaches inother clubs.
Maybe they think they can fill the fields with lacrosse or rugby teams?
NSC took down their netting because of environmentalist badgering. The concern was that geese, ducks and other birds might get caught in the netting. That said, some of their fields have really gone downhill.
I'll take care of those pesky cwitters....heh heh heh
The only reason we're going to NSC this year is for the USA Cup and enjoy the event and competition. The fields are terrible and need to be redone completely.
elmer - you talking about the birds or the delusional enviromentalists?
Ah take care of both of them
The Strib had an article this AM stating that to date 919 students/athletes had applied for transfer before the May 1 deadline.
There is no way to contact MNFUTBOL on this page so I guess I have to leave the information here. But I wanted to bring it to the attention of this blog that Blue Sky Soccer conducted a nice little interview with Manny Lagos of the MN Thunder. Not just about the Thunder but about the newly proposed Events Facility that would be the Thunders home and possibly a place where H.S. tourney games could be played.
By the way, Blue Sky Soccer is working to try to become more of a MN soccer web site and not just a MN Thunder supporters web site. Sr. Wolf from Du Nord (dunord.blogspot.com) has agreed to become editor and we hope to feature more content concerning stand out high-school and collegiate players as well. I don't know if this comments will allow me to post a web link but here is the link to the Manny Lagos interview.
http://tinyurl.com/35f92a
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