2009 Tournament Report

The Troy Strawberry Festival Soccer Invitational is required to submit a tournament report within 10 days of each year's event to the State Association as part of the registration process.  We post the tournament report on our own web site in the interests of full disclosure and openness.

Tournament Name

Troy Strawberry Festival Soccer Invitational

Dates of Tournament

May 16/17, 2009

Fields

The tournament was held in Piqua and Troy.  These parks with number of fields were used:  Archer Park(5), Duke Park (10), Ferguson Fields(6), Pitsenbarger Sports Complex(10).

Number of Teams Applied/Accepted

279 teams applied and 263 were accepted.

Breakout of Teams by State

Indiana: 11
Kentucky: 8
OH: 263

Sportsmanship Awards

Presented at each preliminary game.  The recipients are submitted by the coaches and are available at www.tsfsi.com/sportsmanship/2009winners.

Number of Referees Used

144 referees that worked at least 1 game

No club linesmen were used.

Sponsors

The tournament does not have major sponsors.

Summary Information

The tournament went well.  One of our sites observed a lightning strike Saturday morning at 7:30 and we interrupted play for 30 minutes.  The schedule this year was built with a more liberal amount of time between games and we also built open slots in to the middle of the schedule on many fields so we could accommodate morning delays.  By the middle of the afternoon we were caught up on most fields.

Hotels:  A problem last year was the limited number of hotel rooms available.  We secured a commercial vendor to manage the rooms and had no significant issues.  Unfortunately, two of our local hotels have expressed great reservation with working with the vendor in the future.

Fields:  Last year we had mixed reviews on our fields.  Duke and Archer of course received high marks – but selective fields at both Kyle and Ferguson had very long grass laying on the fields.  This year we were able to influence the schools to cut the grass earlier and more often so the Junior High (Ferguson) complex had no issues.  The city of Piqua was very hard to engage in the preparation activities and as a result, the grass was very long on the smaller fields.  The volume of rain that fell throughout the week made for sloppy play on several of the Piqua fields but otherwise the fields were in good shape.  We used a commercial service to lay out and line the fields and that greatly relieved the committee of effort.  We were essentially done with the Troy fields by Monday the week before the tournament and that’s unprecedented for us.

Rules:  We neglected to remove the point for a shutout.  That was an oversight on our part as it produces undesirable outcomes and unhappy participants.  If the rule had been removed as we discussed, we would have eliminated ¾ of the complaints we received on Sunday.  We will remove it next year.

Registration:  We registered teams electronically before the tournament – allowing teams to do so up to one week before the tournament.  That was well received and something we will build on next year.  We only budgeted 30 days between close of registration and the tournament itself.  We will increase that window next year so we can do a better job ranking, accepting and bracketing teams.

Bracketing:  We had a larger than normal number of teams which were ‘very challenged’ with the bracket in which they were placed.  Every year I seem to get one theme for complaints and this year it centered on bracketing.  We were very deliberate in our bracketing but we had some age levels where we had 2 or three good teams followed by a large number of lower level teams.  The gap between the two sets was very large in some cases and produced some lopsided scores.

Volunteer Management:  We used a commercial web package to manage volunteers.  They were able to sign up for slots and we had adequate reporting on site to manage changes.  We also had a new volunteer coordinator who did very well.

Program:  As you observed, we went to a smaller format for the program.  We only placed ads where absolutely necessary (for exchanges for goods or services).  No team ads were solicited (but one was placed).  We expect a modest reduction in costs as a result but in general the cost of the program is a necessary evil.

Community Outreach:  Three weeks from the tournament I was disappointed that two of our outreach programs would be dropped after having them thrive for several years.  Interest in our 4v4 tournament for the Miami County Special Olympics program had dwindled so we dropped it.  We also lost our Passback coordinator with the graduation of the teen who had driven that (along with her Mother).  In the last week, we had another teen step forward and offer to lead the effort.  We also continued to promote the sportsmanship program amongst the teams.  It is far and away our most popular feature.

Proposed Dates for Next Year

We will again be requesting the weekend prior to the holiday weekend in May.