Few College Coaches and Dirty Play

by Scott
(Alpharetta, GA)

There are a few major drawbacks on the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl. First our team is U17 boys, mostly High School Juniors and one or two Seniors, all are interested in playing at the college level. One of the reasons our club selected the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl was for College Recruiting visibility. If you read their website they say they had over 100 College Coaches sign in at last years event...who cares! What we wanted to know, before heading to Tampa from Georgia was what Colleges would have a representative at the Tournament this year!

If they provided that information, players from our team could have contacted coaches from schools they were interested in, in advance of their games and invite them to watch. As it was we did not see one single college Coach.

Second this tournament prides itself on not giving out red cards and they don't track the yellows given. It is not safe! Teams familiar with the "anything" goes style of the tournament are prepared and the hacking starts early. Lots of cheap fouls and dirty hits. A player on our team was basically laid out in a viscous body blow.

Finally, the referee warned the players that it had to stop or the red card was coming out. Many of the referees are from out of the country, places where they have great soccer, which is fine, but they are not used to the level of play here or expectations of players and sportsmanship, it was a big disappointment and a great deal of risk for our players.

Competition was moderate and below R3PL level, possibly at a state division 2 or maybe division 1 level. Our Team competed in the IMG Boys Invitational and Norcross Nike Cup in December and they were both much better tournaments. The Norcross Nike Cup had a very strong presence of College Recruiters and excellent competition. The IMG Boys Invitational was outstanding, excellent facilities but small.