MIDDLETOWN – After almost a foot of snow, rain, cold and what seems to be a very long winter, Middletown is ready for a spring blast; the Middletown Spring Blast soccer tournament. The Spring Blast has become the traditional sign of spring for the soccer community in the Miami Valley and this year’s weather news is causing some anxiety among the guest teams.
“We’re wet, but not flooded,” Kathy Stites, tournament director, writes back to one of her guest teams who is concerned about the effects of the recent rapid melting of snow, followed by rain.
The Middletown Spring Blast will be held at Smith Park and Franklin Park this year. An estimated 7,200 attendees from 199 teams will all be in town over the weekend of March 29-30, generating an estimated $1.8million economic impact for the City of Middletown and southern Dayton.
“Easter and spring break came at us this year,” Stites added. “We’re a little down in numbers from last year, but not by much.” Stites added that the Spring Blast has become an annual tradition for a lot of teams.
The Spring Blast attracted teams from six states this year – Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia – to fill its roster of 330 games. Teams from under 8 through under 9 in both boys and girls will be competing for trophies in thirty divisions.
For more information about the Middletown Spring Blast, including real-time scores, standings and fan-contributed photos as the game progress thoughout the weekend, visit the web site at www.middletownspringblast.com.
PHOTO: (contributed) Players from the Lady Skyhawks 97 and Hurricanes compete for possession of the ball during last year’s Blast.
FAIRFIELD – With talk of the economy on the skids and gas prices through the roof, conventional wisdom says that travel soccer tournaments should also be affected negatively with lower than average applications. But don’t tell that to Ann Yungbluth, tournament director for the Mid-American Soccer Classic (MASC) in Fairfield, Oh.
BALTIMORE – Pass by the TourneyCentral booth at the 2008 National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) convention and you would most likely do a double take at the huge soccer ball cake on display.
DAYTON – Two local tournaments are a hit at this year’s National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Conference in Baltimore this weekend. The adidas Warrior Soccer Classic and the Mead Cup soccer tournament were both represented at the exhibition.
DAYTON – For years, Laura Shields, 19, has watched her parents, Rick and Nancy Shields dash off to work the Mead Cup exhibit booth at the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) while she sat at home. This year, because of some unplanned manpower shortage for the booth, she had a chance to volunteer for the booth, meeting and greeting fellow soccer colleagues. And she jumped at it.
DAYTON – This past Saturday, almost fifty soccer tournament directors from the Ohio South Youth Soccer Association (OSYSA) gathered for their annual meeting at the Dayton Marriott. Carol Maas, the OSYSA tournament registrar, led a feature-packed meeting that included presentations by Ray Marcano with Cox Ohio Publishing, Zachary Blaine with Athletes in Action and Dante Washington and Mark Santel with Major League Soccer.