When the weather outside is frightful...improvise

My mother always said I was resourceful, my wife says I'm stubborn. I guess they both go hand in hand when you have to improvise.

As I heard Cheryl tell me that our tournament was canceled the wheels began turning. I grabbed my iPod(full of all my contacts) and then I grabbed my MacBook (actually Sarah F. pulled it from my bag) and I began calling dome managers.

Andy at Burnsville said he had 6.5 hours! Wow, we'd get our choice, okay who to call? I checked the teams heading down to Iowa. Wow! There was some good competition going there. So I called them, Cheryl got me names and numbers from her cozy office and within two and half hours we had three teams. Michael F. helped figure out times and how to break out the slots and away we go! So...

We're having our own Just For Girls the Rained Out Version!!

Eden Prairie, Edina, Burnsville and Bangu C1 girls teams will have three round robin games and a third place and first place game to decide the first ever winner of the mysterious trophy!!! (yet to be found and decided upon)

What's ironic about the whole thing is that I'm always saying how I hate tournaments. I think they're a waste of time, a poor tool for player development and put too much stress on players and families. I think I said this to Leigh F. as we were leaving. Ironic how I then end up organizing one on the way back?!

But I think there's something to look at here. We have four great clubs and teams focusing on 6.5 hours of playing soccer within several hours of commitment for each family. You still get the mornings off and you're not waiting around for five to six hours for another chance to play.

After everything was completed I had a fantasy that we could even break it apart even more and have both teams play small sided games on each half where each team splits and forms two teams so that we get even more development, but I'm not sure we're there as a soccer culture yet. Nor do I think I have the energy to go that extra mile.

In our case, we were driving 3.5 hours (depending on who's driving) to go play two Minnesota teams anyways and spending how many hundreds of dollars for each family? This way each family is spending less than $30 bucks for the whole event. ( minus hot dogs, candy, lunch, etc.)

If I was crazy enough and not as sick as I am I would have organized a sleepover and a pool party to boot, but there's only so much I can do!

So here's the tourney, the schedule and the games. I'll try to update the scores as we go along. It's my first tournament as the organizer, so wish me and my team luck!

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