Memorial Day Tournaments -- Potomac & Columbia

[kevbrunton]

My son's U17 team (from Michigan) is considering coming out east for a Memorial Day Tournament. There is one in Potomac Maryland and one in Columbia Maryland. I was wondering a few things.

Are any of you familiar with these? Do you have any comments on either? If you're familiar with both, which one would be considered the better tournament? What about the non-tournament factors such as hotels in the area -- is one area better than the other? We've been to some tournaments where teams are staying as much as 45 minutes to an hour away and if that's the case with one of these, we'd be interested to know about it.

Thanks for your help.

[gildarkevin]

I grew up in the area and played in the Potomac tournament an unbelievable amount of times for various teams -- mainly Bethesda soccer club -- between '81 and '90. But I never played in the Columbia tournament.

I recall that Potomac was always considered the better tournament but that for a brief period, things switched and Columbia started getting the better teams. For instance, I played in a group phase in 1988 where we were playing up from U-16 as U-19s and not one, but two, former national champions in our group. Then I recall a phase where even our club only sent teams there out of loyalty and reciprocity to the Potomac club.

From what I understand, Potomac is once again getting the cream of the Eastern seaboard, except perhaps in the U-19 division. I've refereed at the tournament for the last few years and have done teams including FC Delco, Bethesda and the Vardar U-15 (1987) team that was regional champs, I believe. It seemed to me that the quality of play in the U-15 and U-17 divisions that I refereed last year was quite high.

The other thing that the Potomac tournament has is that it's basically held at one of two sites: the Potomac Polo Grounds -- reasonably nice fields that are near nothing -- and the Germantown Soccerplex -- fantastic fields that are closer to something (it's where both the 2002 and 2003 USYSA Nationals are held).

I'm on the Board of Directors of one of the two local referee associations that is providing refs to this tournament, which has me a little bit involved in the early planning that's going on, so you can feel free to pepper me with more questions, either here or by PM.

[DC Braveheart]

Originally posted by kevbrunton
My son's U17 team (from Michigan) is considering coming out east for a Memorial Day Tournament. There is one in Potomac Maryland and one in Columbia Maryland. I was wondering a few things.

Are any of you familiar with these? Do you have any comments on either? If you're familiar with both, which one would be considered the better tournament? What about the non-tournament factors such as hotels in the area -- is one area better than the other? We've been to some tournaments where teams are staying as much as 45 minutes to an hour away and if that's the case with one of these, we'd be interested to know about it.

Thanks for your help.

My team played in the Potomac tourney last year. Even though they were only U-9's I got to watch a couple of the older age groups too - including a U-17 team from your neck of the woods in the opening game at the SoccerPlex. And the SoccerPlex really is worth the visit to see alone - never mind play there.

In fact that club (Vardar) must have brought 10-12 teams of all age groups (including 2 U-9 girls teams) all the way from Michigan. You might want to contact that club to see what they thought of the experience (in my case I hought the tourney was well run ... but the refereeing at the younger ages left a lot to be desired ... JUST KIDDING GUYS :) ).

I don't know much about the Columbia tourney I'm afraid.