There seem to be a lot of really tough adult soccer teams in Northeast Ohio. With the University of Akron, College of Wooster, Mount Union, Hiram, Cleveland State, am I missing anyone, there seem to be a lot of former college players still kicking the ball around.
Of course they have dunkel on tap. Usually one on in the clubhouse and for the fests, they'll have at least one tap in the beer garden. If they run out, they always have bottles of dunkel behind the bar. There's also a club member who owns Two Monks Brewing in Akron who makes a Schwarzbier for us at festival time. Here's the events calendar for this year. You might want to mark your calendar for the Bierfest in June and Oktoberfest in September. https://www.germanfamilysociety.com/events.shtml
You won't find much about it on line or on BugSoccer, but the 0-30 world has changed drastically over the last ten years. The fat old man brigade gets run over. I've seen some scary teams that really know how to play. Total sea change.
Case Western, John Carroll, BW, Malone, Walsh. Yea, there are a lot. You've got the same situation in Columbus as well. Within about an hour's drive you have OSU, Capital, Otterbein, ODU, Ohio Wesleyan, Wittenberg, Cedarville, Wilmington, Mount Vernon, Kenyon, Denison, and Muskingum. Ohio has some really good college teams at just about every level. Akron is obviously a top D1 program and OSU pops up every once in a while. Cedarville is a solid D2 program and is usually in the NCAA tournament. D3 is pretty loaded with many teams that can be a top 10 team in any given year. In terms of non-NCAA schools, Rio Grande is pretty dominant in the NAIA.
Going against former male college players on a coed rec league is brutal. Not. Fast. Enough. Gosh. When did you get so old?
That's also why I gave up reffing. They put me on centers at the Columbus tournament, u 17's and I simply couldn't run with them. I went home and told my wife I was done.
What I hated was going against them in a O-30 league when they were only 23 or 24.... Ugh. Nailed them once though--it's not wise to pretend that you are over 30 when your former HS principal and one of your old teachers (teammates of mine) is playing against you.... Amazing how so many people who drove to a game waaay out past the suburbs all of a sudden didn't have drivers licenses.
Enjoy it while it lasts. I hit 50 and 50 hit back, and I retired from my O-40 team. That was 13 years ago, almost.
NOASA, for better or worse, put a no-shit end to that by requiring electronic registration. Not easily fakable.
If I make it to 65 (like a couple guys I know WHO STILL PLAY O-30 AND O-40) and can play a bit, I'll be ecstatic.
At one point, I wasn't sure he ever left Stark County. Then he showed up one Sunday morning in Green.
Now that I’m approaching 40, I do find this stuff kind of annoying. But then I remember how hard it was sometimes in my own post college years to even find a game to play in. If you weren’t quite elite level, it was just a weird time of life to try and stay involved. So now I cut the younger ones a little bit of slack. Then crunch em with a tackle.