I’m starting a new feature here on the ol blog- Tournament Tell All. Over the summer we spend most of our weekends traveling around Southern California attending tournaments. As always, all opinions are my own and based on personal experience unless otherwise noted. If you have reviews of your own, please add in the comments!
Name: LA Premier FCSo Cal Summer Showcase
Dates:July 21-23, 2012 (This tourney has Monday Championship games)
Cost:$595
Location:Pasadena area
Application Process/Coaching Conflicts: The application process was easy, and they accommodated our requests for no coaching conflicts. Our Sunday schedule was crazy with a 9am game and a 7:50pm game! If we had advanced to the final it would have been at 9am on Monday morning.
Check In: Friday night check- blech! Fortunately, my good friend checked our team in so I didn’t have to go- hooray!
Rules:10 Point System; 25 minute halves
Number of Teams at our Age Level: 8 teams with one flight
Strength of Competition: Overall there were not a lot of strong teams at our age level. None of the top teams were there, but LA Premier itself has a good team…and we lost to them. Overall we scored 16 goals and had 1 against and didn’t make it to the finals…oops! There was a team from El Paso, Texas playing so it was fun to see a team from another state.
Fields: We played at La Canada High School which has two nice fields- grass and turf. Unfortunately playing on a turf field when it’s 90 degrees is not a great experience. It’s an older field so the heat radiates off the black surface underneath the “green.” There is a big grassy area near the field to set up camp for your team and there were refreshments and snow cones available at the field. Permanent restrooms are available at the field. Other fields used were Pasadena HS, Glendale Sports Complex, Muir HS, Victory Park and Villa Park.
Weather: Hot! La Canada is hot and smoggy, but beautiful.
Restaurants/Attractions: We ate at Dish Restaurant which was wonderful! They were very accommodating and sat us all at big tables in the bar area. The food was great as was the service. Definitely call ahead and reserve a table if you have a big group.
Overall Thoughts:This is the first time we’ve played in this tournament and I’m not sure I would go back. We did get 4 guaranteed games which was great, but our schedule was crazy. I’ve never been so happy not to advance to the finals.
The tournament itself was a bit disorganized with the referees not knowing how long the halves were. The game before ours played at 30 minute half and then a 20 minute half because the refs didn’t know the halves were supposed to be 25 minutes. It didn’t appear that they bothered to tell the coaches judging by how one of them was screaming that there was still time on the clock. In our game they also had wacky timing because they started the clock when the game was supposed to start, not when it actually started about 5 minutes later. They didn’t leave enough time between games (5 minutes!) so there was no warm up time on the field whatsoever. None of this really affected the girls, but it was kind of amusing. If the game had been close it would have been a concern.
Agree!
Lightning was here as well. Wont go back! Too hot, too far, competition lacking. etc.
They do have a cool website though!
New website and new locations I guess, dozens of college coaches for my older girls team, our experience this year was great. I think they understood that moving location was important, unfortunately this past tournament was held at a time when temperatures were at a record high, somethings I guess you don’t control. Overall positive experience for our little ones. We played at MT SAcC and that was an great facility with some great grass fields.
Glad you had a good experience! Thank you so much for the comment.
Being a native of NW San Gabriel Valley, a soccer player as a youth in the 70s and 80s and now a parent in the region, I have to warn would be soccer parents that for 90% of the families LAPFC is not worth the costs. Joining LAPFC is like going on that much anticipated exotic vacation and finding out you entered a tourist trap. The coaches are average, or similar in ability to any respectable club, and most are Brits that are layovers from the “challenger” soccer camps or other UK related businesses that try to leverage their soccer foreign-ness. Some make the Mexican “machismo”, seem like cotillion. Although it is a non-profit the business model appears to be very revenue driven. This combined with adult egos pushing agendas combines for a management style that like many sports organizations is not player centric. Uniforms and accessories are purchased through Soccer.com. I bought t-shirts, uniforms and sweatshirts for a team I managed in a medium sized local club. With the backpack, two sets of uniforms, practice gear and a sweat shirt the cost was $200 per player for the season. LAPFC was $490. They also sell advertising on the jerseys with no discount to the families. They try to reduce overhead per team by signing up as many teams as possible (my personal opinion is that 2 per age, per sex is optimal, with an exception once in a while for three). Practice fields are crowded and insufficient. The club pushes to sign up players quickly prior to the May 1 date when most players sign with clubs. Before you know what hit you are into it for almost a grand prior to May 1. Soccer is love affair not a business… actually all sports are. If you are super star, LAPFC may provide the platform for greater exposure, but if you are relegated to a lower team its a free for all. In addition, the evaluation process for determining ability, as with any youth sports activity, can be somewhat politically influenced and is subjective by nature. Eventually the gold teams end up with primarily scholarship players especially on the boys teams. The only real positive advantage to LAPFC is that they draw from rich neighborhoods and have easy accessibility for these wealthy families at La Canada High School… OH and FC Golden State is worse.
Wow… Obviously all clubs have their issues because they are run by people. Sounds like you’ve had a bad experience, but thank you for the reminder to do your research before signing with any club. The hidden fees are the worst- make sure to check and see exactly what is included in your fees and more importantly- what isn’t! Fortunately there are so many different clubs that you have a wide variety of choices at different price points. Hope the rest of the year goes better for you!!
-Lisa