San Diego for Nomads Because Neusport FC Continues To Ruin The LVCS

We fly out tomorrow to San Diego to participate in the Nomads Coaches Showcase.  San Diego is one of my favorite places in the entire world so I am excited to go out there.  It is supposed to be mid 60's-70's and sunny the entire time we are there.  Here in Minnesota we just had another bout of snow/sleet/rain and sub zero temperatures.  I will be leaving at 9:00 tomorrow morning and I have a surfing lesson set up for tomorrow evening.

Our original plan for this weekend had us going to Las Vegas with our U15's, U16's, and U18's.  We had major problems with this tournament last year with our current 15's and 16's.  

First they put the 15's into the 2nd division of the tournament.  The 15's were the Region II Champs, there was no way they belonged in the 2nd flight.  After much work, they were finally moved into the top bracket.  

The next issue was that hotels had doubled in price from the year before and the tournament was pocketing a ton of extra money.  They were also selling vouchers for food at some of the hotels, that were more expensive than the food at the hotels actually were, and the hotels didn't know anything about the vouchers.

Then, on the first day of the tournament, we were warming up with the current 16's and we kept looking over to the field next to ours where the other two teams in our group were supposed to play.  As we looked over, we saw referees and one team warming up.  Where was the other team?  The other team was supposed to be the Region IV ODP team, but they had pulled out of the tournament well over a month before because all of their players were competing with their club teams in the tournament.  The officials at Neusport had decided not to tell anyone about this.  Not even the refs or the field marshals.  Then, as usual, they would not answer their phones.

We played our game, but the other team in our group did not get a game.  Us and the other 2 teams in our group were furious about this but the tournament would not respond to anything.  Finally on the morning when we were supposed to play the ODP team, they called us and said that we would not have a game.  

Add in the fact that they did not have the goals up and ready at the start of the tournament for the the 15's and there were no corner flags at our complex, this was the worst run tournament I had ever been a part of.

I completed our registration for the tournament last fall and I began sending the tournament emails in November to see if we had been accepted to the tournament.  By December I had heard nothing back from them so I began to call and leave messages.  Our 14's were doing the same thing and we figured between both of our teams that one of us would get a response.

January came and we still had not heard from the tournament.  Then one day they switched the tournament's front page from U13-U18 Showcase to U15-U18.  What the heck?!  I had been hearing rumors that the entire tournament was going to be cancelled do to law suites and I wanted to get in on one of those.  I wanted to file our complaints along with everyone else.   

When all this came about I tried to see if we could get into the Jefferson Cup and one other tournament, but after checking into them, I found that too many of our girls would not have been able to go on any other weekend.  

Then about a month ago I was in contact with Nomads and they said that they could use one more U13 team.  I checked it out with the parents and we had enough players to go so we booked the trip.  We will be in the same tournament as our 13 Whites and we are staying at the same hotel as the 14 Blues so it will be a fun tournament.

*Vegas once again screwed our 15's by placing them in the 2nd bracket and the 16's play 2 of the same teams that they played last year.  It would be great if that tournament could get their act together because it used to be one of the best tournaments in the nation.