SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Mt. Pleasant Tournament

I would just like to say a few things about this tournament. There are some great teams here. However, the tournament was terribly unfair to some teams. Take for instance Lower Lexington u15. They are a classic level team who was put in the elite bracket. The coach tried to get it changed, but to no avail. All this despite the team that was in first place in their division (CUFC) was playing in the lower bracket and yes we did request to be in the classic division. Therefore the coach just said, "no problem we will just have to play." They tied cesa challenge 0-0 the first game. Then they had to play the bridge FA the second game who had yet to play a game that day-so they were fresh. How can this be! They got put in the elite bracket and then had to play an elite team (who has not lost a game this year) while they were dead tired. Each pool had four in each. Well anyway they lost a tough game 0-2. Also, hilton head in our bracket did not have to play the first game. Other brackets were designed the exact same way. Teams from charleston Area were all given the advantage while the out of towners (Congaree Rapid, Lower lexington, and others) were given no curtious or fair play. (I think it was because they wanted to show the muscle of the
Charleston teams). The teams spend lots of money to come and then to be shafted that way is a travesty(and we are not alone). Mt. Pleasant deserves to be badmouthed! Jeremy and the tournament director, you all have some things to learn about class! In fact, Jeremy, I saw a coach come up to you and tell you about your club team's trash that left a pile on your field and you did nothing except leave it there! That my friend is pitiful!

Allan

Everyhting about this tournament is micro managed. From the teams MPSC will play, to the times of the matches. The tournament director doesn't make the schedule. Go down to the Academy level and it gets even worse. The tournament is a microcosm of the club, micromanaged.

Allan,

You may need to look at this another way. I think their putting your girls in that group should be considered a complement to your girls team. Both groups are strong, so I'm not sure they would have fared any better in another group.

As far as the trash issue, that is never acceptable.

Huh?
The purpose of attending touraments is to play teams at the highest level possible. You know, play up and play the best in order to get better. Sorry, it ain't about winning a silly medal and a tee shirt.
For the older girls, not only are you trying to improve but also to get ready for state cup and to show for prospective college coaches.
If you are attending tournaments just to win, time to rethink.
I fully agree with Sock Monkey. To play up is an honor.
Now, as far as the MPSC teams not playing the best, I beg to differ. Without question, tThe U19s played the best three teams from two brackets.
Only one more tournament plus the cup. See ya'll there!

P.S. Think what you will about Jeremy. Afer last year, I don't think any player or parent from our team will step up to defend him.

I have some personal experience with the lack of class shown by the MPSC. We were there recently for some friendlies. We were playing a year up and the MPSC coach ran the score up to 11-0. (these were 8-9 year old girls) The coach acted as if he could not control his team from running up the score until confronted by the director of their league, then he let up on the poor little girls. Heck, they even run the score up on their own teams. This seems to be a systemic problem because we ran into a couple of parents of the "winning" team" that had no problem with running up the score. I think that the quote from the Mt. Pleasant parent was "their young, they'll get over it" . I find this disgusting, so it is no suprise that the above mentioned actions occurred. Just an opinion, but the things mentioned above are facts. I witnessed them personally.

Sorry, correction. Confronted by the director of our league,not theirs. MPSC had no problem with the coaches actions.

As far as playing better competiton, I am fine with that for our girls. The problem I saw was that the teams at Park West fields were playing on regulation fields (11v11) but the goal and penalty areas were layed out for U-12 (8v8) play. They should have the fields right if they are having a so-called top level tournament. Maybe it was a city holiday when it came time to measure and line the fields at Park West.

To correct something in your post Allen-Hilton Head played 2 games saturday. the first at 2 in the afternoon against cesa and their second game against bridge should have been at 8 PM that night but the field was running late so their game started at 10PM and finshed at 11:30PM. They did not miss playing any games.

My understanding was that a kid broke her leg in a prior game that delayed that game over an hour as EMS was called. As for the brackets, I heard parents from MPSC, CUSC and Bridge complaining about their playing teams times and brackets as well. I have been to tournaments with my kids and have been on both ends of the bracket (playing stronger teams and weaker teams), but always felt the team benefitted from playing the tougher competition. I can not address the other issues (trash, lopsided scores, etc.) as I have no knowledge of them. All I can say is that I never seen a tournament where everything went as scheduled and everyone was happy.

There is truth to about everything said. The park west fields were a travesty with the markings. I witnessed at least 4 different goals where a goalkeeper started coming out then stopped because they were about to run out of the box. Those saves would have been made. Don't feel bad about moving to an "elite" bracket. I saw games where some U-13 teams were playing in a U14 bracket. At least you were on age.
I do believe that a coach can encourage a team in this situation. For example, in the U14 bracket, there was a summerville team playing a year up. that team should be encouraged that their losses were 1-0, 2-0, and 2-0. This could be built on. If you played within your own club and only lost to the team an age group above you by 2 goals, it would be a succesful scrimmage. To do it for a whole tournament is encouraging.
I guess it comes down to whether you are trying to grow and develop for state cup or win every tournament? It was obvious that some clubs even played down just to win. The players will get better experience playing up and struggling then they ever will playing down and destroying everyone.

As for the schedule, our club's first game was at 11 a.m. Saturday. Started roughly on time. At noon, I noticed that two of the fields next to ours were empty - no games.
But the kicker was our 8 p.m. game was delayed for at least 1.5 hours. It was over between 10:30-11. Too sleepy to remember. (There was one game still playing on a far field after we finished).
Then we had to play at 9:30 on Sunday.
Somewhere during Saturday afternoon things got really stacked up. On e tournament worker told me that a large number of injuries slowed down play.
The delay did allow us to watch a very good CofC v Furman men's game Saturday night.

Cesa and LL played a game in the morning and the bridge and Hilton head did not because they did not want to play a morning game for a stupid reason! So CESA and LL had to play the other two teams who were fresh. Then on top of it the re-scheduled game (between HH and Bridge) went too late and they called the coaches of LL and Cesa at 11:20 at night to notify them their sunday game was switched from 8am to 11am. Are you kidding me? Trying to get a hold of parents that late is a nightmare. Furthermore, the tournament might be micromanaged, or whatever the heck that other person said, who knows nothing obviously. The management and the micromanagement of the tournament was pathetic and done with no consideration to the visiting teams! Our club spent about $6000 in charleston this last weekend (between 3 teams Tourn. fee, hotels, and food). It may not make a difference to them, but we will not go back next year! By the way our complaint was not really playing in the upper division it was just the whole unfolding of events.

We also played in the U14 age group, and from what I understand, the times of the matches were rescheduled to accommodate some testing on Saturday morning that some of the Hilton Head team were planning on going to. It was either reschedule the times or they would not be able to come. I think the rescheduling was the best of the two options. I would also like to add that our team is from Charleston and we did not receive any special considerations because of this.

It was not testing. It was a couple of girls missing because of a cross country meet. They threatened not to come unless the game changed. Nice to get the factual info.

I stand corrected, regardless of the reason, it seems Mt. Pleasant was between a rock and a hard place and had no choice but to reschedule the times for Saturday. As for Sunday, with the injury that delayed the games on Saturday night and the teams not coming off the pitch until close to 11pm, and scheduled to play again at 8am, rescheduling the match was in the best thing to do.

Sounds like a total mess down there. Glad my son's team didn't participate. This isn't the first time they have screwed up tournaments at Mount Pleasant. Pretty much par for the course!

The actual main complaint I heard from the girls is that the tournament sold out of the yellow tie-dyed t-shirts by 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

Mt. Pleasant scheduled games every 90 minutes on the fields I was at. The halfs were 40 minutes with a 5 minute half time. Hello? Mt. Pleasant has been around enough tournaments to know 90 minutes is too close to be scheduling games.....it should have been every two hours. The games I attended were also delayed on Saturday.

It seems you have all the answers so maybe they should hire you to run their next tournament.

It would be educational for him. It is always easy to throw stones when you are on the outside looking in. The MPSC tournament had some bumps (late games due to injuries, team threatening to pull out, etc) that I am sure the folks in charge were not happy about. Would he advocate forcing a team to drop out on Friday and mess the brackets up to a point that teams would only get to play 2 games? Would he be happy with paying all that money and only play 2 games? If his LL team is a low seeded team in the State Cup, he better brace up. The lower seeds are placed at a disadvantage in terms of scheduling (rest, playing 2nd games against teams that have not played, etc). Maybe this tournament might help his team in ways that he can not foresee.

It seems some people are only happy, when they are unhappy.

Happiness has nothing to do with this soccer Tournament. I have been to many well run tournaments. Why does this one always have a problem? mmm... I think you get the point!

ALL soccer tournaments have their share of problems..weather,injuries,stoppage of play.The later your game starts the better chance of being delayed..Was the hotel nice? How about that weather? Your child's team played two tough matches on Saturday against two good challenge level teams and they performed well..They may have not got the trophy but they got alot more from playing the competiton that they faced.

ALLAN,

Sorry you feel your team was treated unfairly and was inconvenienced with a change in game times, but given that your team has outscored their opponents 42-7 over 7 games thus far in the PMSL, it was probably good for them to play in the top bracket of the tournament and even against fresh legs. Since they were very competitive with CESA 92 Challenge (0-0) and also I'm assuming fairly competitive with Bridge FA 92 (0-2), I'm guessing they received some very beneficial game experience in preparation for the President's Cup. Personally, I was thrilled to get a call at midnight from our team's manager notifying us that we would be playing at 11AM instead of 8AM!

Live and learn
That 11am morning game took place in the CofC stadium..Correct? Not a bad field to play on to finish up a weekend of soccer

You are a classic team that that have run up scores and embarassed other teams in your league with scores of 13-0 and 11-0. Yet, you feel ok in denigrating individuals that ran this tournament??? You even referred to someone as having no class. Where is the class in running the scores up on lesser teams? Seeing your dominance in the PMSL easily explains how you got "bumped" up a level. He that lives in glass houses should not throw stones!!!

I gotta feeling, had Allan's team got to play in the division they wanted, with no trash on the field, played on time and only played teams that had already had one game before, he still would not be happy.

I think he had an axe to grind with MP before ever showing up at the tournament. Just my opinion.

seems he had some issues with the tournament for sure. LLSC

Wow! you all are like posse getting ready to linch me. Just kidding, I like the responses by all. Everyone likes to be heard, including me. Thanks for conversation ya'll. Try to look at the numbers a little better. For instance, the 13-0 loss, the LL team had switched the offense to defense and vice-versa by the end of the first half (our slowest defender scored).
In the second half, we did possession - 20 pass limit (did it twice) and then the team snuck players off the field until play was equalized. We finished the game with 7 - 8 players total. Sometimes competition is not so competitive. We tried to level it.

Mr. lowcountrydad,
I am independantly wealthy and live in a plexi-glass house that is shatter proof. So hurl away. By the way, Carolina Cup and Charlotte are very well run! Furthermore, if the coach had known they were going to have a pretty good team, they would have easily moved up to challenge (after finishing below middle last year in the same league). Hind sight is 20-20 you know.

Then we should expect to see your team in challenge next year..the girls will get alot more out of it..I was at the 3PM game and the team looked like they can hold their own in challenge...Parents seemed to be having a great time...

The boys are scheduled for this weekend. Does anybody have a crystal ball to know if the weather will be a factor?

We are scheduled to play as well, and were told that a decision on whether to play the tournament will be made at 1pm on Friday. There is an 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms on Friday, and a 50% chance of rain on Saturday, so things are uncertain. Appearently, the fields are swamped as it is.

It's raining hard now and the forecast is rain all day. If I was a betting man, I'd say it's off.


Weather radar as of 7:15 am

I think ducks will be the only things on the MPSC fields this weekend.

As with most I am a parent who has endured poorly run tournaments, unfair refs, lopsided scores for and against our team, bad hotels and one too many Subway restaurants. I have come to the conclusion all of this is part of the "soccer journey". As my son gets to the half way point of his eligiblity I try to simply take the time to overlook the negatives and enjoy my son playing, watching him and the team get better every game and time spent with the other parents or what I call my "soccer family". Enjoy the beautiful game while you can for all too soon you will be out raking leaves or cutting grass on a Saturday morning.

I just got a phone call that the offical announcement will be coming very soon, no games at MPSC this weekend.

It's pretty official. Referee assignor has sent cancellation notices from the system, removing all games.

I think I have to question the decision to cancell the tournament. Arrived down there at about 5pm on Friday and had no rain. Was out on the beach all day Saturday and had sunny 75 to 80 degree weather. Sunday a bit cooler 70 degrees and dry . We did however have a great worry free weekend on the beach playing Futbol!

Cantona,

Isn't it nice to take your family to a soccer tournament for a weekend.....and not have to worry about going to any soccer games!? Probably one of the best vacations you've had in years. Nice place to visit, hope you all had a good time.

By the way, while you were down there....were you able to talk any of those Wando girls into transfering to Northwestern?

Hurst

No transfers needed!! We will take the rec players we currently have and take on the best the state has to offer.

Yes the beach was great, had a chance to spend some quality time. Team had no worries about competition other than trying to beat up on coach on small sided 5v5.

Your team will be fine, you always do a great job.

You are South Aiken's worst nightmare!

i made it all the way to the coast of va just to get rained out one time.rooms were paid for so we just stuck around and enjoyed the area.norfolk is a nice area.

If Mt pleasant doesn't want their fileds torn up then they shouldn't have a tournament. I would hope the refund checks are already in the mail.

I guess they will never host a State Cup!

Please see an earlier thread about Manchester Meadows! I guess these quasi public facilities like their fields.