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Would love to see some posts from some people who are there to let us know how it's going. How are the fields? How well has the tournament been run (seems like they handled the weather delay well last night)? Has Raleigh been welcoming? What are some of the overall impressions of the tournament in general, the competition? I know the experience must compare favorably with last year's nightmare in Oklahoma City but how does it compare with 2006 in Little Rock? Anyone have any feedback???

Congrats to all the teams who got to make the trip to represent either SC or PL East and hope it was a good experience.



Having experienced Raleigh, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, & Plano, hands down Little Rock should host Southern Regionals every year. Their fields are immaculate and well-laid out - it seemed as if a lot of thought went into planning that soccer complex. Except for two of the newest fields, each field was separated by plenty of trees. As I recall, that complex was supported with public money - it wouldn't take too many tournaments the size of Southern Regionals to make a strong case for a hefty return on the public's investment! The town sure rolled out the welcome mat for the teams!

In Raleigh, we traveled almost an hour to get to one of our venues - I thought I'd understood that a requirement for hosting Regionals was having enough fields to have all games at one complex. Gillette fields were nice - at WRAL, we played on artificial turf and one of the nicer grass fields. We've played at WRAL before and, frankly, those grass fields leave a lot to be desired. No doubt they see a lot of use during the year.

I doubt the weather delay last night could have been handled any differently. It made it tough for coaches who had multiple teams playing at Regionals. I spoke to one coach whose team got rescheduled to 10 PM last night - he didn't get in until close to 2 AM this morning and had to be back out for a 9:00 AM start - he wasn't particularly happy. Wouldn't want to be a U19 player, either, as their Saturday games got moved to Monday.

To be fair, Oklahoma City might have been great - but it was all under water the entire time we were there. Scrambling around to re-scheduled high school artificial turf venues was an experience. Gotta say those volunteers were tremendous - they took it all in stride and the high school folks pitched in to help with that situation. They made the best of a really bad situation.

Plano complex had great fields but no shade to speak of. That Texas sun was HOT, too!!! It was a well-run affair...

Hands down, give me Little Rock any day. If any of you ever have a chance to see and experience that complex, it's well worth the trip!