This past weekend members of the SMBA V class were fortunate enough to work at the Southern California Beach Soccer Championships which were being held in Oceanside. It was a 2 day event with over 15,000 spectators and around 300 teams. The tournament had both men’s and women’s divisions, with kids as young as 7 competing, as well as an open division which contained teams from all over California, as well as Hawaii, Virginia Beach, and even Senegal! The tournament was set up with 30 beach soccer fields stretching out over the sand, and there was still plenty of space to barbecue, relax in the sun, and many athletes were seen taking a dip in the ocean to cool off. Prior to the start of the competition there was a free clinic on Friday night held by Eddie Soto, the new coach of the U.S. Beach Soccer National Team.
Our group was in charge of some of the set up of the event, as well as collecting surveys to help research the economic impact the tournament had on Oceanside. Other questions helped us find out the overall opinion of the tournament from the spectator’s perspective. Needless to say the tournament was a great success, and the people we spoke to were very happy with the organization of the event, and many said that they were surprised that a tournament this big could be run so well. Hopefully the next SMBA class will be able to pick up where we left off and be even more involved in next year’s tournament.
Thank you to all who worked the event: Dev, Diego, Eric, Jon, Kaiser and Megan
http://www.beachsoccerusa.org/beachSoccer/
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