More than 600 teams gear up for 2014 Virginian Elite Showcase
The Virginian Elite Showcase is set to kick off its 39th year at venues across Northern Virginia on Saturday, continuing its run as one of the largest youth soccer tournaments in the country with more than 600 teams from 72 clubs across the East Coast gearing up for the 2014 edition this Memorial Day Weekend.
The Virginian will be played on 44 fields throughout Washington, D.C’s western suburbs, primarily in Loudoun County, which is the official host of the tournament. The tournament runs through Monday.
The overwhelming majority of participating teams are from Virginia, with others coming in from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Ohio. The tournament includes a range of previous State Cup winners and National Championship finalists. The Virginian Elite Showcase has posted a full list of attending clubs in a social media guide on the tournament website.
[ + 2014 Attending Clubs Social Media Guide]
Virginian Elite Showcase hosts girls and boys in the Under-9 through U-19 age groups, with a variety of competition levels. Younger age groups up to U-15 feature Virginia Cup competition, as well as Gold, Silver and Bronze divisions. The format features two brackets in each division, with the winner of the brackets meeting in championship matches on Monday.
The older age groups, U-16 and U-17-19, are the showcase divisions. Brackets are split into groups of four to six teams with standings based on points and no championship matches.
As of Wednesday, men’s and women’s college coaches from 40 schools had already registered to attend the Virginian, with more expected to sign up in the coming days. Coaches from every division of college soccer use the tournament annually as one of the region’s premier recruiting venues.
Atlantic Coast Conference contender Syracuse and local Atlantic 10 program George Mason, both perennial top 25 teams, will have coaches from the men’s side scouting at the Virginian. Lynchburg College, which finished the 2013 season with a 22-2-0 record and ranked 17th in the country for Division III, will have two coaches in attendance on the women’s side.
The tournament has also posted a social media guide for attending college coaches.
[ + 2014 Attending College Coaches Social Media Guide]
Tournament director Dorothy Talbott is in her second year of service with Virginian Elite Showcase, and has made several changes to the event since taking over in 2012. She added the provision of digital program books, a three-game format to reduce wear and tear on players, social media outlets to improve communications with participants and online forms for submitting comments about refereeing and other aspects of the event experience.
“We’re ready to take our tournament to a different level,” Talbott said.
An additional feature of this year’s tournament is the premier of SoccerWire.com’s Mobile Media Center, which will be providing up-to-the-minute coverage of the entire tournament through a variety of social and multimedia platforms. The Mobile Media Center will be stationed at Evergreen SportsPlex in Leesburg, Va., one of the tournament’s busiest locations.
Anyone following the tournament can visit SoccerWire’s interactive social homepage to track feeds from every form of social media to see what is buzzing throughout the weekend.
