So the truth about the TSC tournaments and why Blitz and WSA don't send a lot of teams...it's too damn expensive. $1200-$1500 for 11v11 teams with the promise of all games video'd and stats compiled along with having 4th officials on every game. It all sounds great until it doesn't happen. Rarely do they have 4th officials, maybe the 1st couple of slots on Saturday but then you have refs get injured and even fewer who want to come back on Sunday (natural for every tournament that refs will work Saturday but not Sunday, I don't know why; a lot of tournaments have resorted to cash bonuses for referees who work 8 games over the weekend with at least 3 games on Sunday, I got $75 for the Blitz tournament, on top of what I got paid for each game). The game video and stats sounds great...until they start getting behind on games because the VEO's are programmed to start at specific times and when you get behind, you miss the last 10, 15, 20 minutes of the game. And I still haven't seen any of the compiled stats for a team although I was listed as a contact as the team manager. The tournament still holds an attraction to a lot of out of state teams and high quality ones at that. It has a wider appeal than most regional tournaments. It also promises a certain number of college scouts and teams represented. They do get a fair number but they're rarely D1 coaches, maybe the local schools send a coach or two but I haven't seen the list include a wide array of D1 coaches.
But the expense is the primary detriment to some of these local teams. It's about $300-400 more just to enter plus the extra $100 parking fee assessed to every team. I don't get to referee the even this year as I will be in Round Rock. My son's Tufts team got grouped with SLU and Virginia Tech for Round Robin play. I was hoping they'd be paired with the Tulsa team. That would have been fun.
I am doing some games this weekend at Scheel's for TSC. I've been told some games are NL, some are RL, and some OPL.
