RALEIGH -- On a partly cloudy, blue-gray day, a soccer complex has become the final destination of a long migration for girls club teams from around the country. They are here hoping to catch the eye of college soccer coaches who have also made the trip to Raleigh.
Twenty-one fields are nestled off Perry Creek Road in North Raleigh at the WRAL Soccer Center, home to the Capital Area Soccer League, the Raleigh area's club soccer league. The annual Girls Showcase Soccer Series is under way. The three-day event showcases the talents of girls in four divisions; U-15, U-16, U-17 and U-19.
Under the hand of tournament director Stewart Pierce and the watchful eye of CASL CEO Charlie Slagle, the showcase has flourished to become one of the marquee events for showcase soccer. (The boys showcase is Dec. 11-13).
"This is a great weekend for recruiting," Southern Mississippi assistant coach Jennie Altherr said. "It's the ability to get these many elite teams in one place."
Recruiters descend
Altherr is one of nearly 500 college coaches at the event (NCAA regulations allow for two coaches from a college to attend).
Altherr has been familiar with the event since she was 15 and competed in it as a player. She played for a CASL team while also playing at Cary High School. She later coached a CASL team, coached at Meredith College and even coached Pierce's daughters. Now she's back as a rep for the Golden Eagles, looking for new recruits.
"You're looking for a balance of athletic power and technical ability," Altherr said. Altherr adds that the timing of the showcase is also great. It's right before the holidays. It follows the end of the NCAA regular season and the ACC Tournament. It also sometimes coincides with the NCAA College Cup, soccer's Final Four, held every other year in Cary.
"It's about giving these girls the opportunity," Pierce said. What started from his own personal interest in seeing his daughters get exposure as players, when he managed to get 50 college coaches in the mid- to late '90s, has flourished.
Now coaches representing 326 colleges litter the sidelines like scattered leaves, each armed with a notebook and a folding chair. Parents walk with stiff necks bending to read the school insignias on the coaches' jackets. Team managers, mostly parents pressed into duty, distribute flyers with a roll call of players, photos, achievements and grade point averages.
"We come for the elite competition," team manager and mother Cindy Summer said. Her daughter Alex Liese plays for U-19 Elite Farmingdale Freedom out of Long Island, N.Y.
Faraway places
The competition comes from everywhere.
Some 384 club teams have descended on the Triangle area, from 32 states and two countries. Teams from as far away as Calgary and Toronto visit. There are also three teams from Alaska, six from Idaho, two from California and nine teams from Canada. They converge at the WRAL complex and 12 other satellite sites in the Triangle, including one in Wilson.
"We try and have the under-19 and 17s play here but also make sure to rotate in the U-15s," Pierce said about the WRAL complex. "If coaches want to look at your player, they'll find you."
That's the bottom line - playing time in front of recruiters. The U-15 division has a tournament format, but U-16, U-17 and U-19 use a round-robin format: three games in each four-team division. Scores are irrelevant. Wins and losses are arbitrary. No awards or trophies are given. But maybe later some scholarships are bestowed.
"This tournament is the equivalent of July in basketball where they host the major recruiting for the Five-Star and AAU," said associate head coach Steve Brdarsk from Longwood University in Farmville, Va.
Brdarsk has been coming to the showcase for the last 10 years. He told how he recruited a girl from Colorado at the CASL showcase to play for Longwood. She would later play four years and graduate as a team captain. Brdarsk recently returned from her wedding in Colorado.
Opportunity knocks
Such is the draw for team manager Diane Wiltshire of Ajax, a Toronto-area team. Wiltshire dutifully arranges for her daughter Cassandra to attend four showcases a year. The U-17 Ajax United Magic added the CASL showcase this year when they heard about the level of talent and number of colleges.
For Brdarsk, it affords him a look at some of the players on the Richmond Strikers Elite that he's seen previously competing against an unfamiliar opponent in Ajax.
There's also competition among the coaches. Brdarsk promotes Longwood heavily, but it's difficult when a University of Florida coach wearing Gator logos walks by.
If the club teams are from all over, so are the colleges, from Division III to top-tier Division I. Just about the entire ACC is here, and from as far away as the Mountain West Conference and the University of New Mexico. From private school Alverno College in Milwaukee (home of the Inferno) to the Oklahoma Sooners.
"Just to get the exposure," International SC U-17 head coach Keri Sarver of Cleveland said. Sarver laments that the same opportunities weren't nearly as available when she played.
It's about exposure and hopefully a scholarship, or at the least the opportunity for a girl to continue to play soccer while earning a degree.
