Thousands of elite boys soccer players will take the field this weekend in North Raleigh, hoping to catch the eyes of the hundreds of college coaches on hand scouting for potential recruits.
About 13 miles away at Cary's WakeMed Soccer Park, older players who preceded them in the same showcase event will be vying for the top prize in college soccer, the NCAA Championship College Cup.
Consider the CASL visitRaleigh.com National Soccer Series Boys Showcase starting today at the WRAL Soccer Center as the "before" snapshot in the before-and-after sequence where top American college players offer early flashes of their precocious talents. North Carolina and Wake Forest, two of the four teams in this year's NCAA men's College Cup, feature key players who honed their skills in this tournament.
After more than 30 years of competition, the Capital Area Soccer League's showcase tournament has become one of the top events in the country for elite prep players to exhibit their abilities for college coaches. The tournament also draws talent from beyond U.S. borders.
This year's showcase features 388 teams from 35 states and eight international teams - seven from Canada and one from Bermuda.
About 7,000 players will compete at 13 complexes across the Triangle.
"Last year, we had the girls' tournament in conjunction with the women's College Cup," said Charlie Slagle, CASL's CEO. "So this year, we have the boys' tournament with the men's College Cup. It brings more college coaches into town, because they can come to recruit and also watch the [College Cup's] final four teams play."
Over the weekend, about 2,500 players competing on teams in the U17 and U19 age divisions will cycle on and off the WRAL Soccer Center's 21 fields. (The tournament also will feature U15 and U16 teams competing for championships in their brackets.) And the fields will be lined with hundreds of college coaches eager to add more talent to their squads.
UNC goalkeeper Brooks Haggerty, a Cary native, recalled the scene from the showcase tournaments he played in with a CASL Elite team during high school.
"You can tell with all their jackets on the sidelines and all the college coaches. They're just lining the sideline," Haggerty said. "You know it's a showcase event. You want to perform your best. And you're going against some of the best competition in the country."
Haggerty's former UNC teammates Michael Callahan and Jacob Wescoe, as well as Wake Forest senior Zack Schilawski, a Cary High graduate, played together on a CASL team that lost in this showcase event one year to soccer prodigy Freddy Adu's team in the U14 national championship game.
"It was almost like they prepared me to learn what I learned at Wake Forest," Schilawski said Thursday of his club team experience before college.
For players such as Schilawski and UNC sophomore defender/midfielder Drew McKinney, another former CASL Elite player, the showcase is another way to maintain and demonstrate the skills that landed them a scholarship. For others, it's a chance to earn it.
"One big tournament can set you off and take you in a new direction toward college soccer," Haggerty said. "You could be getting recruited by a small school, and then one good tournament, one coach sees you, and all of a sudden you're at North Carolina. It can be a huge difference if you make one big play."
But those moments don't come easily.
To make that one play and catch the eye of a college coach can be a lightning-in-a-bottle task, especially at a showcase as large as CASL's.
"You'll find very few coaches that don't have an itinerary of where they are going to go and how long they are going to be at some place," Slagle said.
No matter how good the collective talent of each team is, CASL tournament director Stewart Pierce said, players realize the real task of competing is to catch the attention of college coaches.
"They come for eyeballs, they don't come for awards," Pierce said.
