RALEIGH - Don Blanton's opportunity for a Las Vegas vacation with his wife evaporated when their son's club soccer team learned it was time to travel again.

Instead of playing blackjack at the Bellagio, the Blantons found themselves seeking shade on the sidelines at the WRAL Soccer Complex on Friday, following an 8 1/2-hour drive from their Nashville, Tenn., suburb. It was yet another weekend swallowed whole by son Alex's soccer schedule.

This time, it's the South Regional Championship that has brought the top 184 boys' and girls' US Youth Soccer teams from 12 state associations.

There will be little except soccer all weekend for the Blantons and other team parents, all for the chance to qualify for even more soccer at the US Youth Soccer National Championships next month in Little Rock, Ark. For elite travel teams, such as those fielded by the Tennessee Futbol Club, tournament trips to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and now Raleigh frequently take the place of family vacations.

"What can I say? He's our life," said Blanton, an emergency physician at the Army hospital at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

Footing the bill for their son's soccer dreams doesn't come cheap. There's the $70 each time they fill up the minivan. The $116 a night for at least five nights at the Holiday Inn Express near RDU International Airport. The eating out for lunch and dinner every day with a team of ravenous teenage boys.

Don and Jane Blanton's sole retreat from soccer this trip came during Wednesday's drive to the Triangle, when they listened to an audio recording of James Michener's novel "Mexico."

In the back, Alex and two teammates whiled away the hours playing a soccer video game on a Sony PlayStation.

On Friday morning at the soccer complex, team parents fell into a routine honed over several seasons of travel. A few quickly set up a portable gazebo offering shade for the Tennessee Futbol Club's noon game against a team from Arkansas. A few fathers stood sentry farther down the sideline, while Don Blanton set up a tripod to film Alex, the team's goaltender.

Fred and Marla Linder, whose son Wil plays center back, keep the essentials packed for every trip: a cooler of sports drinks, snacks to stave off a teenager's hunger pangs, a stack of DVDs to keep them distracted on the road, and duct tape, the foolproof bandage for the inevitable blisters.

"You can't do this at this level without pretty good parental support," Don Blanton said.

Parental anxiety

Even in Nashville, soccer has an international flair. Sandy Pollock, the team's coach, is from Scotland. Player Kenneth Ra is Korean but holds dual-Canadian citizenship, while two teammates have Venezuelan roots.

Although most have played together three years, they had little time to reacquaint themselves as a team after a spring spent playing with their high school teams. So, the parents maintained modest expectations.

Yet when it fell behind 2-1 in the second half, the parents squirmed. Mothers pulled themselves out of folding chairs and paced; some wrung their hands.

And when Wil scored the tying goal on a soaring kick from near midfield, cheers erupted, punctuated by at least one "Thank you, Jesus!" and one wry "Just like we drew it up!"

The comeback went no further, however, and the game ended in a disappointing draw. With another game in Wilson today against a team from Mississippi and a Sunday matchup against a Capital Area Soccer League team claiming a home-field advantage, the Nashville squad will face a difficult path to qualify for the championships in Arkansas.

After gathering his team for a postgame talk, Pollock approached the parents in the parking lot before they scattered to find an air-conditioned lunch on Capital Boulevard. He reminded them of the toll the heat took on their injury-depleted team and asked them to make sure their sons stayed hydrated at the hotel.

The Holiday Inn swimming pool should be off limits to the players, Pollock told the parents. Even goofing off in the pool would deplete their energy for the following day's game, he told them.

Soccer with dinner

A few wrong turns later, a caravan of Tennessee Futbol Club players and parents gathered at the Carolina Ale House. Alex Blanton and two of his teammates groaned like old men as they pull themselves out of the minivan.

Inside, there was little time spent rehashing the missed opportunities in the tie game. The big-screen TVs engulfing the dining room walls played the European Championship quarterfinal between Turkey and Croatia.

Parent Jon Emerson grimaced slightly when he learned over lunch that today's game will require driving an hour to Wilson.

"It's crazy, but you get your kids doing it, and they bust their butts," said Emerson, who runs an irrigation contracting company back home. All three of his sons play soccer, and he and his wife frequently split up on weekends to travel with different sons' teams.

Still, he knows the end is near. Three more years, and their son Ford will be out of the house in college. The time they spend traveling together is precious, he said.

"When we're traveling on these soccer trips, we're together the whole week," he said.

Which is why he didn't mind heading with the Blantons and the other team parents back to the soccer complex after lunch. One of the team's players had an older brother playing.

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