If you’re a soccer fan, swing by NHTI this weekend. You can also go to Memorial Field, CenterPoint Church and the fields across from Memorial at the State Hospital.
There’s other spots outside of the city limits too (shhh, you didn’t hear it from us) because with over 160 teams in one tournament, things need to be spread out a bit.
The 11th annual Seacoast Express United Capitol Cup will take over Concord and surrounding towns as teams from as far away as Canada compete.
“It will be good for the area,” said Bill Nardino, Seacoast’s club director. “It’s going to bring a lot of economic impact to the area.”
There will be games in age groups from Under-8 to U-15 with each team guaranteed three games. U-8, U-9 and U-10 teams will play a round robin format in 7-on-7. The U-11 and U-12 teams will play 9-vs.-9, while U-13 through U-15 will play the customary 11-on-11. The teams in the U-11 and up will have playoffs, so some teams will get a couple bonus games.
The tournament started with about 60 teams and has grown bigger just about every year.
“This year we’ll have the largest turnout of any year,” Nardino said.
Games begin at 8 a.m. each day and run all the way until 6 p.m.
Last year, they used 16 fields for the tournament, and that number has grown to 25 this year.
“Because we’ve grown so much, we’ve added a few fields,” Nardino said.
There will be 12 fields at NHTI alone.
“We really use almost every inch of space at the complex,” Nardino said.
And the great thing is – you don’t have to pay money to watch any of the games. Just show up at any time at one of the locations we listed above, and enjoy the action.
“You can just show up and check out a game,” Nardino said.
But since Seacoast United Express is a nonprofit and teams do pay to play in the tournament, a quite of bit of money is generated from registration fees. So what happens to all that money?
“We use the tournament as a fundraiser and it’s one of the largest ways we fundraise for our scholarship program,” Nardino said.
So the bigger it gets, the more kids that get to play soccer. They gave out $50,000 in scholarships alone last year.
“We don’t turn anyone away for any financial reasons,” Nardino said.
For more info, visit seacoastunitedexpress.org/ Tournaments/CapitolCup.
