USA South Sponsors

Sunday, November 8, 2009

By JOHNNY BUCK - Bulletin Sports Editor

The Smith River Sports Complex passed its first college exam with flying colors on Saturday.

The complex hosted the USA South men’s and women’s soccer tournaments on Friday and Saturday, marking the first time college games had taken place at the facility.  

“We’d been hoping to find a neutral location for several years to host our tournament, and I’ll be totally honest with you, ya’ll have a crown jewel out here just outside of Martinsville. The facility is just a fantastic facility to host a tournament of our size,” said USA South Commissioner Rita Wiggs. “The hospitality extended to our administrators, our coaches, our teams has just been fantastic.”  

Four men’s teams and four women’s teams played semifinal games on Friday, and the winners squared off in championship contests on Saturday.  

Christopher Newport University both title games, and CNU fans clearly outnumbered all others on Saturday.

Two spectators rooting for the Captains were Mike and Mary Jennings. The Richmond residents were there to cheer on their daughter, Julie Jennings, a freshman defender on the CNU team.  

“We’ve done a lot of travel soccer up to this particular point, and this is a superb complex — very well structured, very well laid out. The rest room facilities are top notch. The thing that was really unique was we had a guest host family assigned to us. So it was, ‘Here are the good restaurants, here’s where you need to go, here’s the history.’ So they were just constantly helping us with orientation to the area,” said Mike Jennings.  

Meanwhile, Mary Jennings had taken note of the area’s southern hospitality.  

“We’ve never been to Martinsville before, and I wasn’t expecting it to be as big as it was. It’s nice,” she said. “... Very nice people. We’ve just been so impressed with the friendliness of the people here.” Dennis Toney, the executive director of the Southern Virginia Recreations Facilities Authority, was pleased with the tournament. 

“I think it’s gone very well and really sort of exceeded my expectations, to be quite honest,” said Toney, who estimated a crowd of nearly 1,000 people for the weekend. “I think everyone’s pleased, and that’s our whole purpose, is to make sure the teams that come to play are happy with the complex and the way we run the event.”  

Teams attended a tournament banquet Thursday night at the Dutch Inn, and stayed at hotels in the area. 

Wiggs was pleased enough with the tournament that she expressed some interest in extending the conference’s current contract with the complex, which is scheduled to last one more year. “I think this year has been a very good experience. All I’ve heard from athletes and coaches is how much they liked the banquet, how much they liked the field, how much they liked the program,” she said. “I think they thoroughly enjoyed it, and they felt special this weekend. It wasn’t like going to a campus they go to every year and just playing another game or two. It actually was a tournament atmosphere and felt very special for them.”

CNU midfielder Megan Conheeney was most impressed with the synthetic fieldturf on which her team played Friday and Saturday.  

“I really like the surface. I thought it was better to play on, because we were a faster team than the other one,” she said. “I’d rather play on it than grass.”  

Conheeney, a junior, also liked the tournament’s neutral location. In the past, USA South soccer tournaments have been hosted by the regular season champions.  

“I actually like it because I thought that every team had an equal advantage,” she said. “No team is going to be better because they’re at their home field, or they’re used to playing there, you know? And I thought it was cool that we got to watch our boys team play, too.”  

There were a few suggestions made to improve the event. Coaches mentioned the absence of formal locker rooms, and Wiggs noted that the complex’s lack of a covered press box could have been problematic had the weather not been clear.  

The Jennings said they would have preferred both games to start earlier than the 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. schedule so that fans could head back home before it got too late on Saturday.  

The men’s coaches in the championship game said they preferred to play on grass fields because there’s only one turf field in the conference, and also pointed out that the neutral site took away the chance for larger crowds that sometimes accompany games held on campus, within walking distance of student housing.  

Even so, everyone interviewed heaped praise on the complex itself.  

CNU women’s coach Ruth Keegan called the facilities “absolutely fantastic,” and noted how warmly her team was received in the community.  

“First and foremost, I think the hospitality from the Martinsville people themselves has been absolutely outstanding,” she said. “I mean, I think they’ve bent over backwards for all of us. From booking the hotel to going to restaurants, sitting us all together, whatever we wanted. It was great.”  

The complex will be busy next weekend, as well. The Piedmont Youth Soccer League is hosting the Piedmont Shootout, a tournament that Toney said will bring 68 teams to the complex on Saturday and Sunday.