Gates Soccer Club - EST. 1975

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Gates Youth Soccer Tournament & Festival Testimonials from our Guests

The Good

I will recommend your tournament to any team up here in Canada. Thank you! Very well organized and a pleasure to be part of.
We came from Ottawa, Canada to attend this tournament and I must say this was the best tournament we have ever attended. The facilities were great, the organization was unbelievable, the communication was clear and the staff was helpful and friendly. Playing for the biggest club in Ottawa, which has over 6,000 kids, I will ensure that your tournament is listed as one of the USA tournaments to attend within our club.
As always your tournament was well run and the Niagara Pioneer teams enjoyed it. See you next year!
We had a great time and as usual you guys did an excellent job, thank you! [Victor/Farmington]
We had a great time at the tournament. A couple of my girls play on other teams and would like their coaches to enter next year. [Wayne Wings]
The Good: Competition, sportsmanship by Chili, Enchanted Mt. and Niagara Revolution, Referee's. [Wayne Wings]
Lincoln Soccer Club wishes to thank you for a wonderful tournament. Everyone had a great time and complimented the event organizers for such a great time. The girls loved the day and evening. It is often difficult to bring 3 teams to a hotel and let the kids be in the pool for hours. Your additional activities allowed them to take part in a wonderful evening. Our hats off to all you. Thanks for a great weekend. You should be proud of yourselves.
As a person involved in our Tournaments earlier in the year, I certainly appreciate the effort, patience needed to run such a successful event. Even though our teams did not win their divisions, we were impressed how evenly matched all the games were. Often it is no fun to play in tournaments with teams winning or losing 8 - 0. All the coaches commented on this very issue. [Lincoln SC]
The referee for our U-12 Girls game, Ancaster versus Lincoln, was outstanding. He has the correct attitude, game presence that even if parents thought he made the incorrect call, they did not question him. We can all learn from him.
I wanted to personally thank you and the others involved in the tournament for giving both my teams the opportunity to play in the tournament. I understand sometimes it is hard to accommodate every team and what they need and I commend you for that. I hope that we can be a part of it again next year. [Rochester Select]
I wanted to say all of our CNY United teams had a great time! We will surely consider your tournament next year. I always wanted to thank you for calling me regarding our canopy that was blowing away – we left it at the field for the other teams coming on so they would stay in the shade and didn’t realize that it was blowing away.
You all did a great job, given all the rain that could have made the playing fields difficult to play on; you had them in good shape. [Fairport SC]
We had a great weekend at the Gates Tournament. We thought it was very well run and organized. The coaches from all three of our Uxbridge teams participated in the Coaches Game and almost all of the parents and kids from our teams were in attendance.
A big thanks to you and all the volunteers that made this a very special event. All our families had a lot of fun! We love Rochester! [York, Ontario SC]

The Bad

The Armstrong field had no port-o-john or other facilities and the notification of use of that venue was thin at best.
- Our school district took two fields off line the week before the tournament, so the use of the Armstrong field was a "last minute" decision. Full, indoor bathroom facilities were located at the end of the school driveway, and the planning committee had felt that would be sufficient. However, receiving a few comments regarding the lack of port-o-john, we will take that into consideration should we have to use this location in the future.
The only issue we had was the size of field #4 small for U10 play but not a big deal. The fields did meet minimum measurement standards.
- We will pass this info on to the TSE facility for their review.
Scheduling back to back games for Enchanted Mt.
- No teams had "back-to-back’ games, per se. This team had 1.5 hrs between games ~ Game times 8:00 & 10:30 ~ some teams love that kind of schedule, others do not… and with the heat we understand it may have been a bit unbearable to those teams with a shorter time between games.
One related to the fact that the U13B bracket was set up to have no semis or final. I know there were only 5 teams and that was probably why it was set up that way, but if the division was close, we wouldn't have known where we placed until the final game Sunday.
- In a 5-team bracket each team gets 4 games, one more than guaranteed, thus the decision to not include a championship game. Unfortunately, you’re right in that it can require teams to stick around until the end of the tournament until winners are determined. We will take this into consideration when scheduling in the future to help that wait be as short as is possible. An alternative for the teams traveling from further away is to have just one team representative stay behind and wait for final standings, allowing the majority of the team to return home at an earlier hour.
Parents thought it would have been nice for the kids to get something for coming all the way down to the tournament. We had crests that we handed out to all the teams we played, but our players received nothing in return.
- Something for us to consider for future tournaments. We have given patches (crests) away in the past only to find many of them strewn across the grounds after being tossed by the players. With the cost of the patches (and everything else for that matter) increasing, we decided against giving them out this year.

The Ugly

There is not much you can do about this Ugly: "A coach" went on a 3 min. tirade, standing over a player and screaming at her because she asked when she was going in.
- You’re right, nothing we can do about that, as it was not a Gates coach. We would hope that if it were really out of control that the referee or field marshal would step in and take control of the situation.
During our first three games we found the refereeing to be fair & reasonable. Please take this as constructive criticism - but the final game, which determined the championship, was a different matter. It was the most lopsided refereed game I have ever seen in my 5+ years of coaching. It's not sour grapes, as we won, but hopefully it might improve the quality of the tourney in the future.
- All of your comments have been forwarded to our tournament referee assignor. Thank you for taking the time to bring your experience to our attention.

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