AFC Fall Challenge Brackets 02

The Brackets for the Platinum Division are:

Bracket A:

1.  Andromeda Red
2. Ft Worth  Strikers
3. Solar Chelsea Crawford
4. Solar Red

Bracket B:

1.  Azzurri
2. FCD Premiere ( Goncalves )
3. LP Owen
4. Solar Chelsea

This is a good chance for some D2 and D3 teams to play against some D1 teams. 

No semifinals so only bracket winner moves on to finals.

Bracket A:
Solar Red vs. Solar Crawford should be a good game.
But I heard from 2 different folks that the keeper from Ft. Worth Strikers very good and athletic.

Bracket B:
Really tought bracket. Solar '03s are undefeated in their age group if their anything close to the DTS of old, this should get interesting. This team had only 2 goals scored against them this Fall, and scored 83 freaking goals!!!
Gonclaves is a good, fast team.
LP Owen has good forwards and big, fast, talented defenders that only got better as the season progressed. This dude did not "inherit" talent. He built it.
Not knocking any other coaches, just stating that LP Owen when through quals with very new players and a team that was split in half.

cowpukesfan wrote:Bracket A:
Solar Red vs. Solar Crawford should be a good game.
But I heard from 2 different folks that the keeper from Ft. Worth Strikers very good and athletic.

Bracket B:
Really tought bracket. Solar '03s are undefeated in their age group if their anything close to the DTS of old, this should get interesting. This team had only 2 goals scored against them this Fall, and scored 83 freaking goals!!!
Gonclaves is a good, fast team.
LP Owen has good forwards and big, fast, talented defenders that only got better as the season progressed. This dude did not "inherit" talent. He built it.
Not knocking any other coaches, just stating that LP Owen when through quals with very new players and a team that was split in half.

I agree that Bracket B is really tough and could see any  of those teams coming out on top if things go their way.  Castro scoring 83 goals, ( avg 9 goals a game) is ridiculous.

That's just bad-a$$ soccer playing.  
I still think LP Owen can take the Bracket though.  
One of BB's friends play for LP Owen, so off course I'm gonna wish them good luck.

Looks like it may be Solar Red vs. FCD Gonclaves.
Solar '03 has some seriously beautiful touches. They beat LP Owen (2-1)
& lost to Gonclaves (2-3).
Just one of those tournaments. But a good one.

Seriously close games in B bracket. Great competition. Lots of really tough soccer this weekend. Kuddos to all the boys!

However, the games were pretty well played across the board. Almost everyone had a chance going into the last match to make the final.

Hats off to Solar for winning the Gold Bracket also that West Texas FCD team hopefully will get a chance to play both of them again in a tourney real soon enjoy the drive out West, looks to be a tough day at school tomorrow for the little guys.

The Scheduling for this tournament was terrible. Several teams had first round games spread out across Friday, Saturday and Sunday, while others had less than an hour between games due to delays. This too often placed a tired team against a fresh team. Look at the schedules.....Solar 03 had about 2 hours of rest before they played (and lost to) FCD. This was FCD only game that day. Liverpool Owen had their 2nd game three hours after their first game, they tied Azzuri and it was Azzuri's only game of the day. Poor FtWorth Strikers got Solar Crawford for their 2nd game (Solar Crawfords 1st game of the day) and got beat 4-1. But no worries as Solar Crawford got an entire 52 minutes of rest before their 2nd game of the day at 8:00pm vs Andlromeda (who had not played played since Friday night at 6pm). Same result as all of the other poorly scheduled games Solar lost (2-3) to Andro. Go do some research and you will find that the schedules really impacted every game that fits what I have described above. with 2 brackets of 4 teams it should have been so easy to get he scheduling correct.....very sad indeed.

Please no one misunderstand me. I think the best team won the tournament this weekend....just think the bracket scheduling was very poor.

I disagree 100% with your comment about the scheduling.  Solar 03 is a very good team but they were the 8th seed in the seeding.  They should have had the schedule they did.  Top seeds get preference times and opponents because the have EARNED IT.  The purpose of any tournament is to have the best 2 teams playing in the end.  Both top seeds went to the finals. That said, you must remember that a tournament isn't about just "your" team.  Many coaches have several teams playing so scheduling is difficult.  Actually, Solar 03 should have been 4th seed in bracket A so maybe the seeding was wrong..... Congrats to Solar Red; another impressive performance over FCD Central Premier!

p.s. The best team DID win.....

Disagree all you want....statistics dont lie.....All teams playing their 2nd game on Saturday against a team that was playing their first game on Saturday ended the same....winless for the team playing their 2nd game. (results of this very situation 0 wins, 1 tie and 3 losses)....its not hard to understand, go look at the scheudles....would have been very easy to avoid this situation..... trust me, I get it when scheduling tournaments its tough....but too often this situation is avoidable with a little more thought.

Happens all the time. if you don't like it, don't play or play in your age bracket so you can be treated like the "King" with the top seed. but complaining makes you look like a sore loser. never hear the winner complain....just sayin...Like I said, respect is earned, not given...

GOOOAAALLL wrote:Happens all the time. if you don't like it, don't play or play in your age bracket so you can be treated like the "King" with the top seed.   but complaining makes you look like a sore loser. never hear the winner complain....just sayin...Like I said, respect is earned, not given...

No one from Solar 03 is complaining. We wanted the challenge. We wanted the boys to experience a little adversity. We got what we wanted. It was a great learning experience for our boys and we are very proud of the way they played and lessons learned.

I not sure I can make this any more clear. I am complaing about the way the scheduling was set for the tournament. A team getting 24 hours + or rest before they play a team that is on 1-2 hours of rest does not make sense (and this was easily avoidable). It lead to 0 wins, 1 tie and 3 losses in this situation. Period, not a sore loser, just making a statement that a little more thought should have gone into this. It would have made for better games. for the 3rd time now I will state the same thing "Scheduling was terrible, the best team won the tournament"

If you look at the overall results of the brakets I am completly agreeable that the results line up with what I believed would be the case at the end of the tournament. In Braket A and B the results are perfectly in-line with what I can only asusme most thought before the tournament started.

It seemed to me the that officiating was atrocious in this tournament. Most of the time the major gripe is that the officiating is inconsistent but in this tournament it was just flat out ridiculous. One of the most glaring examples occurred yesterday at Five Star soccer complex. The field our first game was played on had no lines demarking the field. You couldn't make out the 18 yard box or the 6 or the touch lines because there were no lines. A boy on our opponents team picked up the ball after it looked like it had gone over the end line thinking it was a goal kick. The ref penalized him for a hand ball in the 18 and awarded us a PK. It was embarrasing. If there are no lines you have to have some basic common sense when officiating. Thankfully we scored (legitimately) in the second half but the first goal I wanted to give back because the call was so terrible. As you can imagine, the parents of the other team were not happy with the call but the ref in his arrogance instanly went over to their sideline and told them that the next person that spoke out was going to be sent off the field. What did the ref expect? Again, if you are going to make a stupid call like that then at least be man enough to take a little criticism.

We used the referee assignor who supplies referees to girls classic league and Plano premier. I will relay your concerns to him.

As for the lines on Five Star 5,6,7,8... The contractor that painted them was instructed to make the fields as big as possible. He told me that with the dormant grass, the old lines may still be visible. I instructed them to stripe the fields in such a manner where is the least amount of confusion between old lines and new. Unfortunately, that was not the end result. I regret that you had a negative experience. If we use Five Star, again, we will use the existing lines (even if that means smaller fields) or a different contractor.

I take running tournaments very seriously. If you, or anyone, has additional suggestions on ways to improve my events, please email me at 1221dom@gmail.com

coachdom wrote:We used the referee assignor who supplies referees to girls classic league and Plano premier.  I will relay your concerns to him.

As for the lines on Five Star 5,6,7,8...  The contractor that painted them was instructed to make the fields as big as possible.  He told me that with the dormant grass, the old lines may still be visible.  I instructed them to stripe the fields in such a manner where is the least amount of confusion between old lines and new.  Unfortunately, that was not the end result.  I regret that you had a negative experience.  If we use Five Star, again, we will use the existing lines (even if that means smaller fields) or a different contractor.

I take running tournaments very seriously.  If you, or anyone, has additional suggestions on ways to improve my events, please email me at 1221dom@gmail.com

My sons team was involved in the game above and I am not sure it was the size of the fields, but the lack of paint/chalk.  There were no visible lines be it big or small on field five on the end lines and the sidelines were pretty non-existent as well.  With the amount of fields you guys had in play over the weekend and dealing with various cities, it can't be easy, but field 5 at five star was pretty bad. 

That PK really was a joke and not legitimate.  The score was really only 1-0 in that game and it was a close match.

4theGame4 wrote:Please no one misunderstand me.  I think the best team won the tournament this weekend....just think the bracket scheduling was very poor.

I would have loved to have had every team with identical schedules, but here was what I was up against in scheduling the u12b platinum division:

Solar (Stricker) - also coaching u9b team
Solar (Crawford) - also coaching u16b team
Azzurri - also coaching u10b team and requested a Fri night game
FC Dallas Central Premier - also coaching u15g team
Liverpool Owen - based out of Arlington, so I assumed they did not want to play Fri night
Fort Worth Strikers - I assumed they did not want to play Friday night


Maybe, I should not have made those assumptions about the Tarrant County teams. Also, it would have helped if we had a larger complex like Russell Creek or Pizza Hut Park with more fields. But, I was able to honor these schedule requests and coaches with multiple teams were able to make all of their games in the preliminary rounds.

I would ask the contractor for Purchase Invoice on materials for the fields. There is no way Field 5 was touched with the appropriate amount of product (I would say not at all based on how it looked Sunday).

At the risk of being critized....in the future maybe they could use a completely different color chalk than what was already out there? While I prefer White, a nice Red or Rrange might have been better and less confusing? Field 5 had two lines on the parent side, they were about 18 inches apart. The AR kept switching which line she was using as the touch line....probably why the parents were so vocal.

On yellowish grass, blue would have worked, too.

Again, I do care about the quality of my events and will make note of these issues.

Scheduling is always a battle especially when a tourney grows like this one did. You went above and out of your way to make things work when folks asked about possibilities to make changes. Every coach received a schedule and if they and their manager had an issue with the schedule had the oppourtunity to contact you for a change. It's tough especially considering field space trying to have it work for everyone. I think you did the best you could so no issues there.

On the Refs, well my mother used to say if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all. So in Game 1 of my boys game we had a wonderful ref. He took the time to talk to the both coaches, explain how they would call the game and was consistent (except for maybe a blown offside call but that happens to everyone once in a while) So yes there was a good ref present at this tourney hats off. Game 1 in my girls game a ref that I have had issues with in the past, we spoke before the game tried to break the ice a little and he actually called a good game no complaints there. The rest of them. That's another story. Yelling at a 12 year old boy when he asks you about a call that you blew is no way to handle the situation and igniting parents by have jabs back and forth is also no way to act when your wrong. Simple to me I ask my boys and girls to not listen to the parents when they play. They I beleive are much younger then these refs how then do they have such a tough time doing something that I am asking my kids to do. I know it's tough but sometimes you make it worse then it needs to be. They all need to watch how the ref in my boys 1st game handled hostile parents. Trust me we all have them on our each of our teams. There is a right way to handle it and a wrong way. Big ups for the CR in Game 1 and his crew. Dom hey best of luck to you man.

Dom - really appreciate your work on this tournament. I know it's never perfect but appreciate the work you did in trying to accommodate coaches with multiple teams spread across 5+ Soccer Parks -and responding to requests so quickly. Had an Excellent ref for our first game in Southern Oklahoma...I mean Denton - ........excellent job as a CR for the entire game.
Disappointing to miss the championship game by 1 point but a productive tournament for us on many levels. Looking forward to the next one.

Solar '03, wow! Good young team.

I really enjoyed watching their creativity. Getting out of trouble, moving the ball, combination passes, and how they handled themselves with pretty tough competition from all the teams. Impressive!