The 19th annual Newtown Memorial Day Kick-Off Tournament, sponsored by the Newtown Soccer Club, will be held Friday, May 25, through Sunday, May 27, and more than 100 teams from all over the region will be competing on dozens of fields throughout New
The 19th annual Newtown Memorial Day Kick-Off Tournament, sponsored by the Newtown Soccer Club, will be held Friday, May 25, through Sunday, May 27, and more than 100 teams from all over the region will be competing on dozens of fields throughout Newtown.
The tournament is a USYSA sanctioned tournament through Connecticut Junior Soccer Association. As always, boys and girls will compete in U10, U11, U12, U13 and U14 age divisions (all U10 teams will play small-sided, eight-versus-eight) and a minimum of four games is guaranteed.
Qualifying matches will be played Friday and Saturday and Sunday, with any finals to be played on Sunday. First- and second-place teams in each division will receive awards (except for U10 division, where all players will receive a participation medal).
Tammy Marks and Barbara Young are the co-directors of the 2001 tournament.
The Newtown Soccer Club has seen a number of its teams claim tournament titles.
Before the U10 division became a non-competitive bracket, the Newtown Strikers and Ridgefield Beasts shared the boysâ title in 1996 (two years later, in the U12 division, those two teams once again shared the title). The last â and only â U11 boys team to hold the title was the Newtown Gunners back in 1983, the first year of the tournament. The last U13 boys team to capture a title was the Newtown Eagles in 1998, sharing it with the North Kingstown Hurricanes. And the last U14 boys team to hold a title was last yearâs Newtown Strikers.
On the girlsâ side, the Newtown Hurricanes captured the U10 division title in 1994. Three years later, the Hurricanes shared the U13 title with the Westside Chargers and a year after that captured the U14 division title. The Newtown Nightmare captured the last local U11 division title in 1997 while the Newtown Rockets were 2000 champions in the U12 division.
The Newtown Memorial Day Kick-Off Tournament â which has grown from 32 teams in 1983 to a high of 116 teams in 1996 â provides three full days of almost non-stop soccer and it will be quite a spectacle.
See photos and results in the June 2 issue of The Newtown Bee.