Congrats to Memphis on Spring Fling

[CoachT]

Memphis will host the Spring Fling the next three years. Soccer, becuase of the number of facilities available, will expand to eight teams per classification. Soccer will be played at the Mike Rose Complex in East Memphis with 17 fields.

[silverpie]

Here's an interesting thought--what now happens to the girls' soccer tournament? It shouldn't be that hard to add quarterfinals by using either the Redoubt or the Camp Jordan complex...

[chs23]

if tennessee high school makes it to the spring fling, that's a long, long trip they have to make.

[CoachT]

There are several posts, on different boards, concerning this same topic with similar comments. Therefore, I am going to make this one post on several boards.

 

Personally, I hate to see the Spring Fling leave Chattanooga. They have done a great job with it for 9 years and I fully expect them to come back in three years with a dynamite proposal. Also on a personal level, I would like to see the Fling in Middle Tennessee...just like every other area of the state would like it in their part of the state. This time it is Memphis' turn.

 

This time around, Memphis had the best proposal. If you look through them all and weigh the best proposal in terms of the players and their schools then Memphis was out front. The three parts of the proposal that point this out most dramatically:

 

(1) financially Memphis is underwriting all expenses. This means that the schools will receive twice the expense money that schools received last year. Schools that travel the farthest will receive the most expense money. This is important to the participating schools.

 

(2) The University of Memphis is providing dorm space for the majority of the participants at $25 per double room ($15 for a single) which includes two meals a day. $12.50 per athlete is hard to beat.

 

(3) Hundreds of additional athletes will be able to participate because of the additional teams that will be added in baseball and soccer due to the large number of facilities made available.

 

The negatives, or perceived negatives:

 

Security- some fans have commented about downtown Memphis and expressed their concern about feeling secure there. As with ANY major cities there are areas that people are not as safe as others. First of all, most of the activities will take place on the perimeter which is as safe as any other suburban, big-city area. Second, the downtown area of Memphis is being strongly promoted by the city and the major corporations there in order to attract other major businesses as well as tourist traffic. Therefore, they are working hard to make that area of Memphis very secure and, from the reviews I have seen concerning the new baseball stadium downtown and the events that are held for teenagers in that area, they are achieving that. And, when the Fling is in town, I would imagine it will be more secure than ever.

 

Geography- Memphis had to know this would be the hard part to sell which is probably why they enhanced the rest of their proposal so well. Memphis feels they have something to show-off and want the people in the rest of the state to come there and give them the chance to see and experience it. I can't blame them for that. But, yes, it is a long trip for a lot of people. As I am sure the people in Memphis would tell you, though, the road goes both ways.

[batboy68]

I have played multiple tourney's at Memphis' Mike Rose Complex and they were really good fields the first time. But returning to play there for other tourneys, the fields were terrible...and have remained terrible. So unless they did alot of work on those fields...I would not expect them to be so nice.