Young soccer players, ages 12 to 19, from across the Northeast will compete this spring in hopes of advancing to the regional championship.
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Some 4,500 players on 272 teams will succeed, descending in July on the small town of Barboursville, W.Va., near Huntington and the Ohio River.
And while there, the players and 10,000 coaches and family members are expected to spend $12.5 million during the six-day tournament.
And that tournament — and those dollars — are headed to Lancaster County next year and the year after that.
The 2011 and 2012 US Youth Soccer Region I Championships will be hosted by the Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association in Lancaster, it was announced last week.
The championship will bring soccer players to Lancaster from a 15-state region, as far away as Maine and West Virginia.
While here, they are expected to rent between 14,000 and 15,000 hotel rooms and spend more than $12 million in 2011 and $15 million in 2012, the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau estimated.
"Fifteen-thousand room nights is a lot of rooms," said Chris Barrett, visitors bureau president.
Nightly rentals could approach half of the 8,300 rooms available in hotels, motels and bed & breakfasts in the county, Barrett said.
Although there have been soccer tournaments in the county before, there has not been one as large as the regional championships, he said.
The tournament, set for June 30-July 4 in 2011, will use 22 soccer fields at Hempfield High School and four miles away at the Sporting Valley Turf Farm in Manheim, which can be rented for athletic events, said Joel Cliff, a visitors bureau spokesman.
"What attracted them to this region is that it is so centrally located and there is so much to do," Barrett said.
While there will be teams playing almost constantly during the week, when their teams are not playing, Barrett expects the players to visit attractions such as the Strasburg Rail Road and HersheyPark.
They also may visit Amish-themed attractions, such as Kitchen Kettle Village, with their families, he said.
About a year and a half ago, the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau identified the youth sports market as an emerging travel market with a niche that Lancaster could fill.
One person on the bureau's staff was assigned to the job of sports marketing. It took nearly nine months to complete the tournament arrangements, Barrett said.
"I think it's a little more recession proof than a lot of those types of travel," said Barrett, referring to the traditional leisure travel and business travel that has been the county's mainstay.
"If you can get one of these events for two or three years, its an incredible economic driver," Barrett said of the soccer tournament and other large sports events, such as the MLK Weekend Classic Volleyball tournament held in Lancaster in January.
bharris@lnpnews.com
