SPORTS BRIEF: Blast Off soccer tournament kicks off this weekend in Federal Way
Published 4:08 pm Thursday, August 2, 2012
For the next two weekends, hundreds of youth soccer players will be converging on Federal Way for one of the biggest tournaments in the Puget Sound area.
The Federal Way Football Club will play host to 80 girls soccer teams starting Friday and a total of 82 boys soccer teams will call the city home Aug. 10-12 for the annual 2012 Blast Off Tournaments. In total, the tournament will include teams from all around Washington.
The two separate girls and boys tournaments will be played at four locations around Federal Way, including Sacajawea and Saghalie middle schools, Celebration Park and Karl Grosch Field.
This year’s Blast Off will include teams from all over the Pacific Northwest in the under-10 through U-19 age brackets. Championship games during this weekend’s girls Blast Off will be played on Sunday at Celebration Park and Saghalie Middle School.
One big reason for the Blast Off tournaments’ popularity is the way the teams are placed into skill-level brackets. The Federal Way Football Club uses four- to six-team sub-groups at each age bracket, in an attempt to have teams of similar abilities compete against each other. There are basically 21 different bracketed tournaments going on during the girls’ weekend at the Blast Off Friday through Sunday.
The two Blast Off tournaments are used as the main fundraiser for the Federal Way Football Club. Tournament directors Perry and Sharon Woodford have been running Blast Off for well over a decade. The tournaments bring in tens of thousands of dollars.
