ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 18, 1996 TAG: 9611190014
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 SPORTS EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
THE FIRST VIRGINIA BANK Fall Soccer Classic is a triumph of logistics and hard work for the event's 244 teams and its many organizers.
By the time coach Dee Dalton sent his soccer team onto the field Sunday morning at 11:15, Danny Beamer already had been pacing the fields at Green Hill Park in Roanoke County for five hours.
Beamer, the executive director of the Roanoke Valley Soccer Club and field commander of the First Virginia Bank Fall Soccer Classic, had reasons to pace - thousands of them.
They included figuring out how to get 244 teams made up of 4,148 players from eight states to one of the 33 fields in 11 area parks used for the tournament. He also had to figure out a way to reserve 3,600 local hotel rooms for a two-day tournament that included 397 games in 29 playing divisions. Beamer then had to round up 200 volunteers to ready the fields, 150 referees to run the games played on them and two parking attendants borrowed from the Roanoke Civic Center to keep traffic flowing.
``It's tough,'' Beamer said Sunday in the midst of one of his countless laps around the Green Hill plains. ``We go to tournaments all the time where people take for granted how it works - unless they go to a bad tournament.
``We try to take care of the little things, but it's a lot bigger than people see on the surface.''
Some of the little things can turn into big things. Like two parents who told Beamer they objected to a child from an opposing team wearing a face mask. They said it intimidated their son's team. Beamer had to tell them the child was wearing it to protect his broken nose.
There were plenty of broken hopes Sunday, with only 29 champions crowned. Three of those champions, however, came from the Timesland area. (Championship results in Scoreboard. B4)
The first champion crowned was the Roanoke Star White team in the Under-12 boys' Gold Division, which beat the Gaston (N.C) Storm 2-1 at Green Hill. The cars carrying the Storm contingent sported flags bearing the team insignia, but the Star wasn't intimidated.
Danny Karbassiyoon put the Star up 1-0 with 10 minutes gone on a left-footed chip shot. Ten minutes later, Justin Krehbiel scored the decisive goal on a corner kick that hooked behind Gaston's goalie and bounced off the inside of the far post.
Later, the Roanoke Star White won the Under-12 girls' division 1-0 on penalty kicks. Two nights earlier, Lindsay Schaffer won a shootout exhibition during an intermission at a Roanoke Express hockey game. This time, Star teammate Lindsay Leffler did the honors for the Star, giving them a 4-3 advantage on penalty kicks.
Also taking home a championship were the New River Rowdies, who beat the Midlothian Blast 1-0 in the Under-10 boys' Gold Division.
And then there was Dalton, who coached the Roanoke Star Red Under-13 boys' squad. This past summer, the former Cave Spring High School and Virginia Tech baseball star played for the Arkansas Travelers, a Class AA affiliate of the St.Louis Cardinals. When Dalton came home after the season, Beamer called the former Star player and asked him to coach the Under-13s, who began the fall season with nine players.
Undaunted, Dalton guided them to a .500 season as a rookie coach.
The team featured a group of high-spirited, almost madcap boys, including Ryan Mullen, who sported a Rasta beret on the sideline and Andre Lexima, a native of Haiti who didn't speak English three years ago when he came to the United States.
When their game and season ended in a shutout loss, no tears were shed. Reflecting on the season and tournament, Dalton said, ``I learned it's a lot harder to coach than it is to play.''
And it's even harder to pull off a tournament of this magnitude.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB