Region III Amateur Cup - Disappointment Deep in The Heart of Texas
On Sunday, Tobacco Road FC defeated Tulsa Athletic 4-2 in Plano, Texas to win the USASA Region III Amateur Cup. Both teams were exhausted after traveling to the lone star state not just for the day, but the weekend. It was a grueling slate of games where the concern was less on the competition on the other side of the field but the bodies on your own roster. The North Carolina side prevailed over a recent national success story and is now two wins away from both the national title and a U.S. Open Cup spot.
And I’m guessing most of you reading didn’t know that. Not unless you were following certain team accounts or my own work at TheCup.us. It isn’t like U.S. Soccer, the United States Adult Soccer Association, or the U.S. Open Cup made any mention of this tournament. Though, with how confusing, chaotic, ill-managed, and outright dangerous the tournament was I can understand why it isn’t talked about.
The USASA Region III Amateur Cup tournament, like many things in the southern region of USASA, is a disgrace. It's something USASA president John P Motta and company should be ashamed of and the fact that a potential U.S. Open Cup team has a 1 in 4 chance of coming from the competition only makes it worse.
Format
Before I get into the Region III set-up, here’s a quick primer. USASA, or the United States Adult Soccer Association, is the largest governing body of amateur soccer in the country. It is split into four regions (Northeast, Midwest/Central, South, and West) with each being responsible for its own state associations and tournaments.
One of USASA’s main tournaments is the National Amateur Cup, a century-old competition that crowns the top non-professional team in USASA. Since 2018, the champion has received a direct berth into the U.S. Open Cup tournament - bypassing the local qualifying tournament.
(For a more in-depth look, including a dive into the 2023 Region I Amateur Cup, check out my previous article from Hudson River Blue)
The way the National Amateur Cup functions is that the “national” portion is a final four knockout tournament featuring the champions of each USASA region. Each region holds their own amateur cup tournament to crown their representative, which is open to every state association within said region plus select national leagues (for example the National Premier Soccer League is part of USASA). Each region holds their amateur cup in their own way and retains the power to control formatting of said cup.
Three of the four USASA regions hold amateur cup tournaments that follow a knockout structure.
For example USASA Region I in the Northeast has every participating state association elect a team to take part, with many picking state cup champions. That makes the competition a sort of champions league in one of the most competitive areas of the country. Region II, meanwhile, has open entry. Any team from its member states can sign up. It's a lot of travel and some states (Illinois, Wisconsin) have more participants than others. While it’s complicated, the format at least passes the logic test.
All of these take place over the course of a few months usually, beginning in spring and ending sometime around June or July,
(Note: For transparency the 2023 Region IV has started late this year and last year. Seemingly the region keeps extending the deadline to try and get teams to compete. But even with it shotgunned between June and July it follows the same knockout format with games every week or two.)
Unlike the other USASA Regions, the South’s Region III does not do this. Instead, Region III’s format has its entire tournament take place over one weekend in one location. This involves teams playing multiple games a day in-order to play at least three group stage games over Friday and Saturday. Then the best finishing teams are rewarded with a game early Sunday morning in semifinals, with the winners playing a championship final almost immediately after the same day.
The group stage is itself as baffling as the format. Teams were split into three groups, with two groups of three and one group of four. The group of four, Group C, played a standard round robin - simple. Groups A and B played three group matches against one another - meaning the points to advance were based on “how well you played against the other guys” vs “how well you played against the teams in your own group”.
By the way, if you thought the standings would be normal, think again. Teams got six points for a win, three points for a tie, and zero points for a loss. Plus an additional point was added for every goal scored (up to three goals) and for a shutout. Meanwhile if a team won 3-0 they got 10 points and if it won 4-1 it got 9 points.
Why was it like this? Cost. The central location was not just hosting the Amateur Cup but multiple Region III tournaments. The Women’s Amateur Cup, plus regionals for Over-30, Over-40, and Over-50 teams were all supposed to take place over the weekend. Regions I and II do something similar with their regional finals. Region I hosts multiple finals at Ukrainian American Sports Center in North Wales, PA (which is this weekend by the way). But the difference is those are single game finals at one location versus multiple teams playing multiple games at one location to complete an entire tournament.
While cost is an important factor to consider, it cannot be the ONLY factor to consider. Especially when cramming all those matches into one weekend severely impacts the participating teams.
But it isn’t just the format that affects the quality of games.
Teams
It should go without saying but Tobacco Road FC and Tulsa Athletic were not the only teams taking part in the Amateur Cup last weekend. In total, ten teams from six states were competing for the title of Region III Amateur Champions.
The slate was as follows:
ASC New Stars (TX South)
Cobb United FC (GA)
DFW United FC (TX North)
Ice FC/Black Ice (TX North)
Kader Boys FC (GA)
Santos FC (TX North)
Sharks FCA (FL)
Tobacco Road FC (NC)
Tulsa Athletic (OK)
Xolos PV Nuevo Laredo (TX South)
I mentioned before how Region I and Region II selected teams for their Amateur Cup tournaments. Region III also attempted to use that approach, asking each state association to send their best teams to the competition.
But of this year’s competitors, only four of the ten teams won their state cup tournaments or leagues (ASC New Stars, Cobb United, Ice FC/Black Ice, and Sharks FCA). The rest of the field included the Carolina Cup runner-up (Tobacco, who lost to NBT Soccer in the final), an NPSL team (Tulsa, which did reach the national semifinals to be fair), three in-state Texas teams, and a struggling Georgia side (Kader Boys FC). This created a substantive imbalance in talent, reflected in the final group standings.
DFW United FC only started playing competitive senior men’s soccer last fall. They lost all three of their group stage games (1-8, 0-11, and 0-15). The latter score is actually a new record for the biggest blowout in U.S. Open Cup qualifying history since the 2016 qualifying tournament (when TheCup started keeping records).
It should also be noted that five of the ten teams taking part come from the host state of Texas, including defending Region III champion ASC New Stars - a respectable program with an Open Cup appearance to their name. But besides ASC, which advanced to the semifinals by winning its group, the only Texas team to have a positive goal differential after group play was Santos FC. And it wasn’t close.
For Region III, this use of local teams to pad the competition is becoming a patternpatten. Last year, when the tournament was also held in Plano, four of the six teams came from the host state. In 2021, the tournament was hosted in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Originally, it was advertised that Kalonji Pro-Profile from Georgia would compete, only for local UPSL side Music City SC to be swapped in at the last minute for the Georgia side. Music City SC lost all of its games and scored five goals while allowing 28.
Due to local clubs watering down of the Region III tournament, nine of the top ten goal scorers in the Amateur Cup competition are from Region III (the only non-Region III scorer is Czarni Jaslo Chicago’s Enrique Gonzalez). Schimiliguen "Jhonny" Castin, a player from Sharks FCA, scored 12 goals across four games in this year’s tournament. Going into Sunday, he was the Golden Boot leader across all four USASA regions. I used past tense, however, because Tobacco Road FC’s Forster Ajago scored three goals on Sunday to jump him. Ajago finished the weekend with 14 goals across five games.
Location
While five games in three days seems like an unfair burden to place on players competing for the Amateur Cup, holding the tournament in Plano, Texas in June makes the burden nearly unbearable. Temperatures soared during the tournament, with highs in the 90s two of the three days.
The tournament was played fully outdoors in Carpenter Park in Plano, Texas, leaving the players, staff, and referees to deal with blistering heat during multiple matches a day. A source with one of the clubs that competed over the weekend voiced their frustration about the safety of the players this week. “It definitely needs to be restructured if they want to attract more quality teams moving forward. The health and the safety of the players should be non-negotiable.”
Then on Sunday, each group winner and runner-up woke up early to play an 8 AM semifinal match. Both games went into extra time, with the Tulsa vs ASC game also needing PKs. That’s 120 minutes plus of soccer meaning the games ended somewhere around 10:30 AM or later. Then the teams were expected to prepareprep for a final that kicked off in less than three hours. There was effectively no recovery time to determine who the best team in the region was. The team that would represent the south in the National Amateur Cup and potentially win an automatic berth in the US Open Cup.
Communication
If you look at the USASA Region III Facebook page right now, it posted Monday about ASC New Stars winning the Over-30 cup. It also shared a post by TheCup.US about Tobacco Road winning the Amateur Cup. Those are the only posts about the competition from USASA.
Fans of Tulsa, who just had a stellar run in the Open Cup that ended with a match against MLS side Sporting KC, had to beg for any sort of update. The only match that was streamed was a VEO broadcast of the semifinal between Tulsa and ASC, where the PK shootout wasn’t shown as the camera was pointed at midfield.
Early last week, in an attempt to get a head start on coverage for TheCup.us, I attempted to contact Region III. I was concerned they wouldn’t post match information or that the information might be inaccurate. My main purpose was to obtain full names of goal scorers, something USASA Region III has not been provided in past iterations of this tournament.
I was sent a Google Sheet of team contacts and was forced to obtain the information through a variety of means, including text messaging, Instagram DMs, and emails. It’s certainly reasonable to expect basic information to be publicly available. It’s the right thing to do from an organizational perspective, as it serves the players, team staff, and fans.
For comparison, USASA Region I’s social media and website are constantly updating about its tournaments. Team information, scores, and even articles on upcoming matches are all regularly provided by the northeastern contingent. Region II isn’t as good, lacking in the constant updates, but does provide team info right on its website. Last year, it even had a constantly updating USASA Region II Amateur Cup bracket.
Region III added a text file at the bottom of its tournament page a few days before the tournament. That file contained the names of teams and when and where they were playing.
To give credit, sometime between Saturday night and Monday morning a “Amateur Cup Schedule & Results” tab was added. That includes incorrect group stage standings because the program didn’t separate the group stage games from Sunday’s knockout rounds.
I think the most damning indictment of this tournament’s lack of communication came from Saturday evening. The final games of group play saw a few teams fighting to win the group or finish high enough to be the wildcard.
Sharks FCA, a former UPSL team that now competes in the Florida Gold Coast League, was a favorite to get the wildcard spot. Their final group stage match was against Xolos PV Laredo of South Texas. From a mix of team contacts and a photo taken of the score tournament scoresheet in Texas, all I was told was the game ended 5-3 in favor of Sharks.
Instead, what actually happened was Sharks walked off the field after a Xolos player allegedly called a member of the team, which was almost all Black players, a racial slur. The game wasn’t finished and Sharks were awarded the win. With a wildcard spot at stake, a critical game was called late in the second half. No one at that time knew the results had locked Sharks into the wildcard spot over Cobb United FC. It was all done without clarity or public communication.
That lack of communication has continued after the fact. One source connected to Sharks voiced concern over “the amount of games over 1 weekend and lack of communication, even on the racist incident we never heard from the region about it.” That is simply unacceptable.
Conclusion
So to recap, the 2023 USASA Region III Amateur Cup was:
Played in a way that reduces the level of competition (multiple games in a single day)
Played in dangerous conditions (outdoors in blazing heat, combined with multiple games a day)
Invited non-top teams to fill in space, including multiple from within the host state
Incentivized blowout wins in early rounds for points
Had little to no public-facing communication from the regional or national organization
Got a team to the National Amateur Cup tournament, two wins away from the guaranteed U.S. Open Cup spot
None of this is on the teams themselves. They signed up and are accepted at the behest of USASA Region III. They paid their money and played their games. On the other hand, the leaders of Region III and USASA president John Motta should be ashamed of the tournament they put on. It was a dangerous, embarrassing display of mismanagement that needs reform of the highest order.
- Michael Battista