Sports: This Sun Bowl for soccer elite

This Sun Bowl for soccer elite

The prestigious Tampa Bay Sun Bowl will draw teams from other states and countries to matches Dec. 27-30 in five bay area counties.

By STEVE LEE

TAMPA -- Words often have more than one meaning, so we're going to clear the air on two words -- sun and bowl -- that can cause confusion when used together.

So here is how the Sun Bowl is different from the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl.

College football's Sun Bowl takes place Dec. 31 in the arid Texas city of El Paso.

The Tampa Bay Sun Bowl, a boys soccer tournament of elite teams, will be played Dec. 27-30 in the temperate winter climate of mid-west Florida.

The Sun Bowl pits a couple of also-rans in Minnesota and Oregon, both of whom have no chance of claiming the national championship. The Tampa Bay Sun Bowl has a legitimate purpose. Namely, to showcase promising young soccer players to college recruiters and Olympic Development Team coaches.

Monday, the 22nd annual Tampa Bay Sun Bowl begins at various sites in five counties (Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Polk and Sarasota). The four-day tournament concludes Dec. 30 with all divisional finals (in age groups under-14 to under-19) at Lake Parker in Lakeland.

The tournament, one of the largest and most prestigious of its kind in the nation, brings together 290 teams from Florida, other states, and even a handful of international clubs from such places as Barcelona, Spain, and Newcastle, England.

"It's such a good thing for this area. We want to provide the best competition," said tournament committee member Bill Burton, a longtime supporter of youth soccer in the Tampa Bay area who has coached numerous age groups in the Tampa Blackwatch program.

"It brings an awful lot of people in here," said Steve Wegerle, a former Tampa Bay Rowdies star in the North American Soccer League who coaches the U-17 Blackwatch Lightning. "It's recognized as one of the biggest youth tournaments in the country."

According to George Kladis, founder and team manager of the Temple Terrace Spirit of '80, a U-19 team in the tournament, the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl is on a par with the Dallas Cup, played annually during Easter weekend, and two summer series -- the USA Cup in Minnesota and the Surf Cup in San Diego.

Sam Koleduk, who starred at Gulf High and at Saint Leo College (now Saint Leo University), said the five Tampa Bay Sun Bowls he played in were "probably one of the best tournaments. Most of the teams are pretty stacked."

"It's very, very difficult to get in this tournament," said Tony Paris, an assistant men's coach at Saint Leo. "You can apply to get in, but you've got to have a track record."

Paris, who recently became director of the Northeast Raiders, a competitive program in St. Petersburg, hopes to have one or more Northeast teams in next year's tournament.

As a college coach, the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl is a must to attend, said Paris, who usually watches games with Saint Leo head coach Fran Reidy.

"We religiously go. It's a great recruitment tool for us," said Paris, mentioning Saint Leo freshman sweeper Eric Edwards as a player he and Reidy successfully recruited after watching him play in last year's Tampa Bay Sun Bowl.

Mark Pearson, Land O'Lakes' boys coach, said his brother, Scott, earned a college scholarship to American University in Washington, D.C., as a result of his performance in the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl. "The coach came up to him right after and offered him a full ride," he said. The Land O'Lakes coach also recounted learning a valuable lesson during one of his three Sun Bowl appearances as a player. Pearson's U-17 Tampa Blackwatch team advanced to the final with eight players, but after a couple of national team players returned to the lineup for the final, Blackwatch lost to a Dayton, Ohio, club it had shut out in the quarterfinals.

"Overconfidence gets you every time," said Pearson, who played at Chamberlain and for the University of Tampa. "We thought we were going to walk all over them."

Among the players hoping to fare well in next week's tournament and be noticed by recruiters are Jesuit's Bryce Wegerle and Josh Paris, who transferred from Jesuit and plans to join River Ridge's team in January.

"When you're beginning to approach college, the pressure builds up because of the college scouts," said Paris, a 17-year-old senior center-midfielder.

Added Wegerle, a 16-year-old junior forward, "With so many college coaches there, if you do good, that could be a scholarship right there."

Wegerle already has carved a niche in Tampa Bay Sun Bowl lore. As a member of the U-12 Carrollwood Lightning, he netted the winning goal in the title game against the Blackwatch Lightning and was named most valuable player in that division.

"It was kind of funny how teams within 10 miles of each other ended up playing in the finals," Wegerle said. "The main rivalry was Carrollwood, Blackwatch and Northdale. It was for bragging rights."

Bragging rights is all that was at stake in the first tournament in 1978, which included eight U-10 and eight U-12 teams.

That tournament, the brainchild of the late Rip Collins, was played to bring in competitive state and out-of-state clubs to face host Town 'N Country squads. As has been the case for every Tampa Bay Sun Bowl, two international clubs -- from Colombia and Mexico -- participated.

"It was a vision to bring really high competition to the area," said tournament officer Burton.

In 1981, Burton marveled at a U-14 team from Bolivia that swept the tournament. "They didn't just win. It was like men versus boys," Burton said of the team that was led by Marco Etcheverry, now a D.C. United forward and the most valuable player in the 1999 MLS Cup. "They were incredible."

Kladis said he feels his current U-19 squad, consisting of many former high school all-stars who played at various colleges this fall, is pretty incredible.

"This is probably the biggest all-star team you've ever seen," he said.