This Memorial Day weekend, thousands of kids, their coaches and families will gather in Canton for the 42nd annual Canton Cup soccer tournament. It’s a win for the kids, the community and the township.
“It’s one of the biggest one-weekend, three-day soccer events in the Midwest,” says Daniel McEvilly, Director of Operations. “We’re averaging about 450 to 500 teams coming in from the Great Lakes area, mainly Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Canada.”
“What we try to do for the community is bring in people, get them to experience what Canton is all about, stay at local hotels, eat at local restaurants, just really support the local businesses,” adds Peter Alexander, Canton Cup Executive Director.
The economic impact of last year’s tournament was about $4.3 million. In that tournament they crowned champions of 77 different divisions. Divisions run from Under 7 to Under 19 with both boys’ and girls’ soccer teams.
“There are definitely more boys’ teams,” says Peter. “The biggest reason is because the Canton Cup falls during the girls’ high school season and high school rules prohibit them from playing in any other competition. We do have a tremendous amount of girls’ teams in the younger age groups, though.”
“Because we have so many teams, we have so many divisions,” adds Daniel. “So, some clubs will bring their entire clubs here, because we have from lower level select all the way to the elite levels. We can find good competition for them.”
The tournament starts Friday night with mostly the local teams, then continues Saturday and Sunday, with Memorial Day off. Each team is guaranteed three games, which have to be played by Sunday at noon, when the finals begin and run through the rest of the day. With around 500 teams, that’s about 1,500 games to schedule.
“Scheduling is definitely one of the toughest parts of the tournament,” explains Peter. “It starts with our coaches that help with bracketing teams into brackets where they can be successful, where no one’s going to end up getting either blown out or have a cake walk through the group. Once the bracketing happens, then that goes to our scheduling group.”
All games take place within Canton Township. “We work tightly with the Township, the police department, even the schools, because we will be using the high school field,” says Daniel. “It’s a nice partnership with the Township, they cut the grass and we take care of ‘everything from the grass up.’ We stripe the fields, buy the goals, the nets, all that stuff. So, every soccer goal you see in Canton at any elementary, middle or high school is ours. We put those at the schools to let them use.”
The Canton Cup also provides funding for the Canton Soccer Club and a number of local charities. They usually pick two or three charities every year. Some of those charities include taking care of a local soccer family that has faced tragedy.
“One year, one of our player’s dad was a Detroit police officer that got shot in the line of duty. We raised some money for the family and then we provided a scholarship for the kid for the rest of her playing career,” says Daniel. “It’s nice that we get that money each year and we do some charities. It also goes back into purchasing new goals, doing capital improvement, stuff like that.”
There is a reason that no games are played on Monday.
“We have that kind of memorial theme,” Daniel explains. “Both Mike Rumley, the tournament director, and I served in the Marine Corps, so we do different things to honor the weekend. A couple years ago, we had a traveling wall, like the Vietnam Memorial, but it was for fallen soldiers from Michigan.”
“Now, we have a link where anyone who wants to honor a fallen hero, they can fill out a form, send us a picture and a little blurb. Then, we make a sign and put it near a field. So, we dedicate one of the fields to the fallen soldier or marine and it has a little story about them.”
Volunteers are always welcome. “If somebody wanted to volunteer, they could go right to our website,” says Peter. “They could get ahold of Daniel or our tournament director, Mike Crumley. If they go to our regular website, they can find me all over that and give me a call and I can steer them in the right direction. We’re always looking for volunteers and there’s always a way to give someone an opportunity to help out.”
“Canton Cup is mostly run by volunteers,” adds Daniel. “Often, it’s parents of the club. We have volunteers whose kids are well gone and even those kids come back. We also hire a lot of kids to help. They’ll work parking, pick up trash, sell merchandise… it’s kind of our way to give back to our kids that have been in the club for so long. They love it. They get to hang around all weekend, eat for free and make some money. It’s really a family atmosphere. We have entire families that help volunteer.”
Peter has been a part of Canton Cup since he was a preteen playing soccer in the tournament. Asked what some of his favorite memories were, he mentioned having the chance to coach his son in the tournament and win a few times together. He also mentioned an end of tournament tradition.
“Every year, volunteers gather around as the tournament’s wrapping up and watch a few finals. We all sit around watching, talking, telling stories about what happened with them over the weekend. That’s always a really cool tradition.”
This Memorial Day weekend, you can start your own tradition of attending or even volunteering at the Canton Cup. But, even if you don’t go to a single game, with all it does for our township and community, we’re all Canton Cup winners.
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