BATON ROUGE – The 2010 U.S. Youth Soccer Association Southern Regional Championships are set to begin Friday at the BREC Burbank Soccer Complex in Baton Rouge, and the LSU soccer program will be well-represented with 11 players competing for five different club teams from across the South.
The tournament will begin Friday and run through next Wednesday as it features the South’s premier club teams in the boys and girls Under-14 through Under-19 age divisions.
Round robin matches in each age division will be contested Friday, Saturday and Sunday, followed by the quarterfinals on Monday, semifinals on Tuesday and this year’s regional finals on Wednesday.
USYSA State Cup Champions and select runners-up from 12 USYSA State Associations in Region III are set to participate. This includes teams from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Texas and Tennessee.
On display for the Tigers will be rising sophomores Natalie Ieyoub, Hannah Jobe, Tricia Johnson, Reyna Lubin and Catherine Luparello for the Mandeville Soccer Club of Louisiana, as well as redshirt freshman Amy Porter for the Murfreesboro Strikers Soccer Club of Tennessee.
Five members of LSU’s highly-touted recruiting class are also ready to compete for their respective teams in the USYSA Southern Regional Championships, including Nina Anderson of the Dallas Texans; Emily Cancienne of the Baton Rouge Soccer Association; and Addie Eggleston, Megan Kinneman and Shannon McLain of the Challenge Soccer Club of Houston.
Champions in each age group at the USYSA Southern Regional Championships will compete at the 2010 USYSA National Championships scheduled for July 21-25 in Overland Park, Kan.
It is estimated that the economic impact of hosting the 2010 USYS Southern Regional Championship will bring $7.5 million to the local Baton Rouge economy. Local restaurants, hotels and retail stores will benefit from the more than 3,600 players and their families representing 184 club teams during the events.