By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Soon, the Grayson Sports Park will offer even more opportunities for locals and visitors to participate in soccer programs.
“Soccer has always been part of the plan,” Grayson Sports Park manager Grant Harper said. “We have had soccer teams practicing there for three years now.”
Harper said the sports park has had one multipurpose field used for both soccer and football since the park was constructed, and in the original plans there was supposed to be a general-purpose area of sports fields that weren’t completed at that time.
“So, we just went back and did that. This will be the second season. Last year was grow in, and this year will be the first season for that area.”
The area in question, Harper said, was four acres of Bermuda grass that is irrigated.
“That gives us the ability to add on,” Harper said.
And it will also give them the ability to have more fields.
“We would like to do something there in late spring,” Harper said. “Bermuda grass is a warm season grass, so it doesn’t come out of dormancy until the frost is done. And that’s usually around the first week of May around here.”
Harper explained that the other field has a rye overlay, so it is more suitable for an early start.
“We have them practicing on that field now, and we have the first travel soccer games scheduled April 12, April 19, May 3 and May 18. That’s a group called Eastern Elite Soccer,” Harper said. “They actually practice there currently, but this will be the first games we have hosted at the sports park.”
Harper said those games will be a way to ‘work the kinks out,’ so to speak. This will allow him to see what works, and what should be adjusted before the larger crowds show up, and allow for smoother growth.
“That’s how we did it with baseball and softball,” Harper said. “We did a partial season to get our feet wet and see what it looked like.”
There is a learning curve to everything, Harper said, and you want to give sports teams the best experience possible. This goes beyond just the dimensions of the fields and includes estimating crowd sizes and the actual marking and preparing of the fields to accommodate different regulation play.
“Every level of youth soccer has different requirements,” Harper said. “Some play 7 on 7, but it’s a smaller field with smaller goals. Some are 9 versus 9, and it all changes with different ages. But I have all those dimensions, and we can paint the field to accommodate whichever one is playing at the time. And we just need to figure out what that is going to look like, and try some different areas to mark fields out to see how they play.”
Harper said it is about finding the best fit, and by testing the waters with the first four games that are scheduled they will be able to do just that. In the beginning it will just be two teams with different age groups playing exhibition style games, but by fall it will open up more to local teams.
“We will even be testing out concessions on that end,” Harper said. “It’s a different crowd, and it will let us see what that crowd is interested in. They could possibly want different things, and some things will sell better than other things. But that’s all part of it. Part of figuring it all out. My approach has always been a little reserved going into things and not ‘blowing it up’ right from the start.”
“It’s really hard because the first impression is really important with people,” Harper continued. “The first really big exposure has to be successful, or it reflects poorly on you.”
So, starting small and doing it right leads to the best end results. The goal, he said, is to offer another sports venue at the sports park that benefits the community and the entire region.Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
