BLAINE, Minn. – (July 14, 2017) – Thousands of soccer players, parents and fans have descended on Blaine for the nine-day run of Schwan’s USA Cup at the National Sports Center.
“This is the 33rd USA Cup and we are welcoming 1,168 teams, pretty much exactly what we had last year, we are actually 10 short of last year’s record,” said Barclay Kruse from the National Sports Center.
With a large construction project going on at the NSC, it will make getting to the tournament a little more difficult this year. But for tournament organizers, the short term frustrations will be worth for the long term gains.
“We are going to work around it. The good benefit for the tournament is long term, it will be a tremendous benefit for Schwan’s USA Cup because the tournament headquarters can move into that school building, and schools are an ideal venue for all the functions you need to run a big soccer tournament team: check in, headquarters, medical headquarters, media, scoring, all these things can go into a school building,” said Kruse.
With 25,000 people a day walking the ground of the NSC, it brings a lot of outside money into the community to go along with the increase in traffic.
“What other time during the year would you have the world come into Blaine, Minnesota. We have 15 countries represented this year. It’s the chance for local residents in Blaine to go visit a restaurant and hear different foreign languages being spoken. This is a huge economic impact event for this community. $33 million of economic impact and the vast majority of that money is spent in Anoka County, so it’s a big economic impact boost. There is traffic. Traffic on Davenport and Highway 65 is tight in the afternoon rush hour on a normal day. and we understand we are adding some cars to that, so we ask people to be patient, but the overall benefit is significant to this community,” said Kruse.
The 2017 Schwan’s USA Cup runs from July 14-23. North Metro TV will air several games live during the tournament. Also, the opening ceremonies celebration will air live on NMTV on Tuesday, July 18 starting at 7:30 p.m.
For more information on USA CUP, visit their official website here.
