The annual Willard Tournament is this weekend. I always enjoy heading out there on Saturday, Coach Owens and his volunteers are excellent hosts, the weather has been wonderful generally and it’s a great opportunity for me to see many of the Class 1 teams in one place. Great preparation for the District seeding. Here’s the calendar for the weekend:
Friday:
4:00PM Willard vs Hillcrest
5:45 Bolivar vs Marshfield
7:30 Central vs Willard
Saturday:
9:00 McAuley vs Bolivar
10:45 Hillcrest vs Central
12:30 Marshfield vs McAuley
2:15 Championship
From Saturday’s Post-Dispatch
Weather permitting, high school soccer will return to the Anheuser-Busch Center in Fenton next week.
As the article notes, the facility that is the traditional host for the High School Final Four, survived the Meramec River flooding remarkably well. I stopped by a week ago while I was in the area and the grass fields looked like they were ready to be mowed and were without the debris field you might otherwise have expected.
The same article also points the the Brine Tournament of Champions event that will occur in Quincy IL next weekend. The Glendale Falcons and Waynesville Tigers are both participating, playing in the Greater Burlington Partnership bracket along with Visitation Academy from St Louis.
Area powers Incarnate Word Academy and St. Joseph’s Academy will be among the competitors in the elite Brine Bracket of the Brine Tournament of Champions April 25-26 in Burlington, Iowa. Visitation Academy and Fort Zumwalt West will also take part in the four-bracket, 24-team event, which has attracted teams from Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin, Colorado and North Carolina.
The Tigers weekend included three games in West Plains where they took their first loss, in PK’s, to Cape Central. They’ve bounced back quite well, continuing their unbeaten run in the Ozark Conference. The Falcons are coming off of their 3-0 performance in Sedalia this weekend, winning that tournament and then shutting out Ozark and Hillcrest this week.
Here’s the weekend Tournament schedule for our local representatives One of the teams in their bracket is Homewood-Flossmoor, a very large school in South Chicago. Their local paper offers some insight on the games as well
“We’ll be going against some of the best high school teams in the United States,” said H-F coach Todd Elkei, whose team will meet Wisconsin Whitefish Bay in a first-round game at 3:30 p.m. on April 25. The winner will face St. Charles North or Missouri Waynesville High at 11:15 a.m. on April 26.
I’ve also been informed that it’s Prom Weekend at Glendale so the burden of performance is going to fall on the underclassmen this weekend. The seniors have non-soccer priorities. What’s the world coming too? 
Prom Night does girls soccer team no favors
Coach Owens will be leaving the Willard School District after 14 years and has accepted the position of assistant principal at Bolivar High School. With his departure, Willard High School Activities Director Jeff Staley has announced that the new coaching staff for Willard High School will be Tim Magee and Geoff Meiss. Coach Magee will be the head boy’s coach and Coach Meiss will be the head girl’s coach – each will assist the other.