The Center of the Youth Soccer Universe

Great Raleigh continues to enhance its reputation as America's premier destination for youth and collegiate soccer and that is never more true than during a five week stretch in November and December.

On fields throughout Wake County, the Capital Area Soccer League (CASL) and the GRCVB will welcome more than 900 teams to four major youth tournaments: the CASL Girls Shootout (Nov. 10-11); CASL Boys Shootout (Nov. 17-18); CASL Girls Showcase (Nov. 30-Dec. 2) and the CASL Boys Showcase (Dec. 14-16). These four events combined are expected to generate a whopping 30,000 room nights with an economic impact of about $9 million. A special thanks to Charlie Slagle and the folks at CASL for bringing these four mega-events to Wake County.

If you get your kicks from collegiate sports, the Town of Cary, CASL and the GRCVB are host partners in the ACC Men's Soccer Championship at SAS Soccer Park (Nov. 13-18). This marks the sixth consecutive year that either the ACC men or women have decided their soccer championship in Cary. The ACC is far and away the strongest college soccer conference in the nation, and the chances are good that at least one ACC team (and maybe even three or four) will return to Cary one month later, when the soccer madness concludes (at least for this year) with the NCAA Men's College Cup (Dec. 14-16) at SAS Soccer Park. The top four collegiate teams in America will gather in Cary to determine a national champion. This will be the fifth straight year that N.C. State, the Town of Cary, CASL and GRCVB have hosted an NCAA College Cup.