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Weekly Wrap Up

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  Hi and welcome back to a weekly wrap up of Tormenta news. I keep hoping to get out to practice but it hasn’t worked out yet for me and I feel bad about that. Hopefully I can get out there soon and actually meet some of the guys and talk to the coaches and do some actual reporting and newsgathering. Until that time comes, we’ll do a weekly wrap up of Tormenta news as we continue our slow march to March 8 and the season opener. Where to start? US Open Cup Let’s start with the US Open Cup, which announced the first round games for the 2026 edition. Tormenta will be kicking off the whole shebang as they host (takes a deep breath) FC America CFL Spurs on March 17 at 6 p.m. That will be the first game of the opening round, so for at least 30 minutes, the eyes of the US Open Cup world will be on Tormenta Stadium. The two teams met back in the first round of the 2024 US Open Cup with Tormenta coming away with a 1-0 win on a Nick Akoto early goal. South Georgia advanced to the third roun...
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Preseason check in

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  We are back for the start of my fifth season covering South Georgia Tormenta and one of these years I might actually start to feel like I know what I’m doing. Until that time I’m going to keep churning out these posts in the hopes that no one calls me on it. It’s been another busy offseason at Tormenta, as is their custom, with a couple of transfers out to USL Championship, others leaving at the end of their contract, several returning players and a host of new faces set to take the field for South Georgia in 2026. Let’s take a look at the offseason so far for Tormenta and what that portends for the 10th year of South Georgia Tormenta soccer. This is the first offseason Manager Mark McKeever has been at the helm of Tormenta. However, recruiting players to Statesboro was going to be one of his responsibilities when he was initially hired by Tormenta midway through the 2025 campaign, so this wasn’t an entirely unforeseen expectation of his. So how has it gone so far? Well, seven pl...
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Some Other New Beginning's End

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Photo Credit: Tormenta FC Being a sports fan is inherently a selfish endeavor. We spend our time, our treasure and, more than we'd like to admit, our emotional well-being investing in a team. We follow the players and, here at Tormenta, get to know them during their tenure here. We watch them grow and develop and that's all well and good, but we want to see them win games for South Georgia. And there are players that you're going to grow attached to. Whether that be because of some connection we forge with that player or just because we like how they play or they signed an autograph for you, we want them to be here year after year. The baseball postcast Effectively Wild has a term for this. They call it the "Jersey Guy." It's the jersey you can buy your 10-year old niece or nephew and feel confident they can wear it for a few years because that guy is going to be around for a few years. What kid wants to have the jersey of the guy who got traded four months af...
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South Georgia announces schedule

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Tormenta's 2026 schedule was released today and Tormenta has an extremely front-loaded schedule for the upcoming campaign. Get your tickets early because there are a lot of games early in the season.  Of their 19 home games listed, only six total come in the months of August, September and October. I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how many games that means there are at home from March-July, but I'm pretty sure you can figure it out.  It was previously announced that Tormenta would open at home with Spokane on a rare afternoon kickoff on Sunday, March 8. They'll go on to host AV Alta (March 14), Sarasota (March 21) and Boise (March 28) while hosting three more games in April.  The first road match of the season isn't until April 4 when Tormenta travels to face Richmond at City Stadium. Greenville comes to Statesboro on April 8 while Chattanooga visits on the 18th and Naples pays a visit to Statesboro on April 25. The Naples game is a part of the newly ...
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Tormenta signs USL1 Goalkeeper of the Year Sean Lewis

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A year after making one of the more surprising free agent signings of the 2024 offseason by signing goalkeeper Austin Pack, Tormenta has once again made a splash in the free agent goalkeeper market, this time signing Sean Lewis from the defending League One champion One Knox. Lewis, the two-time defending USL League One Goalkeeper of the Year (winning in 2024 and 2025), spent the past three seasons with One Knox where he helped lead Knoxville to the regular season and playoff titles in 2025*. I can not wait for 2026 to get here so I can say "last year" and everyone will know what I'm talking about. If I wrote "last year" now, that now it could lead to some confusion of "did he mean 2025 or 2024?"  Lewis will be reunited with Tormenta Head Coach Mark McKeever, who coached Lewis in 2023-2024, and Jordan Bell, who served as Assistant Coach at One Knox in 2023 before joining Tormenta in 2024. "I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with Sean a...
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Goodbye old friends

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At the beginning of this year I wrote about the ever-changing nature of sports teams and, in particular, how the names and faces change year over year as players leave and players join the team. For better or worse, it's the time of year where we replace some planks on the Ship of Theseus for Tormenta as the team announced its first departures from the 2025 squad Tuesday morning. Makal Rasheed, Aaron Walker, Gabriel Cabral and Austin Pack's time with Tormenta has come to an end. I don't know what's next for any of the players leaving, ( Edit: After writing this, we found out about one players next steps, read on to see who) but I always wish them all well in whatever comes next. I could regale you with tales of their stats and performances during their time in Statesboro. Actually, now that I think about it, I probably couldn't do that. "Regale" implies a level of skill or talent that, frankly, I don't have. I could tell you about some of their feats...
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Things Happen Sometimes

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Photo courtesy of Tormenta FC We all knew the rules going in and I don't have a better way of ending a tied game, but losing in a penalty kick shootout just feels dumb. But no one asked me and so here we are at the end of the Tormenta season after they fell in penalties to Spokane Sunday night. It was a tight game with both teams having opportunities to score in regulation that weren't capitalized on. Both teams converted penalty kicks in Extra Time to send us to the shootout . It was an intense, exciting game. Now for a quick digression before we get back to Tormenta. I was reading Craig Calcaterra's excellent Cup of Coffee baseball newsletter Friday morning and he brought up something that I'd kind of known, but could never really could put it into words until he crystallized it for me.  There are no grand conclusions to be drawn from any one playoff game or postseason run. That's not to say they're not important. The games mean a lot to the fans, the players...
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