Crowds, AV Alta Fans, and The Open Cup

It was a good weekend for Tormenta. Yaniv Bazini scored his first two professional goals after being a standout at the University of Vermont. Goalkeeper Austin Pack made a couple of saves and the defense played well even as AV Alta maintained possession for a good part of the game. It was an exciting game, though even I was getting a little annoyed at the time wasting by Tormenta in which multiple players were issued yellow cards for. (My game story from the Statesboro Herald can be found here.)

Where Is Everyone?

The attendance was reported at 539 and, to be honest, even that seemed high (granted, I thought the reported attendance last week of 911 seemed low as it looked like more people were there.) What that means is I'm going to try not to come across as defensive as I get into this section. 

I'm not above laughing a a fun joke about sports attendance. Did I closely follow the Oakland Athletics' attendance last year to see if it would average more than the capacity for the Savannah Bananas' cruise? I absolutely did. 

In 2024, Tormenta was 10th out of 12 teams in average attendance (with one game not reported) and were within a couple hundred fans of being ninth. The did, however, see a dip in average attendance from the 2023 season by about 200 fans a game. (Thanks to Alex Ashton at League One Updater for keeping attendance stats)

I'd love for more fans to come to Tormenta Stadium. Through two games this year, I've found Tormenta to play an exciting style of soccer that's fun and energetic (setting aside the time wasting.) The crowd, small as it was, was energetic and into the game.

Club President and Co-Owner Darin Van Tassell has said they are in the memory-making business and, personally, I think they do a good job of that. I've been going to games since 2022 with my oldest kid and my dad and, honestly, there's not a lot of things that all three generations of us would all enjoy doing. But Tormenta games fit that bill. 

Ultimately it's up to the club to sell the community on the fact they have a great product worth coming to see. Whether that's through community engagement, marketing, promotions or something else I couldn't say. Marketing is not my area of expertise as you can clearly tell from how I (poorly) promote this blog. I don't know how you go about making Tormenta a "can't miss event" that the community rallies behind.  I hope they figure it out.

To do my part, if you come to a game and want me to, I will gladly take a picture of you and whoever is there with you. And to be clear, I mean I'll frame the shot and take the photo, I'm not actually going to be in the picture, but I'll take it for you.

AV Alta fans in Statesboro

AV Alta fans in Statesboro before the game.

I get to the stadium about an hour early to check in with media relations, catch up with some Tormenta front office staff and basically try not to be rushed in getting to games late and feeling rushed. So you can imagine my surprise when I made my way to the far end of the stadium where I usually sit and there were people there attaching an AV Alta flag to the fence in front of their seats. 

Lancaster, California, where AV Atla play their matches, is 2,373 miles from Statesboro. It's a short 34 hour car trip as Google calculates it. Needless to say, I was not expecting opposing fans to be at Tormenta Stadium, even if it was the club's first game.

And friends, they were in to it. Cheering the players during warmups, getting excited at the introductions and basically being great fans. They're the kinds of fans that make sports great. Supporting their team, having a good time but also enjoying being around supporters of the other team and the fun that goes with that.

Still, what makes fans travel all the way across the country when they could just as easily have watched from the comfort of their own home?

Well, midway through the second half, my questions were answered when Joaquin Acuna was subbed in for AV Alta in the 58th minute. The rookie out of the University of North Florida was making his professional debut and the AV Alta fans in front of me were his family who had driven up from their home in Naples, Florida, to watch him play. His dad was like me if my kid was making his first pro appearance. He couldn't sit down and was on his feet cheering and pacing the entire game. He was super nice though and apologized more than once if he was blocking our view. 

For the game, Acuna won one tackle and was successful in all four of his passes, all of which were in Tormenta territory. I hope he does well this year. Tormenta didn't score while he was on the pitch. I'm sure that was a cool moment for him made even more special that his family could be there. 

I can't promise to always have a cool story that comes from not sitting in the press box, but I'll share any more that happen.

 Very Quick Open Cup Preview 

South Georgia turns its attention to the US Open Cup as they host Harbor City (Florida) on Thursday at Tormenta Stadium. This will be a brief preview as the Statesboro Herald will run my full preview in their Thursday print edition (and presumably online.) I should probably get to writing that today.

Tormenta has earned a reputation as a bit of a giant killer when it comes to the Open Cup, going 4-1 against teams from the USL Championship with their one loss being in double overtime against Charleston last season. 

But before they can do that, they have to avoid being the giant who is slayed. Amateur side Harbor City FC defeated FC America CFL Spurs in a "win and your in" deciding game in December to qualify for the tournament and drew Tormenta in the first round. Tormenta defeated FC America CFL Spurs in last year's Open Cup.

"We've got a really talented club from Florida coming in Thursday night who beat Club America, who we played last year year and are pretty good and gave us a really tight challenge," Tormenta Manager Ian Cameron said following Saturday's win over AV Alta. "So we just focus on Thursday, see what we can get out of the game, recover, and then prepare for the next one."

Cameron said the organization places an emphasis on the Open Cup and he credits that for part of their success.

"One of the reasons we've done well in the Open Cup is the owners always put in bids for us to play at home," he said. "It's just survive and advance in the first few rounds."

I'll post a link to my Statesboro Herald article to Bluesky when it posts. Same for the game story, which will be online at the Statesboro Herald on Friday. I should probably post it other places, but as we discussed earlier, marketing isn't my thing.

News and Notes:

If you can't make it out to Tormenta Stadium for the Open Cup game, here is the YouTube link to watch at home. 

Eight more numbers were marked off as the League One On the Rocks guys track to see if every minute (1-90) in USL1 sees a goal this season. 

Alex Ashton had a recap of Tormenta's win over AV Alta over at Beyond the 90.

A new substack named "Tumbleweed Times" is covering AV Alta and their first post was a recap of Saturday's match from their perspective. 

Last year I ranked teams by their Scrabble score, but Ryan Allen went a step further and compiled every player in USL1 (and head coaches) for the All Scrabble team. 

Tormenta is currently 10th in the Walkin' 90 Podcast Chaos BCS Rankings. I have no idea if that means Tormenta is more or less chaotic than the rest of the league, but it's fun. (How it's calculated is in the post.)

Edit to add: John Morrissey at USLTactics posted this shortly after I put my post up. One of the times where my early posting time comes back to bite me.