Vegas Mayors Cup Champions

Oct 22-24, 2010. The TopGun97-Red girls headed to Las Vegas to play in their first "out of state" tournament. This Mayor's Cup is a platinum ranked tournament and is rapidly becoming one of the most respected tournaments in the USA. And the reputation is deserved. The organisation was superb, and the grass fields were cut to perfection with not a bump or gopher hole in sight.

There were 12 teams in TG's section, split into 4 groups of 3 with the group winners advancing to the semi finals - so no room for error, 2 games would decide whether the girls played a semi final and possible final, or just a consolation game on sunday

The games for TopGun started at 8am on saturday morning with a 3-0 victory over Arizona Fury. Maximum points was a good start but next up was Rubisport from Tijuana, Mexico. They played against Fury in between the TG games and scored a 3-1 victory so we went into the game knowing that a tie was good enough to progress. The game was like a classic Europe v. Mexico encounter. The Mexicans played lots of short passes trying to keep possession, TopGun played fewer and longer passes and were more direct. The game finished 7-2 in TopGun's favor and so the girls headed to a semi final on sunday morning (after quite a lot of fun on saturday night)

The semi final was a very tough game against FC Alliance Gold from Seattle who are ranked #10 in Washington and are a very good team full of skill and aggression. TopGun took the lead twice in this game, only for Alliance to equalise from corners within minutes of each TG goal. Alliance applied lots of pressure in the final 10 minutes but TopGun held strong to take the game to PKs and prevailed 3-1. And so to the final against Surrey Guildford United from Canada. Here TopGun were the stronger team and forced multiple saves from the Canadian GK in the first 10 minutes but the ball would not go in. United were more of a threat in the second half and TG continiued to fire shots on goal as well, but the clock ran down and the game finished 0-0. So more PKs and TopGun won again, 4-2 this time to become champions. In true Vegas style, the presentation was made on a stage with speeches given via microphone while "we are the champions" played through the PA !!.