Sports Reporting Story 3: Appalachian Mountain Brewery Premier League

The Appalachian Mountain Brewery Premier League, Boone’s outdoor adult soccer league put on by High Country Soccer Association, is a major player in local youth being able to participate in more soccer programs with HCSA and brings the soccer community together at local restaurants.

“Our adult leagues helps grow our soccer community and gives us funding for our youth programs which really helps grow the club as a whole,” Director of Coaching Kiki Wallace said. “The growth of our youth programs in the last few years was largely funded by the adult league which costs us almost nothing to run.”

The league is split into three divisions: Los Arcoiris Gold Division, which is more competitive; TApp Room Silver Division, which is less competitive; and Wild Craft Bronze Division, which is more recreational. Division champions receive a gift card to their division’s sponsor as well as AMB.

Mike Raymond goes up for a ball with goalkeeper and defender.

Each season begins with a preseason social at AMB for teams to come celebrate the start of the season and enjoy AMB’s craft brews. There is also a corn-hole tournament in which the winners win a pitcher of their choice.

“The preseason social is a newer addition to the league that we added because people asked for more social gatherings outside of game nights,” Technical Director of Coaching and Sponsorships Jody Young said. Young also runs the AMB Premier and Futsal leagues.

AMB also sponsors the adult futsal league that takes place in the winter. It is only split into the Los Arcoiris Gold Division and the TApp Room Silver Division but teams are still playing for gift cards to the division’s sponsor and AMB.

According to Wallace, there were over 500 adult soccer registrations in the 2015-2016 period, which composed 30 percent of all registrations in that time. The adult league as a whole brings in 7 percent of HCSA’s $500,000 annual revenues.

Wallace remembered days when each season they had to wait for registration to end to make sure there would be enough teams for just one division. Now they consistently have three divisions for outdoor and two for indoor with teams coming back year in and year out.

“We wanted to focus on getting people to play every season,” Wallace said. “We would have six teams in the fall and two or three in the spring early on. We wanted to get these teams to come back and always play.”

That is when Wallace and Young thought of sponsoring the league and offering prizes to the winners.

“Our original sponsorship was with Boone Saloon sponsoring the whole league with no division sponsors,” Young said. “Each player on the winning team would receive a mug and the team would get a gift card to Boone Saloon.”

When that sponsorship ended, Young wanted to try to get the league sponsored and named along with getting the divisions individually sponsored.

“A couple were easy because I had thrown the idea out to the manager’s before and they were interested in looking more into it,” Young said. “When we tell them how we plan to bring the league to them and advertise them to clubs that visit us for youth games, they usually jump right on board.

HCSA does their part in the sponsorship with the preseason social and supplying gift cards to division champions getting the teams to go to the restaurants. They also advertise the businesses to the many families that travel to Boone for league games during the youth seasons.

They also try to highlight their two tournament weekends to sponsors. Each tournament brings over 60 teams from nearby states to Boone for the weekend. HCSA offers goody bags to each tournament team including coupons provided by sponsors. They push teams to those locations for food and team dinner parties.

The AMB Futsal League is playing their championship games tonight where the Gold and Silver division champions will be crowned.

“I won the outdoor championship in the fall so I’d love to take home the futsal championship and start the spring with back-to-back gold championships,” Tyler Freeman said. “It’s a fun way to get exercise and meet people who enjoy soccer here because it’s a hard sport to find people really interested in.”

Freeman and his team, Aguilas. Fall 2016 AMB Premier League: Los Arcoiris Gold Division Champions

As for continued growth, Wallace says he thinks they have reached their max because of field space and working around their youth programs but he says the second they can they want to take the next step in making the adult league even better.