Originally posted by Unregistered
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At any rate--what sort of facilities, beyond a pitch to play on (turf with lights in the winter is the bottleneck; plenty of grass fields are available in the summer) do most clubs need?
A clubhouse? A weight room? A private futsal court (rather than booking time at the Y or RCF)? Most local clubs don't have the staff to take advantage of these things. Westside, for instance, keeps its fees relatively low (and offers a LOT of financial aid) precisely because it DOESN'T own a pile of real estate; it gets its fields from Beaverton School District and THPRD, leases a tiny office next door to a flea market in Beaverton, and presumably has a storage unit somewhere to keep gear. But a weight room isn't helpful unless you have a personal trainer on staff to supervise it.
The lack of a facility like 60 Acres or Starfire makes it harder for organizers of local tournaments, who have to spread matches all over the place rather than having one central venue. (The Mount Hood Challenge is the most extreme example of this, with matches being played literally everywhere in the metro area, from Wilsonville to Salmon Creek and from Hillsboro to Gresham).
But training activities don't require much in the way of infrastructure.
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