The Santa Clara University men’s soccer team just finished up their four day training camp at Vero Beach Sports Village on August 26-29. The team traveled almost 3,000 miles from Santa Clara, California to Vero Beach, Florida for their pre-season team training camp.
 

“We chose Vero Beach Sports Village because we knew it would be a great training ground to prepare us,” said Cameron Rast, Head Coach for the men’s soccer team at Santa Clara University. The great part about Vero Beach Sports Village is everything is very close and very accessible and what we are trying to focus on is getting prepared for our games this season.”
 

This was the first team to utilize the new full-size multi-sport field for soccer since its completion in late July of this year. The first team to use the field was the University of South Florida’s football team earlier this month.
 

Each day, the team planned two-a-day practices on the field with team building and tape review in the VBSV conference center. During their stay, Tropical Storm Isaac came through on Monday, August 27. The team was rained out for the entire day after Vero Beach received over seven inches of rain prohibiting the team from getting on the field for practices that day.

“We were concerned about our stay and what we were going to be able to accomplish here with so much wind and rain. The new field here at VBSV is unbelievable. We got over 5 inches of rain on our second day here and were still able to train. I don’t know anywhere else in the county that you could possibly do that. We let the rain pass through and the field was in immaculate condition,” added Rast.
 

Despite the amount of rain, the team used the 19,000 square foot conference center to do more team building projects and were able to conduct various activities within the classroom-type setting.
 

 “The Sports Village is a very unique place,” shared Eric Yamamoto, an Assistant Coach of the Santa Clara men’s soccer team who recently coached with the US Men’s Olympic Soccer Team earlier this year. “The field quality here and the convenience of the locker room, training room and fitness area are right next to the field with the room’s right across the street. This type of facility in the United States is very hard to find. I would recommend all levels of soccer teams to come here and spend some time and take advantage of all VBSV has to offer.”