NASHUA – Matt DeCastro remembers playing in the Columbus Day Invitational like it was yesterday.

It’s something he did every year playing soccer as a child, and it was always one of his favorite New England tournaments to be a part of.

The only thing that briefly separated him from the tournament was age, as he moved on to the high school level and eventually a playing career at the University of New Hampshire.

Now 28, DeCastro is yet again involved with the tournament, but this time he’s the coach for an under-12 boys team based out of Rhode Island.

“I think it’s a great tournament,” DeCastro said. “It’s local, it’s a nice area. I mean, it’s a great time of year to be up here. There’s always things to do around here after the games.

“To me it’s one of the best tournaments in New England. They do a good job running it. Everyone’s good around here, they usually have good competition.”

And at Mine Falls park in Nashua on Saturday, DeCastro was part of the 30th annual running of the tournament hosted by the World Cup Soccer Club of Greater Nashua.

The tournament takes place during Columbus Day weekend, and consists of competitive club soccer teams from all over New England and Canada with boys and girls from the U9 to the U14 level. It consists of roughly two to three hundred clubs on a yearly basis with games being played on fields throughout Nashua and other parts of New Hampshire.

This year the tournament rang in its 30th anniversary with 220 clubs taking part in 11v11, 8v8 and 6v6 matches based on age groups and skill level.

For U11 and above there are two separate divisions; Premier and Classic. The Premier division includes highest level of competitive travel teams and the Classic division is the second-tier groups that usually consist of city and town clubs as well as recreational teams.

“Kids get a chance to get away in the fall, spend time together and teams that travel in get to stay together in hotel rooms,”
tournament director Dan Wyborney said. “It’s good team bonding, and at the same time be able to compete against teams that they don’t normally get to compete against all the time in league play.”

Wyborney, 35, is in his 12th year leading the tournament while also coaching a U12 and U14 girls club this weekend.

The Amherst native was involved with the tournament and Nashua World Cup soccer well before he took over as director. At that time it was run by a particular age group each year.

But just a couple of years before he took over, the tournament saw its biggest increase in teams, reaching the 150-club mark.

And as the tournament continued to grow year after year, also came the need for someone to take control of it rather than continuing to follow the old procedure.

“It got so big that they needed somebody just to try to spearhead it,” Wyborney said. “So I did it one year and they asked me to do it again and they’ve asked me to do it every year since so it kind of just stuck.”

With the increase in the amount of teams also comes the rise in the level of competition.

“When I was a kid and we knew we were playing a team from New Hampshire or Maine we’d get excited because we knew it would be an easy game,” DeCastro said. “Now it’s not like that at all. Now you play (them) and they have very good teams.”

The competitiveness has earned the tournament a GotSoccer.com ranking. With Got Soccer being “the governing body for tournament play,” according to Wyborney, it puts more at stake as teams can earn points with wins

While the growth of the tournament and the level of competition is significant, Wyborney, the coaches and everyone involved all agree that the most important part is making the weekend enjoyable for the kids.

“It’s one of those things where they get to cooperate as a team,” Wyborney said. “It’s a great time to get away and they don’t have to go too far.”

For a former player like DeCastro, he looks back on his playing days and uses coaching in the tournament as an opportunity to give back to the kids and the tournament as a whole.

“My biggest thing is coaching little kids,” DeCastro said. “Kids who want to learn, kids who are willing to learn and I like being able to give back to the game more than anything.

“That’s probably the most rewarding part of coaching is giving back to kids, teaching them things you know as a player and you did as a player.”