Condit Road venue builds a reputation nationally for games
Published in the June 25-July 8, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo by Marty Cheek
Two soccer players battle for possession during the five-day Presidents Cup at the Outdoor Sports Center.
Coaches from the Porterville United Soccer Club felt impressed with the quality of treatment they received when they visited Morgan Hill to compete in the Region IV Presidents Cup, a prestigious tournament for youths held June 11-15 at the city’s Outdoor Sports Center. In recent years, the sports facility’s reputation has grown nationally as a sports tourism venue, bringing an estimated 500,000 visitors to Morgan Hill annually and enhancing our local economy.
“It’s awesome. The fields are great,” said Porterville United Coach Eddie Cardenez describing his experience during his several visits for soccer tournaments at the 38-acre center. “The soccer level is just incredible. We love coming to Morgan Hill.”
Players warm up with ball practice before a match.
Photo by Dylan Kral
The Porterville team has always been treated well at the OSC, the best facility he has ever seen, the coach said. He also finds the people of Morgan Hill are friendly and helpful to visitors.
Fellow Porterville United coach Efrain Vasquez agrees with the judgment of Morgan Hill as a high quality destination for sporting events. “This is as good as it gets,” he said. “The weather is perfect here.”
An estimated 18,000 people traveled for the five-day Presidents Cup tournament from California and out-of-state destinations that include Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, Arkansas, and Utah. Many of them stayed in local hotels and ate at restaurants in the community, pumping visitor dollars into Morgan Hill.
Although there has never been an official study on how much the OSC brings to Morgan Hill’s tourism economy, Jeff Dixon, president of the Morgan Hill Youth Sports Alliance which is contracted with the City of Morgan Hill to run the facility, believes the number is significant.
A team of young men warm up along the sidelines.
Photo by Dylan Kral
The facility hosts competitions 36 weekends a year, he said. One measurement Dixon provides is that 5,000 persons come to Morgan Hill each tournament weekend, staying at the hotels, buying gasoline, and eating at local restaurants. He estimates that visitors spend between $50 and $100 per person during their visit.
“Morgan Hill is in kind of a unique place and time right now,” Dixon said. “Tourism has really gathered the attention of visitors and leaders and community service leaders who are interested in finding out what it means for our city. Sports tourism might not be the biggest draw, but clearly it is a big draw and it differentiates us from Gilroy and San Jose and any community in the South Bay. None of them have an outdoor sports center right next to an aquatics center like we do.”
Most people have no idea what recreational opportunities Morgan Hill offers visitors, so the biggest challenge is just getting them here so they can go about discovering the community, said John McKay, a founding member of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance.
“That first visit is critical,” he said. “Morgan Hill is best experienced in person. With the great job that the MHYSA and city are doing getting people to use our outdoor sports facilities, they have become important gateways to exposing visitors to more of what Morgan Hill is about. These visitors are with their families and friends looking to enjoy themselves so they are in a festive mood. If we treat these opportunities right, these visitors could be spending some of their time exploring our downtown, visiting wineries, walking in a park, shopping at a fruit stand or just taking in the sights and associating Morgan Hill with a good time.”
The OSC is a key component of Morgan Hill’s economic engine, said Edith Ramirez, the city’s economic development manager. It also adds to the community’s identity for healthy living and quality of life.
A young woman kicks the ball down field in a match during the recent Presidents Cup.
Photo by Dylan Kral
“As a regional facility that offers unparalleled fields for tournaments, it attracts hundreds of thousands of users to our community each year,” she said. “The facility supports our economy and our businesses. Beyond that, the Outdoor Sports Complex and Aquatic Center (next to the OSC) offers unparalleled sports fields and pool experience raising the city’s visibility in Northern California and contribute to our identity of a regional sports destination.”
The OSC provides Morgan Hill not just with a first-class environment to hold sports games such soccer, football, lacrosse and rugby, it also serves as the setting for music entertainment such as the Kihncert held there last fall as well as the Freedom Fest fireworks show on the evening of July 4.
The facility provides Morgan Hill with a platform to showcase its story with hundreds of thousands of visitors each year and promote local businesses, attractions and upcoming events, Ramirez said. The Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance, which Ramirez help form last year, is looking at ways to encourage sports tourists who come to the OSC to also take advantage of wineries, restaurants and other tourism opportunities.
“We are still determining the best way to do that and how to capitalize on this captive audience,” she said. “Jeff Dixon and his team have truly embraced one of the most important cross-promotional goals identified by the Tourism Alliance, and is distributing informational and promotional flyers to the OSC’s guests. It is now up to the rest of us to package this information and promote the great assets Morgan Hill has to offer.”
Jeff Bethune, an Arvada, Colo., visitor who attended the Presidents Cup this month, said that during his stay in Morgan Hill he visited the downtown district and was impressed by the friendliness of the shopkeepers. An employee of the Morgan Hill Wine Shop and Cigar Company recommended several good restaurants — including Moon’s Kitchen and Rosy’s at the Beach.
One concern Bethune raised was the higher prices hotels charge during tournaments, saying many Presidents Cup visitors were forced to go to lower-priced hotels in Milpitas, San Jose and Watsonville.
“I understand people want to make money and I know that need and those issues,” he said. “I just felt gouged. The hotel prices were killing us — $180 a night to more than $200 a night. That’s been an issue for a lot of teams.”
Dixon agrees that this has been concern for MHYSA in bringing visitors to Morgan Hill to compete in tournaments. “The hotel prices here are incredibly high, I mean higher than they’ve ever been,” he said. “And people who come here to use the facilities are finding themselves going farther and farther out away from Morgan Hill.”
Overall, however, visitors are positive about their experience at the OSC, he said, and Morgan Hill’s reputation has grown because of the half a million people who come to the community each year to compete at the sports facility.
But cities such as Salinas, Sunnyvale, Fremont and Gilroy are now building their own sports facilities, and Morgan Hill will have competition in the coming years, Dixon warns.
“We’re in a unique place and time where we can really take advantage of establishing ourselves as a great sports tourism leader in addition to all the other aspects we have for tourism such as wineries, restaurants and recreation,” he said. “But that window is closing. Pretty soon everyone will catch up.”
