Morgan Hill’s Outdoor Sports Center thrives on a plot of land with a bit of history.

Jeff Dixon’s goal to make Morgan Hill a national sports destination is taking a tremendous leap forward at the end of the month, with his eyes set on 2014 to bring a major soccer tournament to the area.

June 28-30, 58 lacrosse teams are scheduled to descend on the Morgan Hill Outdoor Sports Center for a weekend tournament.

The US Lacrosse West Championships will feature high school students from Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and Texas competing in six divisions split between boys and girls.

“Lacrosse is going to be Morgan Hill’s first foray into the national arena,” Dixon said. “How we do, how we perform is critical in terms of us bringing in other national players.”

This will be a prelude to the Region IV Presidents Cup youth soccer tournament in 2014. It will feature teams for boys and girls ranging from under 9 to under 17.

That tournament will be a week long and require 15 fields. Morgan Hill’s Outdoor Center has just 11 fields.

Dixon is already looking into arranging a second location to accommodate the space demands. He said he is looking at fields in Gilroy and Morgan Hill, but said he has to work around the availability of potential locations.

Although he said he’s sure the Sports Center can handle the volume with proper scheduling, he said he is required to have a second location so all teams can be accommodated. Helping this equation, however, is that each team only plays once per day in the opening rounds. Dixon said if he schedules games once per hour, there should be enough space.

Over the weekend of June 1, Dixon said the center more than doubled its capacity for the tournament.

“We took 11 fields and converted them to 25 and took a capacity that had previously been 120 and doubled it to 246,” Dixon said.

As research, Dixon was in Boise, Idaho, this last week watching the 2013 Presidents Cup to get pointers and to see how organizers there put the tournament together.

Dixon said Boise is experiencing the same lack of field issues as Morgan Hill will experience next year.

Dixon said he hopes the tournament will translate to thousands of people coming to Morgan Hill to watch and cheer on the participants. He said he expects the crowds to be bigger than usual for a soccer tournament.

He said typically, he expects 1.5 spectators for every player in a soccer tournament. For the lacrosse tournament, he expects anywhere from 2.5 to 3 spectators for every player.

“It’s exciting. It’s great to do this for the community and it’s great to have something like this to work with,” Dixon said.

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