Tri-City United Soccer Club is hosting the 2022 Winter Classic.

It features thirty two local teams and ninety visiting teams from surrounding areas like Minot, Williston, Bismarck, and Aberdeen. It's bringing major traffic to the FM metro.

Fargo/Moorhead, (KVRR)- “Our teams are staying at all local hotels they’re eating at local restaurants, they’re shopping I mean , I hear a lot of people today lets go to Scheels, let’s go to Scheels, let’s go to the mall. We’re sending them to local places to eat, you know that they don’t have back home.
I would say economically around fifty to seventy five thousand if you do hotel rooms it could be a hundred thousand,” said Beth Bohlmann Rec & Tourney Director.

This was an event the metro didn’t see profits from last year, not only did the economy lose out but the kids did too. They were happy to be back in action this year.

“It feels good we get more experience to play and now we know how we can improve and stuff,” said Academy member Laney Thompson.

Club teams competing are different from school teams because players can come from all over to form bonds.

“Well there is some people that we go to the same school with like others we don’t, but others we became friends when we met like at soccer,” said Thompson.

The tournament brackets were broken up into three levels to fit multiple skill levels, competition wasn’t lacking.

“Its been tough we’ve played really hard and they’re really good, the competition we’ve had,” said Thompson.

“This is the most teams we’ve ever had in an event,” said Bohlmann.

The top division is the black division; this one features C1 players, most are older and play on their high school teams.

The C2 division is considered the developmental league for younger players

And the third division is the C3 level is more for recreational players who just love playing the game.

Tri city soccer academy opened their facility in 2020 and it’s a place where players can train inside year round.

They say they were happy to see the winter classic back this year, and organizers feel soccer is a way to bring people together.

“Soccer is growing so fast you know especially having a community so diverse where in a lot of other countries soccer is just soccer and that’s what they play. We can bring our community together playing soccer,” said Bohlmann.