We’ve never been real good with numbers but the way we figure it, 220 (teams) multiplied by 15 (players per squad) equals 3,300. Add to that 220 (teams) multplied by two (parents per player), which is 440, and you get 3,740 (people).

Roughly speaking, that’s the combined total of players, coaches and parents who will be hitting youth soccer fields all over Tampa Bay this weekend for the Score at the Shore 2008 Winter College Invitational Tournament.

And we didn’t even count the dozens of college soccer coaches who plan to scout the event.

The event’s title is a little confusing. These aren’t college teams. These are youth soccer teams - competitve youth soccer teams with some of the best young soccer players in the country between the ages of 13 and 19.

Not everyone who participates is from out of town, of course, so let’s say between 3,000 and 3,500 people are headed to Tampa Bay this weekend from as far away as Chicago and Michigan to participate in the most massive youth soccer tournament that local traditional media either doesn’t know about or just doesn’t care to report.

Just to be clear, we didn’t expect sports reporters to pick up on it. No, this is as much about business as sports. VisitTampaBay.com estimates that this tournament will yield 7,000 room nights for Tampa Bay hotels and motels. Add to that restaurant meals, retail shopping excursions, movies, sidetrips to the beach and and you’re talking a decent chunk of change for a local economy that needs all the help it can get.

Last September we got our dander up after reading a half-baked, myopic editorial, which suggested that having spent too many years and too mnay millions of tourist-tax dollars building a tennis stadium for the Saddlebrook Resort, Pasco County should burn off more tax dollars “soliciting a consultant to determine whether it can afford to invest its future tourism tax proceeds in additional amateur sports facilities.” The ink-stained wretch who committed this tripe also insisted that it “would be wise to commission a comprehensive study of whether Pasco can grab a significant share of the competitive sports promotions market.”

Grab? Hell, it’s coming to Pasco despite the neglect of people who ought to be hard at work encouraging more and the stunning ignorance of local journalists who should have figured this out about 10 years ago.

Take a look at the boys and girls game schedules for this weekend’s tournament and you will notice references to Holiday #1, Holiday #2, Holiday #3 and Holiday #4. Those are soccer fields located in Holiday. Pasco County to be exact.  Good job Pasco Parks and Rec. Department, right? Wrong. This is happening despite that agency, which has been anything but helpful. As a matter of fact, we’re told private money bought the paint to line the fields after the county refused. That’s pathetic.

What really needs to be studied here is why so many people, who ought to know better, insist upon waffling over whether Pasco can compete for competitive sporting events. That and whether this weekend’s visitors will be so disappointed by the condition of the Holiday facilities that future tournament organizers will avoid West Pasco in favor of places like Polk County, which has been wisely investing and improving its amateur athletic facilities since 1995.  

If West Pasco hotel and motel owners (yes, the ones who pay tourist-tax dollars to build a tennis stadium on the opposite side of the county) realized that their own county government was an impediment to bringing these games to West Pasco, they might have shown up at the Parks and Rec. Department with pitchforks and torches in hand. We think they should anyway and demand that Pasco stop fooling around and start investing in new and existing amateur athletic facilities for the good of the county’s tourist economy.

We’re over this whole recession debate.

Every business guru with an opinion and a hole to express it seems obliged to answer whether we are, are not, or soon will be in a recession. As debates go, this one is strictly between people with incomes immune to economic gravity. That would include media mavens and business gurus. For the rest of us, the question was settled about the same time “House For Sale” signs began sporting Spanish Moss.

Recession? Does Bin Laden shit in the woods? Just reading and thinking about the local economy is enough to make you downright downhearted these days, unless you’re able to put it all in proper perspective. For us, proper perspective landed in our inbox the other day disguised as a press release from the Florida chapter of the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF). We learned by reading it that CAF has teamed up with the Gasparilla Distance Classic Association to revive the 15K elite wheelchair race.

If you think you’ve got challenges in your life, subtract a major limb or two, rinse and recalculate. Imagine a view of your future, and the world, as a 15-year-old kid confined to a wheelchair. Now, that’s challenging. But life is for living and you’ve got to make the most of it, which is where CAF comes in by helping people with physical disabilities find fulfillment through physicial fitness and competitive athletics.

The 15K elite wheelchair race used to be a fixture at the annual Gasparilla Distance Classic. In 1997, according to CAF, more than 75 of the world’s top racers competed here. But race organizers wanted to give more money from the event to local charities, so they stopped awarding prize money to the wheelchair race winner. As CAF tells it, anyway, that decision put an unintended end to the 15K elite wheelchair race in Tampa. Until now. The prize money is back. $10K to be exact. And so are the big-time wheelchair racers. Two dozen of the country’s best to be exact.

When we use terms like “eilte,” “big time” and “country’s best,” don’t get the idea that we’re just being charitable. We aren’t. These people are serious athletes who train and compete for real. They can flat out kick anyone’s ass in their events - physically disabled or not. And that’s precisely what we think is so supremely cool about CAF and the 15K elite wheelchair race in Tampa this weekend. High-end athletes tend to inspire people by example, especially young people. Physically disabled high-end athletes tend to inspire physically disabled young people to recognize that determination, competitive fire and perseverence can produce some damn fine results.

Susan Harmeling, the Executive Director of the Gasparilla Distance Classic Association, said “competitive wheelchair racing on the streets of Tampa (will make) the community more aware of how participating in events like Gasparilla’s 15K or 5K can provide those with physical challenges a tremendous boost in self-confidence and purpose in their lives.”

Through CAF’s “Race for a Reason” program, able-bodied runners who register to race in any of the four Publix Super Markets Gasparilla Distance Classic Race Weekend events (this Saturday and Sunday Feb. 9 & 10), are eligible to join Team CAF Gasparilla 2008. By pledging to raise a minimum of $100 each for CAF, these runners will help the Wheelchair Division become a permanent element of all future Gasparilla events.

But you don’t have to be a runner or even an athlete to join. Just go here and do what you can. It’s worth the effort.

Lew Friedland, founder of CAF’s Florida Chapter, said, “CAF is here to help those individuals reach goals they never dreamed they could achieve. We’re finding they can actually accomplish anything they put their mind to, and it is impressive to see.”

Amen to that. It’s enough to make you forget the recession.