Bhutanese Interstate Soccer Tournament: June 17-18, 2011, in Atlanta

Guest author: Tamar Orvell 

Georgia's Red Team is among twenty
nationwide competing in the event

Empowerment Through Sports is the theme of the first Bhutanese Interstate Soccer Tournament in the USA. Organized by a small independent group of sports lovers and volunteers, the event features twenty teams — two from Georgia, with more than 350 players meeting at Granite Field in Tucker, Georgia, on Friday and Saturday, June 17 and 18, from 6am to 8pm both days. Admission is free for spectators.

For Rules and Regulations of the Tournament and more information, send an email to BhutanSoccer@gmail.com. Phone: 404-749-6268.

The Schedule
(Click the image to view the schedule full-screen.)

Updates from the Field

• Watch a video of Day One (8:45 minutes).
• Watch a video of Day Two (7:56 minutes)
• Bhutan News Service: Texas bags winner trophy
• Bhutan News Service: The beginning of a new chapter 
• The Tournament Facebook event page

About Soccer and the Bhutanese Refugee Community
For the ethnic-Nepalis in Bhutan and Nepal, and now in the USA, soccer has been more than a sport in helping to define communities and strengthen the social fabric by bringing together players, youth, and sports enthusiasts. The Tournament organizing team acknowledges the contributions of soccer players and team managers in the seven Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal, and hopes that in this event, the same spirit and love of the game as in the camps is injected and that a precedent for future events is created.

About the Bhutanese Refugee Community
From expulsion and refugee status to welcome and opportunity in the USA, the Bhutanese refugee community is determined to succeed in creating a better future. Once stateless victims of ethnic cleansing in their homeland, Bhutan, they are resettling here through combined efforts of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Third Country Resettlement Program and the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. (Among the community's 100,000 ethnic-Nepali Bhutanese refugees subsisting in holding camps in Nepal since 1990, about 6,000 have been resettled in Atlanta among 60,000 resettled nationwide; more relatives and neighbors are expected to follow.)