Davis World Cup 2025

August 3, 2025August 3, 2025Leave a comment

It’s not May in Davis without the annual youth soccer bonanza, the Davis World Cup. I am on the committee for this tournament (I design the logos, medals, pins, t-shirts and I update the website; all the hard work is done by everyone else). The committee has had many of the same members for a number of years now so we’re a pretty efficient team; all our offspring have either aged out or no longer play regular AYSO to even take part in the tournament themselves; I last coached at the tournament in 2018 (with the Spurs!), and my own teenager last played the Davis World Cup in 2019 (for the Dawgs, they were a nice team with a great coach). Above, I sketched all the flags displayed outside the AYSO headquarters in Community Park. This is what I love about the Davis World Cup. Each team that applies (and they come from all over northern California, plus we always get a few from Nevada) gets assigned a country, and they get the flag of that country and are encouraged to offer their opponents little gifts or such associated with that country. So for example if you are Spain, you give a little keyring that says ‘Spain on it, or if you are Uzbekistan, you give a little keyring that says ‘Uzbekistan’ on it, and so on. Actually teams get way more thoughtful and creative than that, giving out candies or trinkets, when my team Spurs played we were assigned as Serbia, so I made little keyrings with ‘Serbia’ on them (along with information about the country and the Serbian alphabet, showing you how to write your name in Serbian). Fun stuff. I coached another AYSO Select team in 2020 (the Titans; I still wear the t-shirt as it was one of my best logos) and I was really hoping (as a committee member) to maybe be able to pick a country for our team, probably Belgium to give out chocolates, probably Ireland due to the family provenance of both coaches, but I really wanted Italy because I was hoping to have the team sing the anthem before each game, they have the best anthem. However, we never got that far because 2020 turned into the 2020 we know and can’t forget, so the tournament was cancelled that year (and I recycled the retro Top of the Pops style logo for the 2022 event). I enjoy making the logo, but I spend an inordinate amount of time faffing about with the design during the year before. I went this year for a more playful design again, using a similar kid-like graffiti style lettering that I’ve used for some of our old teams (like the ‘Duh’, the first AYSO Select team my son played on, coming 4th in the 2017 tournament at U10 level). I went with a ‘splat’ background full of flags, after my friend spilled some milk at a cafe in Nob Hill and I really liked the shape it made on the table. I’ll have that, I thought. So the logo below was born. It was a hit with the t-shirt vendor. I got very excited when I first drew the little cartoon water tower on my iPad, and abandoned the cartoon cow theme I was originally going with. Maybe I’ll resurrect that for next year, if I don’t go with a classic retro World Cup style again.

Some of the cartoon cows came back for the Keeper Wars logo though, as you can see in the sticker design below. This went through a lot of versions too, one of them looking like an explosion in hyperspace. One of the balls says “Footy Footy Footy” which is a reference to the Adam and Joe “Footy Song” from the 90s (watch that here). Keeper Wars is a fun tournament, though I didn’t make it out to watch it this year. While my wife did a lot of running around from field to field, I was at home a lot as the guy in the chair, to be on hand for any last-second website updates (which I had to do during that sketch at the top, but I only live about three minutes away by bike).

And below, here are some of the medals, pins, stickers, coins and the committee t-shirt. The medal came out particularly well this year, it’s my favourite one yet. If in doubt, always add some stars, that’s my design rule. Splats don’t always work.

Here is how the t-shirt logo looked, as sold by the on-site vendor. So cool seeing so many people lining up to get them. It was cool to see someone running in one of my older shirts from 2022 the other week. What’s even cooler is when I see people wearing an AYSO or DWC shirt I have designed and I show them the original concept drawings on my iPad.

And here are pins from the previous World Cups I have designed. I love this year’s one, I kept the pin just black and white.

the 2024 davis world cup…

May 26, 2024May 26, 2024Leave a comment

Today is the second day of the annual AYSO Davis World Cup, a youth soccer tournament held every year in parks around Davis. The HQ is in Community Park, and we’ve got all the flags up and everything. My job on the committee is designing the logo and medals and t-shirts etc, and looking after the website. this year I went for a retro theme with a toned down colour scheme, I was happy with how it looks on the shirts and medals. On the Saturday morning my wife (who handles ordering all the tournament swag and does more general committee help) and I went over to the building to help with the set-up, and later on I sketched the building (above). The weather was a little cooler than it’s been but still warm and sunny, with a breeze kicking up the allergens. The scouts were nearby, their job is collecting trash and bringing water/Gatorade to the volunteers. There are a load of volunteers involved (we’re all volunteers), from the committee through all the field marshals and gophers and the many many referees, and of course all the coaches, I used to be one. I don’t think I miss the coaching, although it was most fun on the tournaments like this, and this one is special – every team is given a country that they become for the tournament, they get a flag and are expected to have little gifts based on that country to give to players on the opposing team. The only time I coached at the tournament was at the U10 level, as my (very good) U12 team had to stop playing in March 2020 because of that Covid that happened. I’ve been a parent a few times, and been on the committee since 2019, drawing up so many logos. Today I was back in the building helping sort out all the medals (first place is so shiny!) which will be given out tomorrow. I had a little lunch and sketched the inside of the building:

Here are the Davis World Cup logos for this year:

It’s the whole three-day weekend, I’m hoping that it all continues to go smoothly, and that all the teams enjoy it!

soccer by the sierras

August 4, 2022Leave a comment

For the last year I was the coach of a U14 club team AYSO United Davis, which meant practices twice a week and games every weekend. It was pretty busy, and was one of the reasons I put organizing our monthly sketchcrawls on hold. This was our first season as a new club in the NorCal Premier League, and our team had mixed success, although one of the older girls’ teams won the State Cup, which was pretty exciting. (Speaking of female teams winning trophies…well done to the Lionesses winning Euro 2022!! That was brilliant watching England, an actual England team, win a trophy, when the mens’ team could not. Wicked.) Our boys’ team did not end up winning any trophies, though we played in a few tournaments and made some good memories for the kids. I had coached for several years so knew most of the players for a long time, watching them develop. One tournament we went to was the Comstock Shootout in Carson City, Nevada, which involved a long drive over the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains into the high desert. We have been there before on a previous tournament in 2017 when my son was much younger, playing on a U10 team that I didn’t coach, and I did sketch a panorama of the mountainous backdrop back then too (see: https://petescully.com/2017/06/10/over-the-mountains-in-the-high-desert/). It’s a dramatic location for a tournament, played up at a higher altitude of over 4000 feet, and we stayed in nearby Minden – see the view below from our room. The panorama above, that was drawn between two of our games (one which we lost but was close, and one which we won). I had a couple of hours, so I went to watch another Davis team, the older boys form one of the rec Select teams, beating a local Carson City team. I had to sit near the guy with the huge lime green mohawk. It’s like, yeah mate you are getting sketched, you looks cool. Contrast to all the soccer moms and pops on their chairs with their big drinks yelling “pressure!”. Actually in terms of parents comments this was a pretty good one, most of them were positive and encouraging, but we certainly saw some of the opposite of that this season. In our last tournament in Concord one of the parents got red carded and threw a wobbly, I was impressed with how the ref handled that. I’ve been mostly on the coaching side for a few years though, but I remember several years ago when I was on the parents’ side with my sketchbook, and well, if you were a shouty yelling touchline parent, you were getting sketched and I was writing down all your shouts. Well in this game they were all pretty ok. It’s hard drawing all the players as they move around the field, and you have to check yourself to make sure you are drawing the right number. Still, the Davis boys won 3-1, I was pleased for the players and coaches (one of whom actually did coach my son last time he played at this tournament), because some of the other teams they had to play at this one were brutal. You get that at tournaments, an interesting mix of levels, but you come to these for the memories it gives to the kids. The Sierra Nevadas at Carson City makes a pretty memorable backdrop.

I decided to call it a day at the end of the season and hung up my coaching boots, I was pretty exhausted. So, as the new season starts I will be out on the other side again, sketchbook in hand, drawing the shouty sidelines.

PS: The Women’s Euros are over, and now the Men’s Premier League will begin this weekend. 30 years since the Premier League launched! I think I’m ready for the footy to return, but I needed a break from watching it, last season was just too long. I used to do a post on this blog each year with a run down of each team and a little pixel drawing of their kit, with predictions for the season but…I can’t be bothered. I just hope Spurs do well under Conte. I’m still celebrating the Lionesses!

The 2019 Davis World Cup!

June 2, 2019June 2, 20192 Comments

Last week was the Davis World Cup, an annual youth soccer tournament organized by AYSO. This year, we were on the organizing committee (I did the website and designed the logo, my wife handled all the t-shirts and medals and pins and everything). I was really happy with this year’s logo (above) and a lot of people really liked it, we got many nice compliments. It was pretty cool seeing loads of people going around with this on their shirts. My son was also playing in the tournament this year, for the Davis Dawgs, 12U-Boys. Each team is assigned a FIFA country in the Davis World Cup – we were the Cayman Islands. I didn’t coach this year, so I was on the parents side, and while I didn’t sketch that much I did capture one of the games below. This was our second game – we had lost the first one to Antelope (7-2), and unfortunately lost this one as well, to Mountain View Tornadoes, 3-2. Both really good teams. My son did score in each game though, but had to wait until the third game for his hat-trick.

Unfortunately we got knocked out in the eliminations so didn’t make it until Monday. So on Monday morning I walked over to the park (it’s handy the games are only a few steps from my house) and watch Antelope play Winters in an epic quarter final, ultimately won by Winters in a dramatic penalty shoot-out. I sketched the game below. Winters ended up winning the final later that day in an even more dramatic game, against San Mateo, once more in a penalty shoot-out.

Hundreds of games, many hundreds of players, the Davis World Cup was another success.

over the mountains, in the high desert

June 10, 2017June 10, 20171 Comment

At the end of April, we drove over the Sierra Nevada mountains, still heavily packed with quickly melting snow, across the state line into Nevada. My son played AYSO Select this year at the U10 level, and his team (the Davis “Duh”) were off to play in their third tournament, the Comstock Shootout at Carson City. It was a two-day tournament, playing against other teams from northern California, but the location was utterly spectacular. The backdrop of the snow-peaked Sierras on one side, and rocky high desert hills on the other, this was, let’s say, a little bit different from Davis. The sketch above, a panorama in pencil and watercolour in a Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook, was sketched in roughly 20-25 minutes while our team warmed up elsewhere; this was actually the U14 team, the Davis Dissent, for whom several older brothers of our lads were playing. But I couldn’t resist those mountains! I was trying to channel my French urban sketching friend Vincent Desplanche, who does amazing sketches up in the mountains back in Europe. Davis is too flat for mountains, they are usually too far in the distance.

The altitude was high, so our players had more sub breaks during the games (our coach was really good at managing that). I was reminded of when South American teams go and play in Bolivia, and struggle with the altitude in La Paz, which the Bolivian players are well used to. This was so problematic that between 2007 and 2008 FIFA actually banned international games from being played at above 8,200 feet. Carson City is at around 4,800 so nowhere near that high, but you do feel it. I was also reminded of when Premier League teams go to West Brom, who have the highest ground in England, and they often struggle with the altitude, which is a whopping 551 feet, so actually it’s more the Tony Pulis tactics they struggle against.

We were actually put to the test though by another team who were much more used to playing at altitude, a team from the town of Bishop, which is in California but on the High Desert side of the Sierras. Bishop is at 4,150 feet, and their players definitely outplayed ours, giving us our only defeat of the competition (and a pretty big one too). Davis, I might add, is only 52 feet above sea level. We may not be mountain-top athletes, but our cakes are baked to perfection. Above, here are some sketches I did during the game.

We stayed in the nearby town of Minden, at the Holiday Inn. There isn’t a whole lot to do in Minden, so in the evening while my son slept I grabbed a cold drink from the gas station across the street and sketched in the seating area of the hotel. I brought my books about perspective, as I was planning for my workshop in June, and so couldn’t help a nice bit of interior perspective. It was very yellow in there, though.

And here are those mountains again, this time sketched from our hotel window in the morning. It’s pretty beautiful there with that backdrop. I’d like to explore that part of Nevada some day, the High Desert, see some of the old abandoned ghost towns. I’d like to go to Virginia City, where they filmed that TV show Bonanza; I remember once joking it would be fun to do a sketchcrawl there, but at the end you would have to burn your sketches and ride off on horses, like in the opening credits. Tell you what though, those mountains look really pretty but that snow was melting fast. As we drove back over it, you could see it all stacked high but weeping in any direction, with waterfalls gushing and creeks rushing. And the rocks…we saw a huge boulder which had fallen into the road and forced a big car to swerve off, and passed the section of highway that had been partially washed away by the heavy rain and snow in the winter. It was a fun trip, definitely a change of scenery, and a cool tournament for the boys to play in.

petescully

postcards of the hanging

Tag: AYSO