Since its inception in 2008, the South Georgia United Soccer Club has grown into one of the premier soccer clubs south of Macon and one of the better clubs in Georgia. The United is the result of merging three different South Georgia clubs into one in 2008: The Valdosta-Lowndes Soccer Club, the Tift Area Soccer Association, and the Flint River Fusion. Over the years, under the watchful eye of director Lee Blenman, a former semi-pro player and police officer in England, the club has produced some of the state’s top players. We spent a few minutes with Coach Blenman and talked about his background and the growth of soccer in South Georgia.
1. From where did you come to the United States? I was born in Leytonstone, London, England, the same place where Alfred Hitchcock and David Beckham are from.
2. What is your playing experience? I grew up playing in the Echo League in London, which is the same league that a lot of current and retired pros played. I also played in a few other semi-pro leagues. I always thought it would be fun to be a police officer if soccer didn’t work out. When it didn’t, I got a real job and became an officer with Scotland Yard. I started out as a bobby, and then I became a detective. All in all, I was a police officer for 12 years.
3. What brought you to the United States? When my wife and I married, we decided to move to America. She is from Huntsville, Alabama. We moved to Atlanta, where I hooked up with the Atlanta Concorde Fire. It was there that I realized I could make a full time job out of coaching soccer. I got all of my coaching licenses, then I moved to Tallahassee and coached the Tallahassee United. That club merged with another club and in 2008. A friend of mine named John Romaine brought me 
to Valdosta. The Valdosta-Lowndes Soccer Club merged with the Tift Area and Flint River clubs to become the South Georgia United. I’m the club director, and now we have about 800 kids who participate in the program each year.
4. How long have you been in South Georgia? We moved down to Tallahassee in 2007, then to Valdosta in 2008.
5. In the years you’ve been here, how has the level of play improved? We have more kids in the program and the level of play, both in terms of teams and individual players, has never been better. Both of our high school-aged teams played in the top division in Georgia this year and finished in the top four. Many of our players go on to play in college. A lot of them have been with the program since we began.
6. What style of play do your teams incorporate? I try to make sure that our club as a whole possesses the ball downfield and build the game as we play. But you also have to take what the other team gives you. We pass the ball out of the back, through the middle, and up to the front. On defense, we press and try to win the ball high on the field so we can get to the goal. We have tremendous athletes and we play to our strengths. Possessing and passing aren’t strategies that come naturally to American players. We spend a lot of time early on developing those skills. A lot of our kids don’t play pick-up games like we did when we were young. Many of our younger players are behind technically as a result.
7. How do our players compare to the players in larger cities around the state? In the younger ages, the players in Columbus are stronger. But among the older ages, we are stronger. It’s not really fair to compare us to the Atlanta-area clubs. They have clubs with 5,000 kids. Picking from a pool of players that large to find the top 16 is a lot different than us picking from the pool of players we have. But at the top level? Our top kids can play with theirs.
8. Have our kids ever played abroad? Yes. We played in Brazil in 2013. It was a great experience for our players. They played against kids who will be pros one day, and we weren’t far behind.
9. What do we need to do to catch up technically? We need more players participating at younger ages. Our kids need a ball on their feet every day – dribbling, passing, receiving. They just need to spend more time with a soccer ball.
10. What does the future look like for soccer in South Georgia? We are going to continue to improve in the next five years. We now have one club that oversees soccer throughout the region. The key to me is player development. Our coaches need to challenge our players and our kids need to buy into to what we’re doing and work on their own. Our kids need to play year-round and our parents need to support the program as well. At the younger ages, we don’t need to sacrifice player development to win games. We need to develop our youngest players, and in the next five years, our kids will be ahead of our current 16- and 17-year-olds.
10 Questions/South Georgia/February 2015
Lee Blenman
South Georgia United Soccer Club
Robert Preston Jr.
