Participants | Schedule/ Results | Standings
All-Tournament Team & Leading Scorers | Directions to Emory | About Sonny Carter
Previous Tournament Results: 2009 | 2010

Saturday, September 10th - Sunday, September 11th, 2011
Hosted by Emory University
Atlanta, GA • Woodruff Physical Education Center

Participants (2011/2010 Record)

Emory University (1-3-0/ 14-3-2)
Oglethorpe University (3-1-0/ 8-9-1)
Methodist University (2-1-1/ 11-9-0)
Rowan University (2-2-0/ 6-12-2)

Schedule/ Results

Standings

A champion will be declared at the end of the tournament based on the following criteria:
- Three points for a win
- One point for a tie
- No points for a loss

The tiebreakers will be head-to-head results, followed by goal differential, with a maximum of three offensive goals from each game counted.

About Sonny Carter

The most distinguished Emory soccer alumnus is the late Sonny Carter, who went on to play professional soccer, became a doctor and then an astronaut. Carter, a 1969 graduate of the college, was drafted in the first round by the Atlanta Chiefs of the North American Soccer League for whom he played three seasons. He was among the inaugural inductees into the Emory Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989 and received the school's highest alumni honor the following year when he was accorded the Emory Medal. He was a member of the NASA Discovery crew that spent 120 hours in space in November 1989. Carter was in training for a second space flight when he died tragically in an April 1991 plane crash.

The Sonny Carter Scholarship is presented by Emory to a male and female senior who plan to attend an Emory graduate or professional school. The gift, established by Carter's family and friends, provides for the full cost of one year's tuition. A national scholarship was established in Carter's name by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America in conjunction with Umbro. Emory begins its men's soccer home schedule each year with the annual Sonny Carter Invitational, featuring four teams.

This weekend's games are played in memory of the late Sonny Carter, a former Emory soccer player who later became an astronaut. Through his enduring versatility and character, Carter reminds us always to reach for the stars.

A native of Macon, Georgia, Sonny Carter received his bachelor of arts degree in chemistry from Emory College in 1969 and graduated from its medical school in 1973. A strong student as well as a standout on the Emory soccer team, Carter was voted best all-around athlete in his senior year and later became a first-round draft choice of the Atlanta Chiefs professional soccer team. He played with the Chiefs during his first three years of medical school.

After completing an internship in internal medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital, Carter joined the Navy and began flight surgeon training in 1974. He earned his Navy aviator wings in 1977 and was posted for duty aboard the U.S.S. Forrestal as senior medical officer. Following a stint as an F-4 fighter pilot with a Marine fighter squadron, he served a second tour aboard the Forrestal as a pilot. In 1982 he became the first flight surgeon to graduate from the Navy's rigorous Top Gun fighter-pilot training school. Two years later he completed the Navy's test-pilot school.

Carter was recruited by NASA for the astronaut training program in 1984, and within a year he had qualified for assignment as mission specialist in the space-shuttle program. He was a member of the Discovery crew that spent 120 hours in space in November 1989. On that flight he carried several Emory mementos, including a 4,000 year-old cuneiform tablet from the Emory University Museum of Art and Archeology (now the Michael C. Carlos Museum), which is believed to be the oldest human artifact ever to orbit the earth.

In 1989, Carter joined the inaugural class of the Emory Sports Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Emory Medal in September 1990 in recognition of his "intellectual tenacity, physical courage and judicious ability to know and take the right step." Carter was training for a second space flight when he died tragically in an April 1991 plane crash.