POULSBO — This year on Memorial Day weekend, North Kitsap’s 22nd annual Viking Cup youth soccer tournament will host the same fun-loving competition as it has for the past two decades. However, there will be 45 fewer teams joining in the games.

The drop comes in the same year that the school district has raised the tournament field usage fees from $5 to $35, and the North Kitsap Soccer Club feels that 700 percent jump is what has prompted the decrease in Viking Cup team registration.

“The result is that we have seen a substantial 35 percent decrease in the number of teams registered,” NKSC select coordinator Ed Skelley said, noting the drop from 130 teams in 2005 to 85 teams in 2006. “With the increased number of tournaments within a week or so of Viking Cup, it seems teams have decided to spend their money elsewhere.”

The hike in tournament field rates comes as part of an extended process over the past three years that North Kitsap School District Facility Operations director Dave Dumpert has been guiding in an attempt to balance the district’s checkbook in regards to field maintenance and operations costs in comparison to field usage fee revenue.

“(We’re) about $8,000 to $10,000 under what (we) should be charging user groups for different field usage fees. It’s been a process to bring it in line where it should be,” Dumpert said. “(We’re) still not where (we’re) supposed to be, but to raise (fees) all in one fell swoop would be pretty dramatic.”

Last year, the district raised the Viking Cup field use rates from $5 per team to $25 per team, a dramatic increase which prompted the soccer club to plead its case in front of the NKSD board. The raise in rate was eventually rescinded by the board and lowered back to $5 per team for 2005.

However, this year, the rate of $35 is causing heartburn on the NKSC account, Viking Cup Committee member Glenn Gracey said.

“Its a huge crisis because this money that we generate helps us keep registration rates lower for the kids,” Gracey said. “We also fund numerous kids who parents can’t pay for their kids to play … all of that money comes out of Viking Cup.”

The team registration fee for Viking Cup was raised from $425 to $450 this year, an increase which soccer club officials feel may have driven teams away from the tournament.

“The $425-$500/team tournament market can be commanded by tournaments having some turfed fields and/or a centralized complex of 10-15 fields,” Skelley noted of competing tournaments. “We have neither and are currently priced too high for the facilities we offer.”

Club officials estimate that Viking Cup annually attracts nearly $700,000 in revenue to the are economy through the goods and services rendered during the tournament. But as the number of teams drop, so will the community revenue.

Skelley said most of the tournament profits and player registration fees are returned directly to the NKSC participants, other user groups, the NKSD and the local community through materials and services made by the club.

“We can’t supplement (the cost of) an event like Viking Cup because we don’t make anything off of it,” said NKSD director of finance and operations Nancy Moffatt. “Outside use has to cover its own cost.”

Dumpert estimates that the district spends around $195,000 on field maintenance and operations each year, last year the soccer club paid an estimated $9,000 overall.

NKSD usage figures show that the district’s sports teams use the school fields only 10 percent while the soccer club accounts for around 70 percent — including Viking Cup, Dumpert said.