CARY - Between summer vacations and the popularity of club soccer, it's often hard for Athens Drive boys soccer coach Travis Seese to find enough players available for offseason scrimmages.

Like most programs in the area, the team mainly focuses on conditioning and not style of play, since the pool of players is sometimes too low to field an 11-man team.

But with some help from a week-long high school camp by the Carolina RailHawks from July 26-30, Seese and other area coaches were able to test their team against others right before tryouts started on Monday.

"It was a nice warm-up for the season," Seese said.

"To play in this amazing facility, and train here a week before the season starts, it gives some of the guys a head start going into tryouts here."

Athens Drive, Green Hope, Panther Creek, Fuquay-Varina, Leesville Road and East Wake were among the teams that participated in the camp, which went four days for four hours each.

The teams did not compete on Tuesday, when RailHawks players were slated to host Rochester. Camp participants were rewarded with free tickets.

"It's good to see what [other teams] have and sort of get a feel for the season early on," Athens Drive senior Matt Liptak said.

Each day the RailHawks coaches and players focused on a different skill area. RailHawks coach Martin Rennie started each day off with a talk about the mental aspect of the game.

The high school camp was the latest in several summer camps the RailHawks have hosted this summer. The team has hosted camps nearly ever week in the summer.

All ages of players have come through WakeMed Soccer Park for camps.

"Quite often within the few weeks, we've been working with over 100 kids," Rennie said. "That makes our camp program one of the biggest in the whole area, including the colleges, because we're doing it the whole summer, not just a few weeks."

Rennie isn't oblivous at the possible business aspect of working with so many of the area's youth.

"It's about trying to build a link between playing soccer and watching soccer, which hasn't really existed that much in this area. There's been tons of kids playing soccer, but not that many watching it," Rennie said.

"We're saying 'Hey, come learn more about our team, more about our players and then come and watch us."