All posts by Gerard McLean

Soccer tournament legacy – a #letsblogoff post

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What will be your legacy as a soccer tournament? Why are you doing all this? Will players and their fans still talk about your event long after they have left town?

For many soccer tournaments, the immediate goal is to make money for the club or the league. That has to be done for the tournament to continue year after year. But beyond making money, think about how your event is leaving a legacy for each soccer player who participates, each coach who brings their team to play another and each parent who spends the weekend with their kid in the company of other kids and parents. Think about how your tournament shapes your community and contributes to its legacy.

Will your tournament be the subject of a story around the Thanksgiving table that starts out as, “Remember when we went to …” and ends with uncontrollable fits of laughter, followed by knowing glances and wistful sighs?

Our advice: Think about the intangibles about twice as much as you think about the operational parts of your tournament. These things include fair play, good referees, short lines at the concession stand, quality hotels, fun things to do between games, good communication with coaches, friendly field marshals and cheerful volunteers. Update scores as fast as you can. Make sure your maps are clear and correct. Never assume everyone knows what “you are here” means. And perform random acts of kindness, no matter how tired you are or how late it is.

Tell compelling, positive stories about your tournament and the players, coaches and families to anyone who will listen. Share them on your website or blog.

Stay humble and never forget the teams who are playing at your tournament are your guests who chose to come to your event among a large and growing market.

These are the things that create a soccer tournament legacy worth passing on.

This blog post is part of a blog-off series with a group of bloggers from different professions and world views, each exploring a theme from his/her world view. This was about “answering the question, “What is legacy?”” To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below. I will add links as they publish.

Charm City Cakes aces display booth at the NSCAA

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Ace of Cakes TourneyCentral soccer cake at the NSCAA

The 2011 NSCAA Convention is being held in Baltimore. Naturally, we had to get a Charm City Cakes, Ace of Cakes cake. Just had to! But what was it going to look like?

Back in June when we were planning the booth, we had all sorts of ideas. The one that finally emerged was a Maryland blue crab tearing at a soccer ball. The big problem was nobody here at TourneyCentral could draw.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just go to a toy store, find a soccer ball and a toy crab, put them together, shoot that and send it over to the cake folks.” Only in Ohio, Maryland blue crabs are hard to find. Any crab was hard to find. I was just about to give up when I tweeted:

Can anyone draw a Maryland blue crab attacking a soccer ball like a monster truck?

A few days later, I got an email with a sketch attached from Nicole Manzo. Nichole is a talented artist who loves being creative but was apprehensive about studying art. Art doesn’t pay the bills; business skills do.

But the world could not lose one more artist to “practical thinking” and her sketch was going to be my cake. I sent it over to Duff’s crew and they pounced on it, confident they could make an awesome cake from that.

And they did. And they not only made an awesome cake, they each signed Nicole’s sketch which we are going to frame and present to her when we get back home to Dayton.

And this is Nicole’s sketch Katherine and Ben used to build her cake. The Charm City Cakes crew is just awesome for doing this for us. We’re fans forever! (My favorite edit is the lipstick on the crab. Awesome!)

And just because Mary Alice’s voice was in my head, saying “It’s cake. Eat the cake.” and I didn’t get a piece the last time we got a Charm City Cake, we sliced into the cake at about 8:00pm and started serving pieces to hungry soccer coaches who stopped by the booth.

There may be some left, so if you are hungry, booth 1527. Remember, cake at 8:00pm is dessert, but at 8:00am, it is pastry. Yellow cake, chocolate butter cream filling. Awesomely delicious crab cake.

UPDATED
The Fairmont High School Newspaper published the story about Nicole. You can read it here.

Tweet Inspires Local Student to Design Ace of Cakes Soccer Cake

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“Can anyone draw a Maryland blue crab attacking a soccer ball like a monster truck?” That tweet from TourneyCentral.com President Gerard McLean moved 16-year-old Nicole Manzo, a junior at Fairmont High School, to try her hand at designing a cake. McLean forwarded the design to Charm City Cakes, the star of the popular television show, “Ace of Cakes,” on the Food Network.

TourneyCentral.com is using the resulting masterpiece cake to promote their complete end-to-end soccer tournament management system at the upcoming National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Convention in Baltimore, Maryland on January 13-15, 2011. The annual event is a showplace of soccer education, awards and exhibits for soccer coaches and youth tournament organizers nationwide.

The request actually got to Nicole secondhand through her mother Karen Manzo, who is a business associate of McLean’s. According to Karen, Nicole is an “Awesome artist,” whose first job was as a face painter at the Italian Fest. She continues to volunteer for that event and others as time permits. In addition to artistic pursuits, Nicole is a dedicated business student who is, “determined to own her own business some day.” On the extra-curricular front, the younger Manzo is a three-sport athlete spending time competing in field hockey, swimming and track.

ABOUT TOURNEYCENTRAL
TourneyCentral is the only fully integrated, event-focused online solution for youth soccer tournaments. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, advertising tools provide tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Baltimore in January 2011. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

On our way to the NSCAA Convention in Baltimore

NSCAA, Tournaments

Good morning, Baltimore is what we’ll be saying early Thursday morning as we roll into town from Dayton, Ohio! We’re off to the NSCAA Convention.

We’ll be sharing a booth with Annalisa and Alison from Premier Athletic Advertising and Carlo from Traveling Teams in booth 1527.

Stop by and say hi during the Thursday evening event and then come back after 9:00pm for a special treat you can only get in Baltimore.

Watch this spot for photos, videos and stories from the 2011 NSCAA Convention.

Meet US at the 2011 NSCAA Convention in Baltimore January 12-16 - Celebrate the Best of US!