There are really only two things that send soccer parents into a rage at soccer tournaments: referees and really bad maps. The first we can’t do anything about and no matter how good the referee is, the other side will always think he/she made the wrong call. It is wasted energy to disagree. But parents do it anyway.

The other thing that send parents into a rage are the poor quality of the maps most tournaments give out or post on their Web site. My daughter had a soccer tournament in Ohio this past weekend and the map said to go south on I-270, when the fields really were north. Since I was in the middle of Kansas on my way to Colorado Springs for a conference, there was little I could do when she called in a panic, wondering where the heck she was. It was not a pretty conversation. Through the magic of Rand McNally and iPhone, we got her turned around and on the right road eventually.

But, it didn’t need to go this far.

You know where you are. Your local teams know where you are. The rest to the world does not care where you are until they need to play at your fields. And, if you maps are poorly drawn, poorly documented and you clearly had not done any quality checking, you will already be enraging most of your guests far in advance of the referee blowing the whistle on kick off. Why would you want most of your guest teams in that state of mind, especially in the morning?

Parents, coaches and team reps do not trust you when it comes to maps. They want to be able to map the fields themselves, see a soccer complex on Google Earth and plot the directions from their front door. Fromt he time the schedules are published to the day before the games, the number one question we see through the Web sites is: what is the EXACT address of the soccer field. I want to use Google Maps/Microsoft/MapQuest/etc to map the directions so I can give them out to my parents. They believe that no matter what you publish, it will be wrong.

Our Advice:
Spend time on your maps. Make sure you actually drive the route leading up to your fields from major highways. Read your own directions as you drive. Did you get lost following them? If statistics are right, you probably did. You forgot to mention that slight curve or that semi-fork in the road where you had to bear left, or that the street name changed for 100 yards through Shelbyville, etc.

Give specific GPS coordinates that are your park entrance, not “somewhere in the general area.” Use Google Earth or a variety of sites to find the coordinates. Take a look at your maps. Can you clearly see a soccer complex/fields? They are difficult to hide from a satellite view.

Include a “You know you have gone too far when…” statement if the directions could potentially lead to over-shooting a landmark and dump the driver into an unrecognizable landscape. Write the directions using BOTH “right turn” and “go east.” Don’t say things like “The southeast corner of the intersection…” For many people, SE/SW/NE/NW etc all look alike. That is over-geeking your directions. Keep it very simple and use plain language.

But, above all, make sure your right, left, north, south, east and west are accurate.