This weekend, snowstorms ripped through Ohio and left anywhere from 13 inches to over 2 feet of snow everywhere. It is melting and will probably be gone in a few days, but for the early season soccer tournaments, it has caused all sorts of rumors about tournaments being cancelled.
Teams that travel from outside the area only hear the sensational stories the news puts out about the bad weather because it makes news. Flooding, tornado devastation, huge snow accumulation numbers, etc. may not accurately describe the ground conditions that is happening in and around your tournament. Yet your guest teams don’t know that unless you tell them.
Our Advice: Control your event. Always. Don’t let rumors take control of your message or you will be spending unnecessary time and energy responding to rumors and assumptions people make simply because they don’t know what is going on.
Be proactive about the status of your tournament and post up news on your front page, in your FAQs, in the Quick News and if necessary, send out an email to the coaches. Even if you don’t know yet what action you will take, you may want to tell them that. But, always with a promise you will update them via your Web site when you have made a decision.
You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you communicate about how it affects your tournament.