Wow, it's been a month. Where does the time go?
Finally sitting in a coffee shop for a little Mark-time; time that is tough to be found in today's busy world of youth development, personnel management, first team playoff runs, new program development, and my almost-two-year-old beautiful baby girl's tantrums and moments of pure magic. As a teen, I remember wishing I could blink my eyes, jump forward, and "arrive" at adulthood so I would be able to relax. Yeah, right. I've been considered an adult for at least 5 years now and, like the Energizer Bunny, things kpee going, and going, and going...
I hope to make more time like this in the mornings. I drop Emmri off at school (day care really, she's only two) at 7:45AM and usually battle west-bound rush hour traffic from Woodbury to the Thunder offices in St Paul each morning. The drive is anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Gives me some additional Mark-time for sure, but I can't work on my laptop (can't say I haven't tried) and it's too early to call people, so the most productive thing I get done is plowing through audio book after audio book or enjoying the new music stations I find on SIRIUS. But wait, you might say, I've posted before that I enjoy the drives and the time spent in the car to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa for tournaments. That's true, but the rush hour commute to work is different. I feel like I'm wasting time in traffic, rather than the feeling of peace when I'm alone and driving to and from an event. Weird, I know.
The rush hour drive, a pain though it may be, has however given me another one of Life's Amazing Usuallys and Great Hrevelations (or LAUGHs as I like to call them). Ready? In rush hour, the fast lane is usually not the fast lane because everyone thinks it's the fast lane. Follow that? Amazingly accurate when you reflect on it. This is right up there with some of the other LAUGHs - people usually like me until they don't and my keys are usually in the last pocket I check.
Anyway, time for a little blogging...
After the inception of the Bangu Tsunami Academy program in 2004, the word Academy became a buzz-word in the Minnesota soccer scene. I believe there were a few other people using Academy in their soccer programming, but none to the extent that we were, offering what we thought was more of a true Academy year-round training program rather than a camp or clinic or a winter training program. We all see the world through our own filters I guess.
Academy programs have since proliferated the local market almost as fast as the Cabbage Patch Dolls did in the early 80s. Can you believe it’s been over 25 years since people went wild over those ugly things?!? Why has Minnesota seen such an Academy boom you might ask? Mostly it’s a marketing thing as clubs are looking to retain players and stop movement to other clubs by claiming to offer what everyone else seems to be offering. Be Like Mike. And that’s not a bad thing necessarily. In fact, we started our Academy program in 2004 partly to be like the other big clubs in Region II. Though we didn’t have a fear that our players would migrate to another club in the region, we wanted the cache of saying we had a program that other big clubs in Region II offered. We saw the results success that these clubs had had and wanted to put ourselves in their company.
I get a laugh sometimes at some of the “Academy” programs that are being offered now. Just like I’m sure many across the US and abroad are in stitches when they look at our “Academy” program. I guess we’re all doing what we can in our own little way.
This past year, though the year-round Academy training concept (at least our version of it) has remained, the word “Affiliate” started to gain tongue time. The Thunder spent the greater part of the last year trying to affiliate with different clubs, much to the chagrin of many people. Through these affiliations we would offer to help local clubs promote the game of soccer in their communities while also working to elevate the game (through instruction and connection with the professional club) and identify the truly exceptional soccer athletes, looking to provide these special players with a development system that they could not hope to find at the local club level.
With little buy in for the affiliation process in the end, we moved to full on mergers to form MTA this fall.
Minnesota’s next soccer buzz-word will be “Alliance”. With the deep tie ins to community names and local high schools, volunteer community boards will be reluctant to change the name of their local soccer association to something other than the city name, thus preventing full on mergers.
However, in the “Be Like Mike” spirit, clubs will be looking to offering something similar to the MTA conglomerate (that’s not my word for it by the way). If mergers can’t happen, we’ll see Alliances. These will likely be in winter training only with area clubs looking to pool ideas, resources, and players for supplemental training opportunities that can rival what MTA provides. Some might even begin to bill this training like ODP, looking to bring each club’s top players together, give them training with similar ability players, and form a US Club Tournament Team and head to an early spring tournament. Maybe even a group like Alan Merrick or Coerver take the lead.
I remember talking with Charlie Cooke, Director of Coaching for Coerver USA, back in 2005. My thought was that we (BTFC) were on the verge of a unique (to Minnesota) youth development system based on geographical distribution, were going to be attracting many talented young athletes to our programs, and thought it would be a great showcase for Coerver Coaching here in the area. We had the players with interest and ability, Coerver could provide the structure and coaches education. I use Coerver drills all the time and get a ton of ideas from their DVDs. (The preceding statement may not be used in any Coerver promotions without the express written consent of the guy typing it). Charlie was intrigued by the idea but told me that I had to talk with the Minnesota Coerver licensee, Simon Whitehead. I called Simon up but he couldn’t commit to combining with Bangu in fear of the adverse repercussions to his summer camp and winter clinic programs, the loss of community support for these programs due to involvement with the Dark Side.
It bugged me for a while that the club I had just joined a few months back had such a powerfully negative rep. Moreover, for a company (Coerver) to tout the “World’s #1 Coaching Method" and then not want to work with dedicated young athletes in a year-round training environment in fear of loss of camp revenue was astounding. Maybe they had recently revised their company mission statement and were now trying to be the "World’s #1 Camp Program".
Anyway, I digress.
Though there have been a few short-term alliances this past year, the dam is about to break on this. It will be interesting to see what is done and who leads what. It will be easy to rally support for different programs based on the 800 lb gorilla in the market, but that's OK. I don't think anyone could say that my colleagues or I have ever shied away from competition. Exciting times ahead!
And we’ll all look back on this and laugh.
Of Academies, Affiliations, and Alliances
Wow, it's been a month. Where does the time go?
Finally sitting in a coffee shop for a little Mark-time; time that is tough to be found in today's busy world of youth development, personnel management, first team playoff runs, new program development, and my almost-two-year-old beautiful baby girl's tantrums and moments of pure magic. As a teen, I remember wishing I could blink my eyes, jump forward, and "arrive" at adulthood so I would be able to relax. Yeah, right. I've been considered an adult for at least 5 years now and, like the Energizer Bunny, things kpee going, and going, and going...
I hope to make more time like this in the mornings. I drop Emmri off at school (day care really, she's only two) at 7:45AM and usually battle west-bound rush hour traffic from Woodbury to the Thunder offices in St Paul each morning. The drive is anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Gives me some additional Mark-time for sure, but I can't work on my laptop (can't say I haven't tried) and it's too early to call people, so the most productive thing I get done is plowing through audio book after audio book or enjoying the new music stations I find on SIRIUS. But wait, you might say, I've posted before that I enjoy the drives and the time spent in the car to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa for tournaments. That's true, but the rush hour commute to work is different. I feel like I'm wasting time in traffic, rather than the feeling of peace when I'm alone and driving to and from an event. Weird, I know.
The rush hour drive, a pain though it may be, has however given me another one of Life's Amazing Usuallys and Great Hrevelations (or LAUGHs as I like to call them). Ready? In rush hour, the fast lane is usually not the fast lane because everyone thinks it's the fast lane. Follow that? Amazingly accurate when you reflect on it. This is right up there with some of the other LAUGHs - people usually like me until they don't and my keys are usually in the last pocket I check.
Anyway, time for a little blogging...
After the inception of the Bangu Tsunami Academy program in 2004, the word Academy became a buzz-word in the Minnesota soccer scene. I believe there were a few other people using Academy in their soccer programming, but none to the extent that we were, offering what we thought was more of a true Academy year-round training program rather than a camp or clinic or a winter training program. We all see the world through our own filters I guess.
Academy programs have since proliferated the local market almost as fast as the Cabbage Patch Dolls did in the early 80s. Can you believe it’s been over 25 years since people went wild over those ugly things?!? Why has Minnesota seen such an Academy boom you might ask? Mostly it’s a marketing thing as clubs are looking to retain players and stop movement to other clubs by claiming to offer what everyone else seems to be offering. Be Like Mike. And that’s not a bad thing necessarily. In fact, we started our Academy program in 2004 partly to be like the other big clubs in Region II. Though we didn’t have a fear that our players would migrate to another club in the region, we wanted the cache of saying we had a program that other big clubs in Region II offered. We saw the results success that these clubs had had and wanted to put ourselves in their company.
I get a laugh sometimes at some of the “Academy” programs that are being offered now. Just like I’m sure many across the US and abroad are in stitches when they look at our “Academy” program. I guess we’re all doing what we can in our own little way.
This past year, though the year-round Academy training concept (at least our version of it) has remained, the word “Affiliate” started to gain tongue time. The Thunder spent the greater part of the last year trying to affiliate with different clubs, much to the chagrin of many people. Through these affiliations we would offer to help local clubs promote the game of soccer in their communities while also working to elevate the game (through instruction and connection with the professional club) and identify the truly exceptional soccer athletes, looking to provide these special players with a development system that they could not hope to find at the local club level.
With little buy in for the affiliation process in the end, we moved to full on mergers to form MTA this fall.
Minnesota’s next soccer buzz-word will be “Alliance”. With the deep tie ins to community names and local high schools, volunteer community boards will be reluctant to change the name of their local soccer association to something other than the city name, thus preventing full on mergers.
However, in the “Be Like Mike” spirit, clubs will be looking to offering something similar to the MTA conglomerate (that’s not my word for it by the way). If mergers can’t happen, we’ll see Alliances. These will likely be in winter training only with area clubs looking to pool ideas, resources, and players for supplemental training opportunities that can rival what MTA provides. Some might even begin to bill this training like ODP, looking to bring each club’s top players together, give them training with similar ability players, and form a US Club Tournament Team and head to an early spring tournament. Maybe even a group like Alan Merrick or Coerver take the lead.
I remember talking with Charlie Cooke, Director of Coaching for Coerver USA, back in 2005. My thought was that we (BTFC) were on the verge of a unique (to Minnesota) youth development system based on geographical distribution, were going to be attracting many talented young athletes to our programs, and thought it would be a great showcase for Coerver Coaching here in the area. We had the players with interest and ability, Coerver could provide the structure and coaches education. I use Coerver drills all the time and get a ton of ideas from their DVDs. (The preceding statement may not be used in any Coerver promotions without the express written consent of the guy typing it). Charlie was intrigued by the idea but told me that I had to talk with the Minnesota Coerver licensee, Simon Whitehead. I called Simon up but he couldn’t commit to combining with Bangu in fear of the adverse repercussions to his summer camp and winter clinic programs, the loss of community support for these programs due to involvement with the Dark Side.
It bugged me for a while that the club I had just joined a few months back had such a powerfully negative rep. Moreover, for a company (Coerver) to tout the “World’s #1 Coaching Method" and then not want to work with dedicated young athletes in a year-round training environment in fear of loss of camp revenue was astounding. Maybe they had recently revised their company mission statement and were now trying to be the "World’s #1 Camp Program".
Anyway, I digress.
Though there have been a few short-term alliances this past year, the dam is about to break on this. It will be interesting to see what is done and who leads what. It will be easy to rally support for different programs based on the 800 lb gorilla in the market, but that's OK. I don't think anyone could say that my colleagues or I have ever shied away from competition. Exciting times ahead!
And we’ll all look back on this and laugh.