Yesterday, I did a small assessment for myself as to what direction I headed so far into this mentorship. I was glad to learn my progress of understanding the role of media and news agency, International Soccer Network LLC. With renewed energy, I continued to work on the tasks at hand. I started with the youth soccer clubs in Oregon. Following this, I started with the research for the adult clubs. I found out that Oregon had 2 major soccer leagues which were Oregon Premier Soccer League and Greater Portland Soccer District. Under these leagues there were several teams listed but like any other clubs/teams in states where professional soccer is not that active, I couldn’t find their source of contacts.
0 Comments
Today I continued with researching about the adult soccer club in the state of Oregon. It was pretty simple in the sense that it was the same structure for all other states. Before I went ahead with this, I took some time off and reflected in my past work. I realized that I have honed my communication skills in the sense that with continuous interactions with officials and members of the league from various states, I was able to pinpoint key areas and bring it up to Gary. I felt that this led to a better understanding of the teams and clubs in these leagues when it comes to gathering and compiling information using their websites. I continued to look into all the work in the past and form an assessment for myself.
After finishing with the state of Washington, I went ahead with the teams and clubs in Oregon. Oregon had a strong and an extensive line up of under 18 boys’ soccer program. The league was impressive in the sense that it had many teams, again, several teams of the boys’ under 18 represented a single club/franchise which I had encountered before for several states and teams in these states. So, I began with the youth clubs in Oregon and selected the top 20 in the league. Once I selected the top 20, I accessed their website and compiled the contact information for all the board member and the coaches. It was a pretty strait forward task but a little time consuming. I was able to finish up with this and start researching for the adult soccer clubs.
I was a little unwell today from a slight headache in the morning so I decided to work all day with regular breaks since I was on bed rest. I continued compiling the contact information of the teams/clubs in the Washington state.
Washington DC’s soccer scene was not as active as the other states. There were some states like Idaho who had the same kind of soccer environment where there was not much happening in terms of professional or amateur leagues. Washington DC had the City Premier League which was the highest level of soccer in the state. Under this league, I found out that there were several teams that were affiliated to the professional tier but when I went to their website to obtain their contact information, I was unsuccessful. This being the same issue with other leagues/states that there was no comprehensive source for outside parties to avail club information. For the youth soccer clubs, there was! In fact I found that for the youth soccer clubs, each club had several teams of under 18 boys that represented in different levels. So I started with the teams for boys under 18 in the Washington DC area.
Collecting the information for Montana’s adult soccer clubs was a little overwhelming in the sense that I had to dig deeper to confirm if the teams listed were actually a full-fledged professional soccer club or just a part of the league as a registered team every season. However, I managed to get some work done and found out that the best way to confirm was to communicate with the league office, which I did and accordingly sort the teams that would be in my list. Today, I took up Idaho for compiling the list of youth and adult soccer clubs in the state. I noticed that Idaho was not an active state in terms of professional soccer. For the adult soccer teams, the Idaho soccer had two distinct leagues under two regions. They were Boise area – Southern Idaho Soccer League (SISL), Idaho Falls area – Idaho Falls Adult Soccer Association. The teams listed under each of these leagues were those ‘register to enter’ teams that didn’t have a comprehensive source for club information. The only information that I was able to retrieve was the contact people and their information of the league. It was underwhelming to know that I had to repeat the task of contacting the league office to confirm the status of the teams. But it was my job!
Today, I continued with the youth soccer clubs in Montana. The youth soccer clubs have a comprehensive source, mostly websites for outside parties to avail club contacts of various coaches and directors. There is a legitimate website wherein information for all youth soccer clubs from any region/state can be obtained by simply entering the state, age group and sex in the respective drop down menu. The list of teams are in order of their rankings and it makes extracting information very smooth. So, I proceeded with the clubs and got the contact info of the head coaches and directors for boys U18.
I began the assignment with Montana. For the adult soccer clubs in Montana, there were several leagues under which several teams were affiliated to. I also found out that some of the leagues under the Montana State Soccer Association, were on the roster on a registration basis. I can only assume that it is an open league where teams can register to be a part of the season. This, however, made me question the level of these teams in terms of their scale of operations, club size, rankings etc. It was an important consideration since I wanted to only list the teams with credibility from a client’s/investor’s point of view. The information package that I was creating will be one of the sources for potential and existing clients with varying interests. Therefore, it was essential that the teams listed must be of value in some aspect so that our clients can reach out and conduct business. So, I went ahead and compiled the list of the teams in several leagues. Most of the teams didn’t have the contact information but the contact info of the league Director and Administrator was available which I thought was enough to reach out with any queries of the teams in it.
I emailed Gary the updates and also asked for the next assignment. He assigned me my weekly task of gathering contact information for the youth and adult soccer clubs in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. He explained to me that one of our clients is looking to expand into the Northwest and that we're looking for prospective leads.I had to put them all in one Excel as different sheets for each state. I began my initial research of each state to find out what was available since I was aware that there were youth and adult soccer clubs that didn’t maintain a functional website for outside parties to obtain club information. I wasn’t surprised to find out that there were a bunch of clubs that I couldn’t gather contact information. For the youth clubs, it was more or less easily available in the sense that there were leads to their resources if not on their main website. I figured that it would be a time consuming process when I found out that for the adult soccer clubs, there were several leagues for each state and region and that these teams didn’t have any resourceful outlet for their club. The only form of contact with these clubs or teams in the various leagues was through the league director or administrator whose contact information was available.
Today, I received responses from several youth soccer clubs that I reached out for obtaining the contact details of the head coach and/or people in charge of external affairs and media relations. It was important that I had a full coverage of these information on the clubs that I listed for Gary since these information would be used for dealing with clients looking to expand in any areas. I had sent out fifteen queries to fifteen different youth clubs that didn’t have the information listed on their website and got response from eight of them. I was motivated to see my efforts bear fruit and so I went ahead and updated the spreadsheet for these states that I covered earlier. However, there were still some clubs left that had nothing listed and I was eager to get something out of their management so I sent them a follow up email on my query to expedite the process. Hopefully, I’ll hear from them soon enough!
|
AuthorI am Jason Salam, MBA - Sports Management student at Tiffin University, Ohio. I have a background in business administration, particularly in marketing. Blogger and sports enthusiast! Archives
December 2015
Categories |