Continuing my weekly assignment, I started with the remaining states which were KY, IL, MI and IN. Everything was pretty much the same in terms of work approach, teams and the gathering of all the contact information of directors and coaches of clubs in these states. I encountered the same problem as I did earlier with the previous teams and clubs that was not being able to specifically locate the contact information of the coaches and the directors. Some clubs didn’t provide the email nor the number of the Under 18 coaches and directors. There was only a general email to reach the club and the club contact telephone number. It would have sufficed for any other purpose but for the International Soccer Network, it was important that we have the resources to reach these people for any event that we might have. So, I put in the information that was available to me and notified Gary about it. I wanted to know what he had to say and how to go about this since I wanted to maintain professionalism in communicating with these youth soccer clubs and also didn’t have my ISN.com or shalesoccer.com email. I had completed my task and forwarded it to Gary.
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After having done a research on the various youth soccer clubs for boys Under 18, I was able to locate a source that generated the list of teams in each state in the desired categories. The states that I worked on were PA, OH, TN, KY, IL, MI and IN. Today, I started out with the list for OH, PA and TN. I saw that the youth soccer association for Ohio was divided into North and South. I compiled the list of the top twenty youth soccer clubs for boys Under 18 in the Ohio north region. Many of these clubs were well established youth soccer clubs that had different teams under its umbrella representing at various levels. Same was with Pennsylvania where there were regional divisions under which a list of youth soccer clubs operated. These clubs maintained a resourceful website that had easy access to contact information of directors, coaching staff and administrators. Some of them didn’t have any contact information of their coaches or directors but instead listed a general email or had a query box for outside parties to reach the club management. I got through most of the work for these three states in gathering the information for the youth soccer clubs. I had the information that I needed for most of the clubs and for the rest, I sent in a query asking for the contact information and also stated my purpose.
Today I continued with the list of schools in Michigan under NCAA and the NAIA. There were many competitive schools in terms of their involvement in various conferences which I thought would be ideal for the International Soccer Network to reach out in order to provide youth and academy players the exposure at a college level. But there were not many schools that offered soccer programs in Michigan besides the big schools in Div I and also in Div II and Div III. My task was to extract the contact information of the head coach and assistant coaches for these schools from the staff directory page. It is usually time consuming but I once I got the hang of it, it was smooth. I completed the list for Michigan and Illinois today and was able to start researching on the youth clubs for all that states that I covered so far.
It’s been a slow week in the sense that our company was only monitoring and overseeing some of the players at the youth level. I contacted Gary and asked him for my next assignment. He explained to me that he was still trying to figure out what he should assign men since he didn’t want me to spend my time on petty tasks. So, I was engaged with the updating and file creation of some of the existing spreadsheets for the NPSL. I had to refer back to the Dropbox where all the match reports were shared and based on that information, I had to make the changes wherever necessary. I continued to do so for a bunch of games. Also, I compressed the size of all the files of the list of soccer schools in various states. It took me much time because I had to ensure that the information wasn’t distorted in any form.
Gary contacted me today and assigned my task. It was related to creating a database of all the schools that offer soccer programs for men and women. I had this this activity in the first couple of weeks as this was resource was important in this line of work which was media and communications. Gary was content with my work and the organized manner in which the filed were created. He stressed the need for including as many states as possible in the list so that we have ready data available when we need to contact a list of institutions. So, I added Illinois and Michigan to the list with all the schools offering soccer programs. In addition, I was required to shortlist all the youth soccer clubs in all the states that I have covered. Since the International Soccer Network is involved with various teams of all levels and the media relations and communications, the maintenance of a database of these youth soccer clubs was crucial for a reaching out for future events and scouting.
Today, I continued with gathering the numbers for all the social media pages for each team in the South region. The southern region had four conferences in it; South Atlantic, Southeast, Sunshine and South Central conference. There are 24 teams in this conference collectively with varying numbers in their fan following across its social media.
I received the assignment for this week. Gary emailed me explaining what was to be done. This week's activity was to create a spreadsheet for all the social media handles of the NPSL teams. The league was divided into different regions and each region had its various conferences. In order to effectively create a database for the social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) statistics for each team, I was required to visit the social media pages of each team. There were some teams that haven't made their presence on all three platforms but for most of the teams, the numbers demonstrated a strong fan base in its respective regions.
I began organizing the information for all the regions and conferences in different sheets so that any party using this information would be clear in navigating through the spreadsheet. Today, I stared with the Northeast region which had three conferences in it; Mid Atlantic, North Atlantic and Keystone Conference. Last week had ended on a positive note. Gary had opened me up to some of the duties and responsibilities that were directly related with the NPSL. I was motivated to see my progress each week through the daily and weekly tasks that were assigned to me. I called Gary to ask about my next assignment for this week. I spoke to him for a brief moment and he told me that he would let me know by the end of the day. In the meanwhile, I checked my Dropbox to see if there were any updates of game reports. Now that the spreadsheets for all games was updated with the available information, It was important that I kept checking for reports of games that took place recently. I skimmed through my files in the Dropbox and found several new posts. So, I went ahead and did my job of updating the logs.
I had emailed Gary the spreadsheet for the 500s yesterday evening and today, I got an email from Cindy Spera, the Director of the National Premier Soccer League. She wanted to talk about the logs for the various games that needed to be updated and also about some discrepancies that I encountered with some of the game reports while I was compiling the statistics.
I called her in the evening but she was on her way home. She did tell me about some of the things that I should send her via email and Dropbox and that she would review the 500s log that was newly created. So, I uploaded the 500s log in Dropbox and shared it with her and also sent her via email. After this, I continued to work on the logs for 700s, 800s and the 1000s. I had to keep monitoring my Dropbox if the reports for the missing games has been updated so that I can compile the stats for those games. There were a few reports that were posted today and I worked on those reports with the available information I had. I continued to work on updating the compiling the statistics for the games. I had completed filling out the statistics for the 700s and 800s. Today, I moved on to handling the games under the 900s. There were not many missing games so it took me relatively lesser time to get it done. In the middle of the work, I got a call from Gary and he told me the game reports of the games under 500s was up and insisted that I start working on it immediately. All the spreadsheets that was shared with me that required to be updated was already created and I had to fill in for the missing games whenever the reports for those games were available. But the spreadsheet for the 500s was not created at all so I had to make one following the same format as the other spreadsheets.
So, I began reviewing the reports and extracted the numbers for each game in a new spreadsheet. I made sure this was done at the soonest because Gary told me that this is priority. It was a lengthy task but I enjoyed the work since it was something new to me and was related to the administration task of the NPSL. I was getting to learn new things and furthermore, I was now working, in part, for the NPSL, besides my mentor, Gary. |
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
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