Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #112 - Matt Sheehan, Vice President of Peoria City Soccer

Transcript

I Hate Soccer #112 - Matt Sheehan, Vice President of Peoria City Soccer · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

0:00
SPEAKER_03: Matt Sheehan is the vice president of Peoria City Soccer that plays in the USL League Two.
0:07
SPEAKER_03: They were in Michigan last week playing against the Flint City Bucks in the quarterfinals of USL League Two.
0:17
SPEAKER_03: In this episode, we discussed the setup of the club, the future of USL, the future of USL League Two, how to build a club, how to build a game day environment, how to organize your club from top to bottom, your pro team from top to bottom, and just about the future of US soccer in general.
0:39
SPEAKER_03: I just looked at some stats uh this week about just where we are as the podcast grows.
0:46
SPEAKER_03: And I just uh saw that I have 1,500 followers or 1,570 followers on Apple.
0:56
SPEAKER_03: Uh and we just passed 19,000 hours.
1:00
SPEAKER_03: We're at that's a bit that's basically 798 days of listening time uh for all of the audience.
1:09
SPEAKER_03: And and on Spotify, uh we have hit we just hit a thousand followers, uh we're at 1,08 followers total, and then on YouTube, we are at 4,764, and the goal is to get to 5,000 by Christmas.
1:26
SPEAKER_03: So if you're listening on Apple, listening on Spotify, or or watching on YouTube, please follow and subscribe.
1:35
SPEAKER_03: It really helps the show grow and it gets gets viewership up.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: So please go ahead and and support the show.
1:45
SPEAKER_03: It's free.
1:46
SPEAKER_03: That's the it's the easiest way to support the show.
1:50
SPEAKER_03: I hate soccer.
1:52
SPEAKER_03: And the editing afterwards is like I found this thing, it's called Adobe Podcast, and it enhances everything and it takes out everything.
2:05
SPEAKER_03: I went I went to uh MLS next playoffs, and it was so loud behind, and it was awful, and I was like kind of worried, yeah.
2:19
SPEAKER_03: And then I threw it into Adobe Podcast and it's all gone.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm like, it's amazing.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: What um what percentage do you do?
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Like when I I use the I'm guessing you're talking about, you know, the enhancer, I think it's Adobe Podcast now, but automatically it's like 90%.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, like I don't know if you kind of you can mess with it.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you knew that.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: So on the one that I use, it's about like I always do about 50.
2:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: Because when you do when you do 90, yeah, it like it's almost like muffles your voice, yeah, and stuff like that.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it can make you like miss a word or like it can take your word and make it sound like another word.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I guess sometimes you gotta kinda that's good, yeah.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: 50, yeah.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: And I love how it completely takes out the background because when you listen to real like legit podcasts, yeah, you can't hear a thing, but they're also in a studio, usually, right?
3:22
SPEAKER_03: They can can control everything, yeah.
3:25
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, so um why have you ever gotten into podcasting or anything like that?
3:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, my two buddies and I in college, we launched it.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: We called it, I think we called it uh sports entertainment weekly.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were huge WWE fans, and then we were all in like broadcast journalism classes, yeah.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: So we were doing like sports anchoring, and so we're like, let's just make this weekly show and cover baseball, hockey, whatever, soccer, you know.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And uh I got like the local Red Bull creative distributor person to like sponsor the thing, and so she's like, Yeah, we'll give you a bunch of Red Bulls.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: So we'd put Red Bull up and be like sponsored by Red Bull.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just hilarious.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: It was such like a unofficial thing, but you know, it was fun.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we'd we'd uh just talked for like 30 minutes to an hour about everything.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: What's the 309 podcast?
4:21
SPEAKER_03: I saw that you were on that.
4:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 309 is like the area code of Peoria.
4:25
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, yep.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: So I was on yeah, soccer in the 309.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Um it's he's just uh a local guy who's super involved.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jason's his name as well.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, super involved in soccer, and he wanted to launch a podcast.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: So he's very involved in uh the Peakin Pride.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: So we're Peoria Peekin is 20 minutes outside of Peoria.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: It's like 30,000 people in the town.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, so Peacin' Pride is that local club team, and he's like super involved there.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, he just launched a podcast, I think, within the last year and had me on.
5:00
SPEAKER_03: So how far is Peoria from like Chicago?
5:04
SPEAKER_00: I always say about two and a half hours.
5:06
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so right down smack dab in the middle.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: It's literally right between St.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Louis and Chicago.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: So two and a half hours, two and a half hours.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: And you're originally from St.
5:15
SPEAKER_03: Louis?
5:16
SPEAKER_03: I am and I'm from Kansas City originally, Missouri Missouri City.
5:20
SPEAKER_03: Okay, good.
5:20
SPEAKER_03: Um moved up to Michigan when I was like six.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: Then a job with the Western New York Flash and the NWSL took me to Buffalo, and then I stayed in Buffalo, not with the Flash, but I started my own training company.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: Uh and eventually had my own facility.
5:37
SPEAKER_03: But then I launched this podcast, and then I'm like, you know what?
5:40
SPEAKER_03: I need to go I need to go back to Michigan because there's so much more soccer here.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we have DCFC, we have Flint City, we have, I think we have uh six USL2 teams statewide because you got Lansing and you got Midwest and you have Oakland's uh Oakland County, right?
6:00
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, and and all the colleges.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
6:03
SPEAKER_03: We have way more D1, we have two Big Ten schools.
6:07
SPEAKER_03: New York doesn't have any, they have a Syracuse, but Syracuse is two hours away.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: And it's just it's just so much easier.
6:13
SPEAKER_03: But that's yeah.
6:15
SPEAKER_03: And uh what what's your role?
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Well, okay, first of all, it seems like you guys what how is your front office set up?
6:26
SPEAKER_03: Because not everybody has a full I wouldn't say are you full-time staff or go into your role and how it's set up a little bit?
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so front office we have three people.
6:39
SPEAKER_03: So um not everybody has three people, right?
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes it's just one or two.
6:44
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Um, so now me personally, I'm I'm part-time, so I'm I'm the vice president, but um, I have a full-time role outside of Peoria City that's you know, more like nine to five, Monday through Friday, and then early mornings, late at nights, weekends is Peoria City.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: So um, I came on in 2023, okay and I honestly just came on in kind of a supportive communications role.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to kind of take the comms to the next level.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: They knew me back from the TV days, and so they reached out.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Hey, can we grab lunch, talk about you know, what our vision is, maybe where we see you assisting?
7:24
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, of course.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: And it was perfect timing because I had just left my TV job.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: My last day in there was like the first of February, and I started my new full-time role um in marketing, um, like February 6th, which is right around Super Bowl.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so like the Tuesday after Super Bowl that year, I had lunch with the guys at Peoria City.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: They offered me this job to kind of assist with the comms, to do social media, to send out press releases, that sort of stuff.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, but as that summer went on, the guy that I would have been kind of working under said, you know what, I'm taking the summer off.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, you kind of take the reins.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: And so I did.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: And then here we are.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: So that gentleman, Bobby Parker, is now our COO.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, so he's a full-time staff member.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, so he came back on in full capacity in 2024.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: So kind of just took 2023 off.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: And then Jim DeRose is our club president.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: So he's he's full-time, former Bradley University head coach for 28 years.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Um very well known in the Peoria soccer community, kind of makes sense.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: He's he's the guy to lead the club.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that that's it.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: It's the three of us, so the two full-timers, me, the part-timer, and then you know, to put game days on, we have like part-time operations staff.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
8:49
SPEAKER_03: What's your game day experience like?
8:51
SPEAKER_03: Because you I see uh in almost like that, you guys were tops in attendance.
8:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:00
SPEAKER_03: So what's uh so you guys play at Bradley, but how how many fans?
9:06
SPEAKER_03: And I've gotten into this conversation with uh like the owner of FC Buffalo because uh years ago he asked me, he was like, How did Detroit City FC just grow?
9:15
SPEAKER_03: And I go, Listen, beer.
9:19
SPEAKER_03: Like one of the things it's like the game day experience, it's like if you can sell all alcohol for some reason, a lot of people show up, yeah.
9:28
SPEAKER_03: And like, so what's your game day like experience and whatnot?
9:32
SPEAKER_00: So we definitely have beer, don't get me wrong.
9:35
SPEAKER_03: Beer came after, of course, because you might be out of high school or something like that, right?
9:40
SPEAKER_00: So um, it all started with the family friendly aspect, yeah.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: So we are much more of uh bring your kids, bring the family, like multi-generational fun uh for people at the stadium.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: So we play at Shea Stadium, which is Bradley University Stadium.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So how it's set up, it's very beautiful stadium, kind of over here, nice grass field.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Outside of the stadium, there's actually a like a concrete track and then a like a large grassy field in the middle.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: So that is our tailgate zone.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And so starting in 2022 when we launched, just organically, people were tailgating.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: So we kind of I wasn't involved in 22, I came out in 23, but it was kind of like this is our tailgate area.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe let's get somebody to grill out barbecue and like you know, people can BYOB, um, bring the kids out, and like people can just park in here and like make it happen.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: So that really grew.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: So I think in 23, when I took over, uh, one of the big things I wanted to do was bring food trucks.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: I think that was a hit, and I think that brought a lot of people, because now it's not like um uh we gotta go get dinner, then come to the game, the game's at 7:30.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Now it's like if I show up at 4:30, which is when we open the the gates to the tailgate zone, I can eat at five, and it's this whole hours-long experience.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: So I mean it really starts from 4:30 for fans.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then, you know, we open up, we have a play zone.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: So it's uh Discover Peoria play zone.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: We have like little games, and maybe like the local zoo brings out a snake and they can like see a snake, you know, stuff like that, or like like a balloon art or face painting.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we all have that set up right outside the stadium that opens up at 5 30.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Stadium gates open at 6 30.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of this progression.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not just, hey, we're coming for a soccer game, it's like this whole event, and that's I think that's a big reason about why we get more people.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe I don't want to say this too much, but some people just come for the before the game stuff.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And that's they leave you know for the game, and and that's okay, you know, that's totally fine.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: It's I've got a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and sometimes it's bedtime at seven and seven thirty.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're very strict to that, a seven thirty kickoff is very tough, right?
12:02
SPEAKER_00: For your family, especially if it's uh a late May game and you're still in school and it's a Thursday night, like it might not might not work out.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: So I'm a Chiefs fan since I was born basically, and then I moved to Buffalo.
12:15
SPEAKER_03: Both of those fan bases, they have those tailgators that will just go to tailgate and then they go home for the game because they don't they they didn't have tickets or whatever, and yeah, and then I mean that I've never really heard of tailgate around here.
12:32
SPEAKER_03: Well, Detroit City FC is a little bit different because there's a falling.
12:36
SPEAKER_03: Do you know what foaling is?
12:38
SPEAKER_03: So it's you throw a football to bowling pins.
12:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh, and so there's a big like warehouse, and everybody basically congregates there and then they walk to the game.
12:51
SPEAKER_03: I've heard that kind of like a tailgate, right?
12:54
SPEAKER_03: But now they're moving to a different location and everything.
12:57
SPEAKER_03: I think tailgating is like an underrated way to grow fan bases, yeah.
13:04
SPEAKER_03: I think and do you guys like market that?
13:07
SPEAKER_03: Like you're uh you're big into marketing, yeah.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: Like what's everything that you market?
13:13
SPEAKER_03: Do you market the game day experience or do you market what's happening on the field, or what's like what you do the most?
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all the above.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think um we've always marketed the game day experience, and and when we saw that kind of take off, and then the more you talk to people, you'll always hear, man, I didn't know you guys tailgate.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know you did that before the game.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And so there's always a need to kind of share it more and get it out there.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: So almost every game, I mean, there's photos going up, and it's a group of 20 that are tailgating behind their car, and they got the the trunk lifted up and they got the chairs out and they're all smiling, having a beer or whatever.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Like we try to push that about every single game.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, and when we were first really launching that off two or three years ago, yeah, it was like, hey, let's get like five or six photos of the tailgate and make a social media post, get it out there, put in the news release, whatever.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, just it organically grew.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: So we're not trying to like shove it down people's throats, like we'd love to have you there, but like this is here, we'd love to have you.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: So I I think it's just all organic stuff, and people caught on to it.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: There's not really anything else like it in the Peoria area, you know, especially during the summer, right?
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a unique opportunity to have family-friendly fun.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, doesn't cost a lot, you know, at all.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And you know, food trucks, I mean they make the prices, but yeah, you can get 10 bucks or less, whatever.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: It's not bad.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Could split a meal with your kid or whatever and do have an affordable to get the food truck.
14:51
SPEAKER_03: Do you have to like pay the food truck up front and that just for them to come or so uh it depends on the situation for us?
14:59
SPEAKER_00: It's the other way around.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have a vendor fee.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: It's 50 bucks.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: It's if you're available and you want to be there, you pay 50 bucks to be there, and all the profits that you make stay with you.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: We don't we don't take a share of it.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: Some people do that, you can do that.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we've just found in our market like 50 bucks is kind of the sweet spot.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Um especially if it's a slow night, then yeah, I mean, I'm sure you know this weather.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: If if you have rain and it's cold, you're only gonna have 100, 200 people maybe show up.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, smoke.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Bad air quality.
15:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you never happened last week.
15:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the games got moved inside and they haven't had the air on in the facility.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: It was so uh hot, it was awful.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, games are good though.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I mean, and I can never promise people.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they could they ask, uh, how many people you think are gonna be there?
15:56
SPEAKER_00: I can tell them generally it's 1500 to 2000.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: But if it's 50 degrees and raining and thunderstorming, it's a hundred, maybe, yeah.
16:08
SPEAKER_03: This episode is brought to you by the North American Soccer Expo.
16:12
SPEAKER_03: If you remember last year when I had Alexi Lawless on, so many of you were blown away and kept on messaging me how did you get Alexi Lawless to talk to you?
16:23
SPEAKER_03: And to be honest with you, it was the North American Soccer Expo.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: The expo has workshops and seminars and field presentations from top coaches and industry experts.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: I will be there this year.
16:36
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: I'll be set up on podcast row.
16:40
SPEAKER_03: In addition to the podcasts that I'm going to be filming there, I'm also going to have an open hour where any coach at the expo or anybody at the expo can come sit down at the chair and have a one-on-one 15-minute chat with me, and you guys can just come and chat and talk about whatever you want.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: North American Soccer Expo, July 30th to August 1st, Nova, Michigan.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: I'll see you there.
17:04
SPEAKER_03: So how did it how was it the first years?
17:08
SPEAKER_03: Because you just went as a fan or as just like take the family out, right?
17:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: So what was the first years like compared to the 1500 expected now?
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so 2022, they averaged 712 fans a game.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: So I think maybe they might have broken 1000 once or twice.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, and but but like for a first-year team in Peoria, like that was pretty good.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And it was still like for USL League 2, like attendance-wise, like it was really good.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: And um, like I said, the tailgating started organically.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, there was a supporters group created called the 309.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that started bringing some energy and they had chants and drums, and so that was fun.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh me personally, yeah.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: I just honestly that year I just went to one game uh due to like work conflicts and like man, I was waking up at two o'clock in the morning to go to go to work.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: To go to work.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: So I like a 7:30 game, I'm asleep by an hour by that point.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Is that why you stock?
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: For the most part?
18:12
SPEAKER_00: For the most part.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we started my wife and I, we started having kids, um, and you know, getting up with a newborn baby every two or three hours overnight, and then waking up at two o'clock was not great.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: So one of my friends was a meteorologist, and he he's no longer a meteorologist, and it's kind of the same, like the lifestyle is just hard because if you're at the if you're on the morning broadcast, you are you're getting up at like two, you're getting there at three or four.
18:43
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, and it's just a grind.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: It was like, and there was such a time period, probably the six months before I left, where like producer roles, so most shows you have a producer, you have an anchor, meteorologist, like you said, um, maybe a reporter, probably not these days.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And like, so the producers get there at like midnight.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting there at 3:30.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: So when producers didn't work out for us, guess who had to fill in and do the producer stuff?
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Me and my co-anchor.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: So two or three days a week, it'd be me showing up at midnight, producing a show, working 12 to 9, and then going home.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: My wife works full-time.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: It was just like, we need to change.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And my full-time job, I mean, uh, kind of just fell in my lap.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: I had a good contact um working at the hospital system I work at now.
19:40
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, hey, this uh Do you do comms for them?
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I didn't have media relations, really.
19:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's what he does now.
19:47
SPEAKER_03: That's good.
19:48
SPEAKER_03: He got out of it and he does comms for a hospital.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Good for him, very good, huh?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so yeah, media relations.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Hey, this job just opened up, it's in Peoria.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, him and I we had lunch at some point, and I'd kind of talked to him what I was going through, and he's like, I think this is something you should look at.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: And so I applied, and here we are, three and a half years later.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: So that's awesome, yeah.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: And then the your role with Peoria, uh, is that paid?
20:16
SPEAKER_03: It's probably it is okay.
20:17
SPEAKER_03: Good.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: Um, because I just I'm always so worried about the financials of USL2 clubs and even USL clubs.
20:25
SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you look at what's going on with the Oakland Roots, right?
20:29
SPEAKER_03: And like they have to they have to pay 1.4 million dollars today, or they're out of the Coliseum, I guess.
20:38
SPEAKER_03: Wow, yeah, they do they defaulted, and so it's like, okay, where are you gonna play?
20:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'm actually after this, uh the this afternoon, I'm going downtown to go talk to the Las Vegas guys because they're playing Detroit City FC tomorrow.
20:55
SPEAKER_03: Oh Las Vegas Lights.
20:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm talking to one of the assistants, and I'm probably not gonna bring it up, but I guess the same situation is going on with Las Vegas, they don't have a home field right now, and it's like I I want USL to do so well, and I'm just so worried about the financials because we all want ProRel and we all want the we all want an open system and we want investment into the game, but not everybody is into soccer.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: Not uh I mean, yeah, it would be great to get a billionaire to invest, but not every billionaire once right cares about soccer.
21:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a lot of billionaires hate soccer, or some people hate soccer, you know what I mean?
21:42
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
21:43
SPEAKER_03: So it's good to hear that like you guys are how how are you guys funded?
21:48
SPEAKER_03: Because you don't have a uh youth academy underneath, right?
21:50
SPEAKER_03: Is it is it investment, is it based on the fifteen hundred and the supporter group?
21:56
SPEAKER_03: And how is that work?
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's a mix of things, so we Do you have owners?
22:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they came in officially right before the 2025 season.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: So a little bit of history.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: We were announced in 2020.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Sure, you can imagine what happened, you know, with the pandemic, right?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: So there was a pretty strong ownership group that came into Peoria, uh, a local investor, very well known.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, he was kind of this was like 2019, 2020, was like launching a lot of big, up-and-coming, exciting stuff for Peoria.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And then the pandemic hit.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And so um, we got pushed back to 2022 when we launched.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the the guys with that, um, his name's John Dorn, very well known in Chicago uh soccer scene, okay, Chicago Fire, uh Youth Academy, that sort of stuff.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, he was our owner.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: And then you had, you know, Jim DeRose, uh, like I mentioned earlier, Tim Regan, and then Bobby Parker at the time was uh kind of a supportive communications role as well.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And so um since then it's transitioned to uh new ownership, bought out the club before 2025, um, and has come in and and I think done a fantastic job.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, so that's that's a big way is from them investing in the club, uh, funding the club, and then obviously, yeah, ticket sales, merch sales, concessions, um, that sort of stuff is big.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Sponsorships.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're we're really big about sponsorships and getting good partnerships that are also investing in.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: So this year, uh OSF Healthcare became our main presenting sponsor, and that was, you know, the largest uh sponsorship that we've had to date.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: And we've got a another uh other very kind of you know big ticket item sponsorships that come on and support whether it's that tailgate zone we were talking about, the play zone we were talking about.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just being marketing-minded and thinking about every every little thing and how we can make something happen, but make don't just do it to do it, like actually make it meaningful because I mean, all these things do have a worth, and so yeah, you just have to kind of find the right people in the right companies to see that worth and then take action.
24:19
SPEAKER_03: There's so many people in the soccer world that hate the marketing aspect, they just don't they don't care about the social media aspects like guys, they should you are missing out, yeah.
24:30
SPEAKER_03: And it and I know that you're it's an obligation, but then hire it out, hire somebody that is cares about social media, that is good with the camera, that's good on camera, maybe, and and you know, have them run it right because it's uh it's when I see clubs and I see how they're managed, I owe and I so full disclosure, I partner with some clubs.
24:58
SPEAKER_03: Sure, I want to see a social media manager or I want to see a marketing coordinator within your front office or your uh executive staff because it shows me that you guys get the picture.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: I think with how stupid this podcast is and how much it's grown over the last year and a half.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: Um, I think every soccer club should have a podcast.
25:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because think about think about like if you're just a youth club, you can have coaches on, you can have former players that have gone on, you can have uh college coaches on and talk about the recruitment process.
25:36
SPEAKER_03: You could do so much with the podcast that it's it's just uh awareness.
25:42
SPEAKER_03: You have to build up the awareness, yeah.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, uh, what's your biggest social media avenue for the club that you think that gets the most reach?
25:52
SPEAKER_03: Is it Facebook or is it Instagram and TikTok and stuff like that?
25:56
SPEAKER_00: So Facebook is a hilarious one.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Facebook's number one.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: Facebook, yeah, I still like I mean, I'm old and like older, and I remember when Facebook started, but I still don't understand Facebook and I barely go on.
26:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'm probably missing the boat on Facebook a little bit.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Facebook's the big one for us.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, we've kind of talked about this that Peoria is more of a Facebook town.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, it just more people are on it that are local and they engage with it more than they would for Instagram or X or TikTok.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I would say Facebook's number one closely followed by Instagram.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Um I take you know our goal videos every game and I post them almost immediately to our social media channel, like during the game.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, you could have a goal video reach 500,000 people, and our page only has five thousand followers, and so um, you know, we're reaching about two million people a month on Instagram, it's about the same on Facebook.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: The funny thing about Facebook is you know, last year there was a goal video that was posted, it reached like nine million people, and I'm not kidding, overnight we went from five, I think five thousand followers on Facebook to 33,000.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: No pay we did not really, we didn't pay a cent.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm serious, it was crazy.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: I woke up the next day, I'm seeing like I don't really get all the notifications on my phone because that would just my phone would be dead all the time.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: But it was like I woke up and I pop open the Facebook, and I'm like, hold on a minute, we're at like 16,000 followers, and then I put my phone away, you know, there's this video blowing up.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, cool, this is sweet.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: It like just hit a million.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: More time goes on, and now it's like 20,000, 25, 30, and like in just a couple of days, it was 33.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: So just last week we had a goal, it was our third goal against Swaño.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: So this was last Thursday night.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: And um, it was a really hard press uh by one of our forwards.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: The defender tried to body our player, didn't play the ball.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Our player knocks it over, the goalie misses it, our other striker comes and just knocks him the goal.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: So that one's like blowing up right now because I noticed on our Facebook we went from 33,000 to 36,000.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, what's going on?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And it's that video, and it's got like 50,000 likes on Facebook, and so I don't know, I think it's crazy.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And you can catch lightning in a bottle for one post and in one day go from 5,000 to 33,000 without paying for followers, without doing paid ads.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: We pay nothing.
28:52
SPEAKER_03: I don't do paid ads at all.
28:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I started this podcast, so I started my training company in 2015, and I had you know, I had some top players that were at that age, but most of my kids were like nine, uh not ten years old.
29:10
SPEAKER_03: Fast forward 10 years, all of them are going to college now, and so I was like, you know what?
29:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna start having some of my top players come on and just do a podcast.
29:23
SPEAKER_03: And I was so I wasn't consistent.
29:25
SPEAKER_03: I would do one here and there and stuff, and then last year I had a girl that was on the ECNL RL team, and she is playing D1.
29:37
SPEAKER_03: And the clip was and with my training company, I posted every single day.
29:44
SPEAKER_03: I would do training clips of like good goals, I would post my own players, their highlight reel, yeah, or I would just talk in the camera and do um uh talking head videos and stuff like that.
29:55
SPEAKER_03: I posted a video about how R uh just because you're RL doesn't mean you can't go D1.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: That one post got me a thousand followers.
30:04
SPEAKER_03: I was stuck on like 23 uh 2300 followers forever, and then that one post got me, I think it's at like 1300.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that kind of I'm like, oh so I now started getting more players and more players, and then I was like, you know what?
30:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna have an uploading schedule.
30:23
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna upload every Monday at 6 a.m.
30:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah for the full episode, and then I'm gonna have clips throughout the week today, yeah.
30:30
SPEAKER_03: And and and now Instagram, TikTok's really hard.
30:35
SPEAKER_03: TikTok is the hardest one for me.
30:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Instagram.
30:38
SPEAKER_03: I'm at like 33.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then that's awesome by the way.
30:45
SPEAKER_03: TikTok 6,000.
30:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and then YouTube's kind of slow too.
30:51
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, but my my downloads are pretty good in audio version, so like it's ahead of schedule, or it's ahead, like I because I always just like check my metrics and see where I'm at.
31:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but yeah, that that's guys that's we're just so uh hesitant to put stuff out there or think that we don't need to, or they'll come.
31:14
SPEAKER_03: It's like guys, no, you need to like really embrace.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: Do you post the same thing on all the different accounts?
31:23
SPEAKER_03: Pretty much, yeah, yeah.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, especially game day graphics.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't do graphics on TikTok, but right, Facebook, X, Instagram, all our game day graphics go up on those three.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, every video goes up on all three and TikTok and YouTube.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, YouTube's been a tough one for us too.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: I will say we we launched YouTube, I want to say 2024, uh-huh.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: When at the time we were able to stream our games, we we actually, so 20, yeah, I think 2024 is when we had a broadcast team, Clutch Sports Media, their local Peori area.
32:01
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: At the time, we're mainly known for covering high school sports, doing a great job.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: And so we had a meeting with them, and so they became our broadcast team.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: They're still with us today.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: So we were able to simulcast on their website and on our YouTube channel.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: So anytime we had a game, it was like hundreds of subscribers.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, with the league, now we have to broadcast on Sports Engine Play.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: Really?
32:29
SPEAKER_00: We cannot have a public facing or link at all on YouTube behind a paywall, right?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: It's free.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a little tough to find it, um, unless you have kind of the direct link.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: You have to either download the app to your phone and get the get the link there, um, or hopefully the team that is the host of that game, so tonight would be Flint.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, they should, and they do because I've been sharing it out.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: They have the the SE play link available to share and put out there.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: So we try to promote that as much as we can because we have people asking all the time, where can I watch?
33:07
SPEAKER_00: How can I watch XYZ?
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we try to do that a little bit extra.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, when we were on YouTube, um, able to do that and Clutch Sports website, you know, that's when we were getting a lot of subscribers.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: And I wish we could do that, um, but that's high above my my pay grade.
33:24
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: And I remember always trying to watch the FC Buffalo games or FC Buffalo women, because Buffalo is more of FC Buffalo did very well on the men's side for for this year, but it's a women's soccer area.
33:39
SPEAKER_03: Um, they're very strong.
33:40
SPEAKER_03: They're Western New York Flash and the ECNL, very, very good.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: And um, I would always want to watch, and it's like everything at that time was different.
33:50
SPEAKER_03: It's like it was either on YouTube or it was on Sports Engine or it was on something else, and and I would just the access just needs to be clearer and cleaner and just easier.
34:01
SPEAKER_03: And I think YouTube is personally the easiest.
34:04
SPEAKER_03: And if you allow, well, you've probably been to away games where like the stream is awful, the camera's awful, there's no play-by-play, or there is a play-by-play, and they're terrible.
34:18
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I mean seen it all, man.
34:22
SPEAKER_03: Seen it all, yeah.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: And now you see companies pop up like Sports Engine or well, uh National Soccer Network.
34:30
SPEAKER_03: Are you familiar with them?
34:31
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, and um, and basically they remotely commentate on all these games all over the country, and it's pretty awesome, yeah.
34:41
SPEAKER_03: And and they're actually pretty good too, yeah, for the most part, you know, but it's all relying on the camera.
34:47
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes oh my god, I'm watching a game on their network, and it was hilarious.
34:52
SPEAKER_03: The camera for that game was field level.
34:56
SPEAKER_03: Wow, okay, so it wasn't even like a VO, it was field level.
35:02
SPEAKER_03: So, like you see coaches like walking by and you see the ra it was embarrassing.
35:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was like, oh god, but yeah, you just never know what you're gonna get.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: I think the funniest story for us, and I I shouldn't say this is funny, but it was an await game, and I don't remember what team it was, and I I wouldn't name drop them anyway, but um, you know, they had maybe one or two cameras, and one of the cameras was like down in the stand, and it was a really hot day, and like I just remember a bag of ice going in front of the camera, and like it was an iPad, I think it was.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: It was an iPad.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: So that was one of their cameras was an iPad going like this, and randomly it's in the middle of the game, and they're recording, and you just see this bag of ice, and you're like, what is that?
35:50
SPEAKER_00: And then you hear it like crunching across the camera, and there's this guy, he means he's so sweaty and it's hot, and he's like, Oh man, it's so hot, and it's like everybody can hear you, dude.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, you're live on air, you know?
36:04
SPEAKER_03: It's like the parents they don't know the VO is right there, yeah.
36:08
SPEAKER_03: And you they can hear everything that they're saying, yeah, or the coaches.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there was one this year that it was a stationary camera, no commentary, and it was like a football field.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was from the 30 to the 30, the whole game.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: So every time we scored, we beat them five-nothing.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Can't see it.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Every goal.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Now I was there, so I got every goal, luckily, but everyone at home was watching, was just like, well, I guess we scored because we see our players cheering and running to the other side of the field.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: It's like, man, you gotta step it up.
36:45
SPEAKER_03: When I played, would we didn't have Vio, we didn't have Huddle or anything like that.
36:51
SPEAKER_03: We had dads with video cameras, and what they would do is they would like watch the play and they would keep the camera facing there, and then they're like, Yeah, and then like, oh, it was like, oh my god, it's just terrible.
37:03
SPEAKER_03: And that's what we had to rely on for highlight tapes.
37:07
unknown: Gosh.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: I think going back to you mentioned like using social media, if there's like one piece of advice I'd say, obviously, first is have social media and start it, but like use the collaboration tool as much as you can, because that will help grow your your following.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: And so, um, whenever we announce new players, like we we post with that player, exactly.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, they've got a fan base, you know, we've got a couple of people um from Liberia on our team, and so they joined our team.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: There's a Facebook page called Liberia Sports International that has 130,000 followers.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so every game that uh we play, and this player or that player does something, they post about it, and it reaches a lot of people and they tag us.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And so, like stuff like that is super cool, and that's one awesome thing I've always loved about this league and our team is uh players from all over the world coming here, and so I mean, you really reach new audiences all over, so you know, our goalkeepers from France, and it's like a lot of people from France are now watching Peoria City, and it's like that's pretty awesome.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: Or guys from Ghana, you know, we have a lot of people from Ghana that are watching Peoria City.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I just I don't know.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: I think that stuff is super cool.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: That would be really nice if if you were allowed to have YouTube as well, because obviously they can all see the game.
38:37
SPEAKER_03: Also, it could be another revenue stream for the club.
38:41
SPEAKER_03: I always think about that.
38:42
SPEAKER_03: It's like, okay, tough, okay, let's look at let's look at Ronaldo.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: He he has like 600 million followers on Instagram, and I'm like, I know he makes millions and millions and millions on uh his contracts and his sponsorships.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: How much is he making on Instagram?
39:02
SPEAKER_03: That I always just think about like little things like that, but go into your roster makeup, yeah.
39:07
SPEAKER_03: So so guys from all over the country, how do you guys find them?
39:11
SPEAKER_03: Do they find you?
39:13
SPEAKER_03: How many how many local guys do you have?
39:16
SPEAKER_03: What's the biggest local club, like youth club, uh near Peoria?
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's uh Peoria FC United is really big.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there's also Central Illinois United CIU.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, in terms of high school, um, Peoria Notre Dame is very good.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: Local Catholic school.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, we actually have always had multiple uh PND players on our team.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay so um actually one guy, well, two guys now, um Caden Hudson and Thatcher Hogan, Peoria Notre Dame, Peoria City, now up at uh Michigan State.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: So really might be able to see them in a game sometime.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: So very great players.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, nice pipeline between Peoria, Notre Dame, uh, Peoria City.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, we've had guys from uh Dunlap.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: So our um third string goalkeeper uh just literally just graduated from Dunlap High School Um and is gonna start playing this fall with Bradley.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: So staying in Peoria.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: He got minutes um against Forward Madison on July 4th of this year.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: And he made um there was no stream for the game, which I was a little disappointed by because I didn't I wasn't able to go to that game, but um, from what I was told in like the last like 10 minutes, made a very impressive play.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: So you got this high school going into college kid playing against forward Madison.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: We we tied them by the way, one to one, which was pretty cool.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, I mean you you got guys like that.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: So there are some local guys, no doubt about it.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, there is a couple of Bradley guys.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: You and I talked before the interview.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, a rule in the league is you can only have up to five from one university, um, um, especially D1, I think.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: But so you know, you could have three or four Bradley guys on the team, and then, you know, we bring some guys down from uh Chicago area, so maybe Northwestern.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Um Jim DeRose is is really the magic man.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: I call him.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he knows everybody.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: He's so well connected, not just in Illinois, but around the country.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, I mean, he's got he's got great contacts.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, Coach Mike Pay, our head coach, third year in a row.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: He's got great contacts.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's bringing a lot of guys in internationally.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: So whether it's, you know, some guys from Canada or guys from Africa, he's bringing them to Peoria.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's always fun because some of those guys didn't go to college or don't go to college.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: They're from Tanzania or Ghana, and um, they actually have professional background experience.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: And so um, we have two players right now, or two center backs, Abbasa and uh Jackson, uh Simba, Simba Kazanzu.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: And uh Simba's from Tanzania, Abasa's from Ghana, and so Abbasa back in 2022 was on Philadelphia Union, okay, like signed, played.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think had an injury at the time, and then that that went away.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: So he joined us in 24.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then he signed a pro contract in Saudi Arabia, then went to the UAE and really wanted to come back to Peoria because he loves Peoria, loves uh the United States playing here, wants to be here, and so he's back with us.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh Simba was with um, I think it's Georgia Tormenta, right?
42:44
SPEAKER_00: That that folded after last year.
42:46
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: So he was with them and now is with us.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, so you got guys like that that are um, you know, from different different walks of life, and then of course you've got D1 from all over the place.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: You have NAIA, yeah.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: You and I were talking as well.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: Some of our star players 2024, when we went to the national final, were Clark University, NAIA guys.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: So it's a good mix of everything.
43:13
SPEAKER_03: What's the coaching rule?
43:14
SPEAKER_03: Uh you can't have more than five uh college players, yeah, but what's the coaching rule for USL2?
43:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's a big one is um no more than five per a university.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we were talking as well.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: So in 2023, our head coach was Tim Regan, um, former assistant coach at Bradley, also former MLS player.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, now is the head coach at Bradley.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: So when he took over in 2023, one, he couldn't have any Bradley guys because he was coaching Bradley.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: Not a single Bradley guy.
43:48
SPEAKER_03: Nope.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: And that hurt.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: That hurt.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: We could have we could have used um the Bradley guys that year.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, in terms of high school age guys, whatever.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, so if you're the D1 NCAA uh head coach for said team, so we're gonna use Peoria, yeah, they don't let you recruit high schoolers within a 50 mile radius for like conflict of interest.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: So any of those up-and-coming Peoria Notre Dame, like 17, 18-year-old guys about to graduate, nothing.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of a difficulty for sure.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why when we brought in Coach Mike Pay, who was with Clark at the time, NAIA, he had full range.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: Bradley guys, come on, Illinois Central College, which is in Peoria, we could bring whoever we wanted.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he could bring five Clark guys with him.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: So that that brought a lot of freedom for sure.
44:45
SPEAKER_03: What do you guys do for housing for these guys?
44:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we house everybody.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, we provide housing, we provide meals, uh, we provide transportation all summer.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, there are you know camp opportunities for guys to work camps.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's always fun.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: I think that's one of the big reasons why we attract such talent is because it's not like pay-to-play, what some clubs are doing.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not, hey, you need to drive an hour and a half to be here to train three days a week.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: It's like you're here.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: We have your apartment set up, we get everything for you, we pay for your food.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Like we have sponsors who are local restaurants, they provide all of their pre-game meals, they provide all their post-game meals.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, it's a really good setup.
45:31
SPEAKER_03: But you don't pay any of the players.
45:34
SPEAKER_03: No, can you?
45:35
SPEAKER_03: Are you allowed to in USL too?
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't really think you're supposed to.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're we're amateur status.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: So they're supposed to be unpaid, but yeah.
45:45
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, what did you just say?
45:47
SPEAKER_03: You just said something.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I was gonna ask.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Food, groceries, no, lodging.
45:51
SPEAKER_03: Um, it'll come back to me.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: Pay to play.
45:55
SPEAKER_03: Pay to play.
45:58
SPEAKER_03: Hold on.
46:00
SPEAKER_03: So you're there's clubs out there, there's USL2 clubs where you have to pay to be on the team.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: I've heard of it, yeah.
46:08
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
46:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that sucks.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to have like a tryout.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: We I get that.
46:18
SPEAKER_03: We understand that a hundred or fifty dollars, something like that for a trial.
46:21
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: We've done we've done like 25 bucks.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've done 10 bucks before for a tryout.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: Like and you don't do them anymore?
46:30
SPEAKER_00: We haven't done them in two years.
46:33
SPEAKER_03: Basically, just like invite only or something like that, or you guys just know all these players and be like, hey, hey, you would help us, and you just know them right now.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: By this point, we know.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: So you asked a lot, and I never answered your question about how we get guys, but we recruit heavily, sure.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: So Jim DeRoes, Mike Pay, but we have a ton of guys, like, and every club gets this, I I feel like, or most, but we have so many people reach out wanting to play.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: So emails, DMs, like it's nuts.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: And so, but honestly, we've we've gotten a lot of guys through that.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: They've sent over their CV and their resume and uh video.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, coach likes them, coach calls them, says, Hey, I saw your video.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: Either one, and we did this this year, which I think is a good move.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: We had some pre-season exhibition matches.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had I think two, two or three, and um, so that was an opportunity to bring guys to Peoria, have them play.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: We we did a match against Bradley, we did a match against Northwestern, so have them play there.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: Is that their spring season?
47:41
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: So they added to the spring calendar.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: It's perfect, and so um we did it one year.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you knew this, but so in 2024, we did two matches against Chivas, de Guadalajara.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: Really?
47:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so their U-23 team.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: We brought them to Peoria.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: We call it Copa Peoria.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: It was about a four-day event.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: We had two matches against Chivas.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, we did a couple of camps, Peoria City and Chivas, community meals at local restaurants.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: This is a big time event.
48:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, both matches had about 2,700 people in the stands.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: That's like max capacity.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's I was telling you, you know, if if you have 2,500, I mean, you can count that as a as a sellout at our stadium.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: So we did that in in summer of 24, it was like like June 19th to the 22nd, something like that.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: And so we did um in 2025, it was like a March 22nd friendly against uh Chivas again, had them to Peoria.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: And then we actually went to Bloomington, Illinois about mid-June, and we played Atlas FC's U-23 team.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so um, you know, that that's a good way to get guys um who are kind of trialing with you some eyeballs and see if they're gonna work or not.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: What how is Illinois set up?
49:02
SPEAKER_03: How many USL2 teams are there?
49:04
SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
49:04
SPEAKER_03: Um, is there a lot?
49:06
SPEAKER_03: That's good.
49:07
SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't say a lot because it's not like Michigan where there's I think there's nine.
49:11
SPEAKER_03: I want to say there's nine.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: Seven?
49:15
SPEAKER_03: Seven to nine, something like that.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: If you're at seven and nine, I'd say we're probably five to six.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: So outside of Chicago, it's us and it's uh Springfield FC.
49:26
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: So in terms of central Illinois, those are the two USL League two teams.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: Chicago, especially in the Heartland division, you've got Chicago Dutch Lions, you've got Swain UFC, you've got Riverlight.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: I think Edgewater Castle, I think they launched a USL League 2 team this year.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: So the Heartland Division is like, so we're in the Great Plains.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: We have six teams.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: Like it's you play everybody twice, and then there are two teams in our division we play three times.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: So like we went to Springfield twice, Springfield came to us once, we went to St.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: Louis once, St.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: Louis came to us twice.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's how it is.
50:05
SPEAKER_00: The Heartland division, I swear, I need to double check this, but they have like nine teams in the Heartland division.
50:10
SPEAKER_03: How is it that like it's isn't that crazy?
50:14
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
50:15
SPEAKER_03: Because then there's Great Lakes or whatever Flint City is in, and it's just it's so wild how some teams play everybody twice, some just once.
50:25
SPEAKER_03: Right.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: How many games do you guys play total?
50:28
SPEAKER_00: So in the regular season, it's 12, six home, six away.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then um, yeah, if you make the playoffs, you can play up to five games to get to the national finals.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, they just launched a team in Rockford, the Rockford Raptors.
50:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh they joined USL League 2 this year, and they're in the Heartland division, but you know, Rockford's only two hours from us, right?
50:48
SPEAKER_00: So that would be very nice.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: Because for our division, it's us, St.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: Louis, and Springfield, which is like not bad at all.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: Springfield's hour 15.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: Then we got two teams in Kansas City.
50:59
SPEAKER_03: Really?
51:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: So we have Sunflower State and um Santa Fe Wanderers.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: So that's a good six-hour haul for everybody, and then Des Moines Menace, so it's about four hours.
51:13
SPEAKER_03: Oh boy.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
51:15
SPEAKER_03: Think about their travel.
51:16
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
51:17
SPEAKER_03: Every game is four hours away.
51:19
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of like kind of like FC Buffalo.
51:22
SPEAKER_03: And and another thing about like budgets and stuff is the travel.
51:26
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
51:27
SPEAKER_03: And people forget how big this country is.
51:30
SPEAKER_03: It's like the Western New York Flash in the ECNL has conference games against clubs in Tennessee.
51:38
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
51:39
SPEAKER_03: That's 11 hours away.
51:41
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
51:41
SPEAKER_03: And if you're driving, and it's like the people underestimate yeah, how so Iowa or Des Moines has to go out of state every single game.
51:54
SPEAKER_03: It's not like they can just go to another club in Iowa.
51:57
SPEAKER_03: Is there only one USL2 in all of Iowa?
52:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:00
SPEAKER_03: Now some people will say, well, if we have Pro Rel, more investments or investors are gonna come, and then and then uh more clubs are just gonna pop up out of nowhere.
52:13
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I hope so.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: You hope so.
52:15
SPEAKER_03: I hope you're right.
52:16
SPEAKER_03: I promise.
52:17
SPEAKER_03: It's not guaranteed, yeah.
52:19
SPEAKER_03: You know, and not everybody.
52:22
SPEAKER_03: When I was at the Flash, I wanna say, and this is NWSL days, it was probably the third or fourth year of the league.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: They lost$250,000.
52:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
52:34
SPEAKER_03: When they had Marta before I was there, it was more like they lost$500,000 because they paid her an ungodly amount.
52:43
SPEAKER_03: And because there was no salary cap back then, and that's another thing you're like, okay, if we're gonna have promotion and relegation, I want a salary cap because I don't want these clubs to fold.
52:53
SPEAKER_03: I also kind of like playoffs.
52:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I want playoffs, I don't want just winner of the table, and that's your champion.
53:00
SPEAKER_03: Because if you just look at all the leagues in Europe, everybody talks about promotion and relegation, and they talk about the bottom.
53:06
SPEAKER_03: They don't talk about the top.
53:07
SPEAKER_03: I just took screenshots of all of the top leagues in Europe.
53:12
SPEAKER_03: Every single league out of the last 15 years, all of them had at least one club that has won eight out of 15.
53:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you look at our sports, closed systems and all that, NFL, nobody has more than three.
53:30
SPEAKER_03: MLB, nobody has more than three.
53:32
SPEAKER_03: NHL, nobody has more than three, and NBA, nobody has more than three in 15 years.
53:37
SPEAKER_03: I kind of like that model just a little bit more.
53:39
SPEAKER_03: Can we merge the two?
53:40
SPEAKER_03: Can we have a salary cap?
53:42
SPEAKER_03: Can we have playoffs and have promotion and relegation?
53:45
SPEAKER_03: But who's gonna pay the parachute payments?
53:48
SPEAKER_03: Because when people get relegated over there, they're given money to make sure they stay afloat.
53:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, is there just gonna be everybody throws in a pool?
53:58
SPEAKER_03: Where's all that money coming from?
53:59
SPEAKER_03: Right, where are all these pros coming from?
54:02
SPEAKER_03: You're talking about your roster, and it's uh a lot of foreign players.
54:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think we're gonna have to rely even more on foreign players, and everybody's anti-fore employers right now because of what's going on in college.
54:14
SPEAKER_03: You went to uh Missouri State Thursday, yes, I did.
54:18
SPEAKER_03: Have you seen their roster?
54:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh yeah, and like there's people pushing back.
54:22
SPEAKER_03: I know like they didn't at one point in the offseason, they didn't have a single American player, right?
54:29
SPEAKER_03: And people like you can't have it both ways.
54:32
SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, we want pro row, we want this, we want that.
54:34
SPEAKER_03: Oh, and by the way, we don't want any internationals in collar soccer.
54:38
SPEAKER_03: It's like yeah, where is this utopia?
54:42
SPEAKER_03: Like, good luck.
54:43
SPEAKER_03: I know that's like that's my brand, that's my challenge with it because I just I want it, I want it at the youth level, yeah.
54:51
SPEAKER_03: But everybody else is always gonna be unhappy and they're gonna start their own league.
54:58
SPEAKER_03: Let's say somebody doesn't like this USL promotion and relegation system, they're gonna go to UPSL and try to build up that or or something, right?
55:06
SPEAKER_03: Or they're gonna go to MLSNets Pro, or if MLSNets Pro fails, then they'll go to USL too.
55:12
SPEAKER_03: And it's just like, yeah, I have no idea how this is gonna play out.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: I think, and I don't know if it's a a good or a bad thing, but I think there are just some beautiful stories, you know, you think about um in England, you know, with the EPL uh and ProRel over there.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like when some of these smaller community, like die hard fan-based teams get promoted, it's like rejuvenation for a community.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: It's like fantastic, and it's crazy when you hear like really big names like maybe about to get relegated, and you're like, holy cow.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I don't think if we go pro rel here in the United States that it's gonna be that big of an impact yet if you get promoted or relegated.
56:05
SPEAKER_00: Just speaking honestly, I think a lot of people think Peoria City is pro.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think like in our community, like not like diehard soccer fans that know the the pyramid of US soccer, like just like passing by.
56:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Peoria City, that's the pro soccer team.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: There's not this like they're pro, they're pre-pro.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's there's not a lot of that, right?
56:27
SPEAKER_00: Unless you're like in the supporters group or like a seasoned ticket holder, or like have conversations with like myself or the front office about like what is the difference between USL League Two, League One, why why do we want to go to League One?
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Here's what would be different, that sort of thing.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, like, like if Purious City was pro and then we got relegated and what we were now pre-pro, I think it would hurt, but I don't think it'd be this like major, absolute bombshow that like if Tottenham, you know, something like that, or like a man you, like that would be like heartbreak for millions and millions.
57:04
SPEAKER_03: I want that to happen.
57:05
SPEAKER_03: I want one of the big I just want a big club to get relegated just once in my life.
57:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so then people are like, it's not so great, is it?
57:12
SPEAKER_03: But then they'll be like, Well, this is what it's meant for.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: It's like and then they'll get promoted the next year.
57:16
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, that's yeah, and I think that's something that's m mostly bound to happen too.
57:23
SPEAKER_03: If we did this, I think it's gonna be just the same teams over and over, just going up and going down, going up and going down, and then it's not gonna be like third division climbing up, I don't unless they have crazy money, sure, because that's what it's going to take.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I I don't know.
57:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm also worried about the bandwagon fans because there's bandwagon fans here, and what bandwagon fans usually speak with are their wallets.
57:52
SPEAKER_03: So when like the tigers are bad, yeah, they're not going to they're not going downtown.
57:57
SPEAKER_03: When the Lions were bad, they're not going to Lions games.
58:00
SPEAKER_00: You're right about that.
58:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:01
SPEAKER_03: And I'm just worried about like I don't know if Europe has bandwagon fans because they're born into it.
58:09
SPEAKER_03: You were probably born into the Rams, they're gone, they moved.
58:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
58:13
SPEAKER_00: Cardinals.
58:14
SPEAKER_00: You still got the Cardinals.
58:15
SPEAKER_00: You still got the Cardinal.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: What?
58:17
SPEAKER_00: I was about to bring up the Cardinals.
58:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, they were top performing MLB team for decades.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever been to Bush.
58:26
SPEAKER_03: Wheels.
58:26
SPEAKER_03: No, I've been by it.
58:27
SPEAKER_03: I've driven by it and stuff.
58:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, huge stadium, a lot of sell-out crowds.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: Last couple of years, Cardinals have been tough to break 30,000.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: That's like record lows.
58:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens when you go year after year of mediocre or losing season, uh losing record seasons.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: Peoria City, we haven't had that yet.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, our 2023 year, we were six and six, but we were also firing on all other cylinders for social media, the tailgate, like that sort of thing.
59:00
SPEAKER_00: So the attendance rose a lot, and we lost six of our games.
59:04
SPEAKER_00: But we also won six of our games a lot being at home.
59:07
SPEAKER_00: And so it didn't hurt as bad.
59:09
SPEAKER_00: Now we wanted to make playoffs and all that, but Chicago City at the time, who no longer exists in USL League Two, um, they were the number one ranked team in the country.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: They were undefeated, and then Des Moines Menace was uh close behind number two.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we got third place and we didn't make the playoffs that year.
59:28
SPEAKER_00: How many teams are uh who are the teams in St.
59:31
SPEAKER_00: Louis?
59:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's FC Ambush right now.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: They're the only one in League Two.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of teams um in the Midwest Premier League, so there's a lot more of that.
59:41
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, there used to be uh what's that?
59:44
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of same tier as USL League Two, amateur pre-professional.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
59:49
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
59:50
SPEAKER_03: Is it kind of like a UPSL?
59:51
SPEAKER_03: Do you guys have that?
59:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh not in not in Peoria, no.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: We don't really have anybody nearby us in UPSL.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: It's it's most in Midwest Premier League.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_03: Is part of your role the club outreach in the area, like the youth club outreach, or not really?
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: I do a little bit.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we all kind of pitch in at this point, you know, when there's only three of you, you know, it some days.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's another great thing, too, is a lot of people reach out to us, you know.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I want to have a birthday party.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_00: I got 50 people.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_00: How can I do that?
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: Hey, my club team, we just ended our season.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: We want to have a celebration.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_00: How can we do that?
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: So if that person knows me, they're gonna call me.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_00: They know Bobby, they're gonna call Bobby.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: If they know Jim, they're gonna call Jim.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_00: And so it just, it's just, you know, if it comes to you, you step up and make it happen.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_03: How is the travel like again?
1:00:41
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so Flint City probably gives you two hotels to choose from or something like that, or whatever.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_03: And then how many guys uh come, how many, how many away trips do you go on personally?
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: Personally, I always go to St.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_00: Louis because I have family in there that I can stay with.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: Yep, exactly.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_00: So I always go to that.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, I went to both games in Springfield this year because that was just an hour 15, hour yeah.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: Um I did not go to the Kansas City games.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_00: I didn't go to Des Moines, I just watched them online.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: So I've always gone to a lot of away games, but um, I mean, in terms of travel for the team, I mean, we have local transportation companies that bring a big bus.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we brought 23 guys, you know, this weekend.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_00: Can only roster 20.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I mean, we brought a couple more than 20.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: So in case of injury or whatever, you know.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_03: Is this round of what is this?
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: Round of eight?
1:01:44
SPEAKER_00: We're in the the eight.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_03: And then where's the final four?
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: So if we win tonight, uh, we would play Sunday in the the final four.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: Here?
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: Here at Atwood Stadium, yeah.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_03: So we would play either is there another game uh oh yeah today?
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh who's Ballard and uh Ventura County.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
1:02:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, California, Seattle, yeah.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: So they're here.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_03: Think about that.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, think about that.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_03: Think about okay, so we have teams from California and a team from Seattle, correct?
1:02:16
SPEAKER_03: They had they had to fly it for sure, of course, and think about budget.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_03: FC Buffalo, I had him on last year, the owner, and he said that his travel budget for the year for his USL2 is forty thousand dollars.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_03: If you're coming from California to here, that might be forty thousand dollars.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh 20 correct, easily all those flights.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: So, one thing about being a host for playoffs is I mean, you are you foot the bill for at least the lodging.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, that's kind of nice for really.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: So we hosted the Peoria pod last weekend, so we had four teams come.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_03: Is that just for pot playoffs or is that season long?
1:02:57
SPEAKER_00: It's just playoffs.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so got it.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_00: So during the season, it's very rare, at least in our division, that anybody would stay overnight.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_00: Like, even if it's a 7:30 p.m.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: game and you gotta drive back to Des Moines after your game's done at 9 30 or 10, like you just drive back, you get back for one or two in the morning.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so not a lot of people, but I mean, we did have hotels that in case of emergency that they would have a block reserved for them.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it kind of makes sense because you know, we're hosting a playoff game with let's just say a thousand or fifteen hundred people.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_00: We're we're getting the ticket revenue, the merch revenue, the concessions revenue.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_00: These other teams aren't, but they're traveling, so I mean, the the lodging is yeah, one of the things that we provide.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_03: That makes sense, yeah.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_03: I like that actually.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_00: You get about 10, 11 rooms per team-ish per block.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, when we had we had Minneapolis last weekend, block rooms for them, Swaño, uh, who's they're only two hours away, so they they declined uh a hotel room.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we had um gosh, who did uh Minneapolis beat on Thursday?
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: They beat somebody else that was pretty oh West Virginia United.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_00: So West Virginia team came to Peoria, Illinois.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just wild.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_03: West Virginia, so like I mean, just think about it.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_03: And uh it's wild.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and when we were in 2024, when we hosted, so picture this weekend, 2024, it was us, Flint came to Peoria, yep, and we beat them one to nothing Friday night.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: The other two teams were FC Tucson, Arizona, and um the project 501 at the Oakland Roots USL League 2 club.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_00: So you're talking these teams are flying long ways, coming to Peoria, and so yeah, it's it's pretty crazy.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_00: But then last year, the Central Conference teams had to go up to Seattle for Ballard.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, they kind of even it out that way, I guess.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: It's awesome.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_02: Team going for a team walk?
1:05:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they are.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_02: They're probably going for lunch.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_02: What's J Culver's?
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: What's your like what's your game day role?
1:05:30
SPEAKER_03: Like, what will you be doing tonight?
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll be taking um any sort of highlight videos from the field.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_00: I'll be posting all the graphics.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that's pretty much it.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: On a on a home game day, it's more so it's that, but then it's also operational.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_00: So I help set up the kid zone, I help in the tailgate zone.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, I was scanning season ticket holders and their gate, you know, versus the the main gate.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_00: So you just kind of do whatever needs to be done.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: You know?
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, away games, uh it's it's kinda nice 'cause there's less responsibility on me.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_00: I just go and hope for the best, hope for some good goals or some good saves from our goalie and yeah, post as much on social media as I can.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_00: Do you just use your iPhone?
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_00: I brought this weekend I brought I have a um an Insta360.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_00: So I've got one of those.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how much I'll use of it, um, but you know, I might get some clips and and sometimes I just get assets that maybe I'll need for later on or some sort of you know thing later.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_03: So what's like how how far in advance do you guys think about like club growth in terms of like, are you gonna outgrow Bradley?
1:06:49
SPEAKER_00: So like what do we do now?
1:06:51
SPEAKER_00: You're asking the million-dollar question.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the question that everyone wants to know.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_00: And I want problem that's a good problem.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_00: That's a good problem to have.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_00: Um the biggest issue I think we have currently is parking, where just we don't have enough parking for the amount of people.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so some people have to park off property and walk.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_00: It's nothing crazy.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I go to baseball games, I go to hockey games in Peoria.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_00: You're parking at this parking lot half a mile away and you're walking.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's nothing like that.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_03: And if you're used to downtown uh stadiums, you're used to that.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of people aren't.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_03: They expect it, it's gonna be like Arrowhead and Kaufman Stadium, right?
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: Where you have the parking lot.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_03: And it's like, no, most most stadiums are downtown, right?
1:07:40
SPEAKER_03: And you're walking two miles to the game.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_00: In terms of the stadium itself, I mean, it's it's really serving us well.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_00: It's a great size for where we're at.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can fit, like I said, the 1500 to 2000 in very comfortably.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, how it's kind of broken up is it has kind of the it's on the east side of the stadium.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_00: It's one kind of big grandstand.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_00: And so usually you have the biggest grandstand here, and then you have kind of a smaller version here.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_00: So that's like when Minneapolis came down, they brought like 40 or 50 fans for that game last Saturday when we beat them.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they had that section.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_00: Kind of we told them, like, hey, this is kind of your section um that you can go and set up your drums and do all that stuff.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_00: And so they were all there.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_00: And then our supporters group goes behind um the South Side goal.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_00: We call it the Shea Brigade, which is where the 309 sets up, they've got their drums, they've got their flags, they wave their flags all game.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a super cool space, and there's a lot of standing room opportunities.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_00: So all the kids are down there.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got like 50 or 100 kids just behind the ropes, yelling at the players, just going nuts.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's a lot of fun.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I think we're in a good spot.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's not really a a lot of other local places that would do for us what Shea Stadium would do.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we'll see.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_03: How does well, first of all, does any of your supporters travel the 309?
1:09:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they do.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_03: That's that's awesome.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_00: There will there will be some there tonight.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know how many.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_00: Six-hour drive on a Friday when people are working, have families, is is tough.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I think you know, you might have a handful or ten be there in addition to players' parents' families, you know, of course.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_00: That that's always nice.
1:09:37
SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, when we go to Des Moines, I mean we we travel well to Des Moines, and Des Moines our arch rival for sure.
1:09:44
SPEAKER_00: That's they just have been, it's a really good rivalry.
1:09:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we always take a pretty good amount of people to Des Moines, and then we go to places like Springfield and St.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: Louis.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people travel to those.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I mean, we we travel well, the 309 travels well for sure.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_03: Go, okay.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_03: Also, didn't you start like a like a food and like beer like blog and stuff like that?
1:10:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, for me personally, yeah.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_00: I do I do a lot of that, yeah.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_03: And then doesn't the didn't the club partner with like a beer company and like have their own beer?
1:10:18
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_00: We have two.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_00: We have two.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_03: I think that's brilliant.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_00: It's sweet, it's awesome.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_00: So when we first launched, um we had a partnership.
1:10:27
SPEAKER_00: It was a brewery called Bearded Owl.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, and they launched the Peoria City Pilsner, Peoria City Pills.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_00: People really loved it.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_00: Light beer, nice for the summer.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, unfortunately, uh Bearded Owl shut down and now is a different business under different ownership.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_00: However, there's another brewery in town, industry brewing, um, who does a really great job.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_00: They've got an awesome restaurant.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_00: And so I reached out to them.
1:10:54
SPEAKER_00: It was before 2024, and I was like, hey, would love to work with you on something.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_00: Let's meet and talk.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_00: And so they launched a beer called the 309 Red Lager, and it's a Vienna style red lager, kind of right in the middle.
1:11:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, in the summertime, people have people have told me, you know, I can have one or two, but more than that, I probably shouldn't.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_00: So then, yeah, my feedback for the next year with them was what if we launch something a little lighter for those folks that want something lighter in the summer.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_00: And so we launched the uh Peoria City Golden Light Gold, like a soccer gold.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and that's more of an American-style, you know, very light beer.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_00: So we have two beers with them.
1:11:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, just a month ago, we were on a regional brewery show called Brewed TV out of the Quad Cities in Iowa.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_00: They came down to Peoria and they interviewed myself and Mike Anderson over at Industry, their head brewer, and we just talked beer for half an hour.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's been cool.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_00: That's been fun.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_03: And do you guys sell those beers at school?
1:12:02
SPEAKER_03: Can you guys sell alcohol at Bradley?
1:12:04
SPEAKER_00: We can.
1:12:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, we finally so Bradley owns the stadium, to be clear, obviously.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_00: And then we are kind of the the renters, like the tenant in the summertime when there's nothing going on.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_00: So they had to get a liquor license, um, which officially happened, I think, last year.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_00: So now they have that.
1:12:25
SPEAKER_00: So yes, but Bradley serves it.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_00: So their employee comes to the concession stands, opens up the liquor area, and they sell it.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
1:12:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:12:37
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, I think uh yeah, that that totally makes sense.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_03: And more alpha more beer sales are going around the country in college athletics or college football at least.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_03: Because it's not all not everything, a lot of campuses, like Michigan State, for instance, is a dry, it was a dry campus where uh like they don't sell, and now I believe I think it was starting last year, they're starting to sell because it's more money.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:13:08
SPEAKER_03: It's it's more money, and like the going back to the DCFC talk about like how the how it grew, yeah.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_03: Part of it was uh they partnered with a beer, uh Detroit beer company called Strows.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_03: Okay, and uh what they did was uh they kind of they almost marketed it as this is where you come in pre-game, this is your pre-drinking, and this is like come here and then go out to the bars, right?
1:13:35
SPEAKER_03: And it's like that kind of makes sense, yeah.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_03: And and a lot of clubs are built around that, you know.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_03: I mean, go look at uh what what happens in Europe, they go to the pub and then they walk to the games, right?
1:13:49
SPEAKER_03: Together, and if you can mimic that kind of atmosphere, I know you have something.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't have a pub or like a bar that's in such close walking distance to the stadium to do that because that would be so awesome.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_00: But we have uh it's probably a five-minute drive.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_00: It's called Ducks, yeah, on Farmington Road.
1:14:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, and their ownership is um a big name in Peoria is Cruisins.
1:14:14
SPEAKER_00: So it's these cruisins restaurants, they're very well known for their live music, their Friday night parties, like chicken wings, beer, pizzas, like for sure, really fun place.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_00: And so Ducks is kind of part of that family.
1:14:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they're a big sponsor of ours.
1:14:32
SPEAKER_00: I believe they're on the the back of our jerseys, upper back.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyway, so that's our official every game, every home game is pre-game at Ducks.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_00: So the players have their meal there.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_00: We invite the fans out, um, if you want to meet the players, that sort of thing.
1:14:48
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, some people always come out, get their lunch, that sort of thing.
1:14:51
SPEAKER_00: And then we always post-game.
1:14:53
SPEAKER_00: Usually it's at Ducks or it's at one of the other cruisins, if Ducks has live music that night or a concert or might be at another place.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of our I mean, tonight it's our watch party is at Ducks.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_00: So they're gonna have it up on the screen and and all that stuff.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_00: And so the idea was um, you know, with with the beer in the brewery was to any restaurant that kind of partners with us to hopefully have them sell that beer.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_00: And so they've got the 309, they've got Peoria City Golden Light on drafts or in cans.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_00: And so we kind of that kind of helps bring some worth to a partnership if if a local restaurant is to invest in a sponsorship, like you know, hopefully it brings more people out, get the local beers, that sort of stuff.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_03: What's the rest of today look like for you guys?
1:15:43
SPEAKER_03: I mean, what time are you gonna leave here?
1:15:45
SPEAKER_03: Like five what time's the game?
1:15:47
SPEAKER_00: Four seven thirty?
1:15:48
SPEAKER_00: It's seven thirty.
1:15:49
SPEAKER_00: I and I have to always pinch myself because we're central time.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_00: You guys are eastern time.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, sorry.
1:15:53
SPEAKER_00: So so it's seven thirty local time, you know.
1:15:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh yeah, no, I think we'll get to the stadium five or five thirty.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:16:02
SPEAKER_03: What time's the first game?
1:16:03
SPEAKER_03: Four thirty.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_00: It might be three.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_00: It might be three.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_00: I'd have to check the schedule.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_00: Usually when we host, we do the first game at three because it goes three to five, and then kind of switch for the other teams to come in.
1:16:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:16:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, because yeah, our guys usually arrive at our stadium at like 5, 5, 15, 5.30, get dressed, we do warm-ups, that sort of thing.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so I'd I'd want to say it's probably more like three.
1:16:33
SPEAKER_00: I'd have to check the schedule.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_03: How many did you guys travel with?
1:16:36
SPEAKER_03: 23?
1:16:36
SPEAKER_03: We brought 23 players.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_03: What's the oldest?
1:16:39
SPEAKER_03: What's the youngest?
1:16:40
SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd say the youngest is probably 18 or 19.
1:16:45
SPEAKER_00: Oldest 23 or 24.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_00: Really?
1:16:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_00: Really?
1:16:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_03: Steel City had somebody that was like 31, 17, and 31.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_00: Somebody was telling me that Flint just signed a former.
1:16:58
SPEAKER_03: Oh God, yes, 40 Clark.
1:17:01
SPEAKER_03: 40.
1:17:01
SPEAKER_03: He's he played 11 years in the MLS.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_03: He's been on the show before.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_03: He is great, and it's unfair.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_03: Like I was like, wait a minute.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_03: Like, what?
1:17:12
SPEAKER_03: FC Buffalo owner messaged me about last weekend because they only came with two subs.
1:17:17
SPEAKER_03: One was a goalkeeper.
1:17:19
SPEAKER_03: And because they lost because they're heavy college rosters, sure.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_03: And all the colleges cut you off and say, no more playing.
1:17:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, another thing about promotion and relegation, how's that gonna work if one of the leagues is heavily reliant on college players?
1:17:37
SPEAKER_03: Like, are we just going to choose pro over college?
1:17:40
SPEAKER_03: I mean, but that probably will is what's gonna happen, but but yeah, he's asking me for assistance of trying to get some guest players that haven't been on a USL2 roster.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I don't, everybody I know is pretty much on the USL2 roster, right?
1:17:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, people were you know, it's it's just social media, so some people get frustrated at us for bringing in a couple of players from other USL League Two League 2 teams at the end of the regular season, but you get a transfer window, right?
1:18:09
SPEAKER_03: You do, absolutely, it's like July something, and you can sign anybody.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and a lot of clubs like Midwest offered a bunch of guys to Flint City because they why not want their players to continue to and they want those players to come back to them.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_03: So, like, hey, if we help you get to Flint City and maybe make a playoff run, you'll come back to Midwest next year.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_00: So I everybody does it.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I'm not gonna be ticked off that Steve Clark is on the roster tonight.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: I hope we score uh five goals on him, but uh some people were texting me like how how bad do our players want to score on a former MLS guy?
1:18:50
SPEAKER_00: And I just said, let's do it.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_03: He gave up one, he gave up one last week to Steel City.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, great player.
1:18:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have a lot of respect for Flint and the organization.
1:19:00
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, two years ago, that game was epic.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was awesome, electric.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_00: It was only one-nothing.
1:19:06
SPEAKER_00: So it was one of those nail biter.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_03: That's when you guys went to the final, yeah.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_00: So it's literally flipped.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_00: Like Flint came to us.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_00: We played Flint Friday night in the Central Conference final.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we beat them at home one nothing.
1:19:20
SPEAKER_03: So how do you how are you guys feeling about tonight?
1:19:23
SPEAKER_00: We're always confident.
1:19:24
SPEAKER_00: We're always confident.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_00: So I will just say um that you can lose any game.
1:19:30
SPEAKER_00: So we lost four to one to the second to last place team this season.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_00: It's our one loss.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_00: They came to Peoria, beat us four to one.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_00: Talk about eye-opening.
1:19:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a little wake-up call.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_03: Wake-up call.
1:19:45
SPEAKER_00: Now I will say we didn't have all of our guys, some injuries were going on, sure.
1:19:50
SPEAKER_00: Still shouldn't lose four to one at home.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_03: And that could that's a good, I think when I see stuff like that, I think that's a good advertisement for the league.
1:20:00
SPEAKER_03: I don't want uh undefeated team that's never given up a goal, right?
1:20:06
SPEAKER_03: And when I was at um MLS next playoffs, I was looking at the board and I'm like, man, there's a lot of non-MLS clubs in there.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_03: This is great.
1:20:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and one of the guys like, no, it's not.
1:20:19
SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, it is, it's very good.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_03: Like the the because you're marketing to more people than just the MLS folks.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_03: You have you know a hundred uh non-MLS clubs in there, and you want to keep them happy, or they'll eventually leave.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so every summer there's always one game that is like that shouldn't have happened, but it did, and you have to learn and grow and bounce back.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_03: So and kind of reverse engineer what happened.
1:20:55
SPEAKER_00: What the heck happened?
1:20:56
SPEAKER_00: And that was that was the big one.
1:20:58
SPEAKER_00: Now we also had a draw on the road in Springfield, which we we tied three to three, we were up three to one, and they got two late second half goals.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of other crazy stuff in that game happened.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_00: We had a one of our players, I want to say in the 80th minute, he was driving towards their goal on our side, stepped wrong, and I thought he ruptured his Achilles.
1:21:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean it like it was one of those you see it and you're like, oh my gosh, like and the the cry out the a the agony, and so the game stopped.
1:21:36
SPEAKER_00: They had to call the ambulance to take him to the local hospital.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_00: Took 25 minutes for an ambulance to get there.
1:21:44
SPEAKER_00: He was just laying on the ground for 25 minutes, and it was it was horrible, it was horrible.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_00: Luckily, it just ended up I don't know how, it just ended up being either a f like a fracture in the ankle or like a like even a strain.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_00: But it it was bad.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, so think about that.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_00: You're tied three to three, it's eightieth minute, and now you wait 30 minutes for the ambulance to come, get your guy, take 10 minutes to get him into the ambulance, then drive off.
1:22:17
SPEAKER_00: So it's you know, it's 10 o'clock at night, and you gotta play 10 more minutes of a game.
1:22:21
SPEAKER_00: How do you bounce back from that?
1:22:23
SPEAKER_00: Nobody scored, it was it was three to three draw.
1:22:25
SPEAKER_00: So those two games were kind of like we're not invincible, anybody can beat us.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_00: On the flip side, we can beat anybody.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just beat Minneapolis for nothing.
1:22:38
SPEAKER_00: Minneapolis was undefeated, number one or number two ranked in the country, and we beat him for nothing.
1:22:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't blame the refs for that.
1:22:47
SPEAKER_00: That was like that that was what it was.
1:22:51
SPEAKER_03: The worst injury I ever saw, I was coaching at a school called Country Day, and uh a girl dislocated her hip.
1:22:59
SPEAKER_03: Oh man.
1:23:01
SPEAKER_03: Wild, and it was fluky, and same thing, 30 minutes, and the head coach who was like in his 50s at the time, is like, Thank God I didn't have a heart attack, I'd be dead.
1:23:11
SPEAKER_03: Right, you know, it's like why did it take you that it's that long?
1:23:14
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, exactly.
1:23:16
SPEAKER_00: There's a hospital five minutes away from where we were playing, yeah.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_00: And I mean the the um the personal the physical trainer who was there.
1:23:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I saw him, I was right there, called immediately, like within a minute of being down with this player.
1:23:34
SPEAKER_00: So it's like I mean, shoot, I mean he's just sitting there for 25 minutes, just on his back, like uh, it was terrible.
1:23:43
SPEAKER_03: What's your guys' record right now?
1:23:44
SPEAKER_03: 10 1 and 1, 10 1 1.
1:23:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was our first season with 10 wins, 30 uh more than 30 points.
1:23:52
SPEAKER_00: So we had 31 points on the uh on the season.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we beat Swain Yo three to two and Minneapolis four-nothing.
1:24:00
SPEAKER_03: How many divisions are there?
1:24:01
SPEAKER_03: There's like oh my god, there's like 12, isn't there?
1:24:04
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot.
1:24:05
SPEAKER_03: No, there's more than that, probably.
1:24:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so there's there's four conferences each one has a ton of divisions within that.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_00: I'd say the central conference.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh.
1:24:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'd have to have at least four.
1:24:21
SPEAKER_03: I was just wondering, like, who's the best?
1:24:23
SPEAKER_03: Like who's usually the best?
1:24:25
SPEAKER_03: And it probably just varies.
1:24:27
SPEAKER_00: It varies.
1:24:28
SPEAKER_00: The East Coast teams think they're the best, the West Coast teams think they're the best.
1:24:32
SPEAKER_00: I think Central Conference is always it's just the same as we're the Midwest.
1:24:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:24:38
SPEAKER_00: We're underdogs and East and West Coast doesn't think twice about us.
1:24:42
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
1:24:43
SPEAKER_00: And then we uh come out and we win it all.
1:24:46
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, with us, like Flint City is and and Des Moines Menace are like two of the top USL League two teams like in the history.
1:24:55
SPEAKER_00: So you can't say Central Conference doesn't have it because those two teams right there alone have multiple national final uh championships.
1:25:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:25:04
SPEAKER_00: So, but I mean Vermont's fantastic, Ballard's always fantastic, you know.
1:25:10
SPEAKER_00: So the other side of the table is Fort Lauderdale United.
1:25:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't know much about them.
1:25:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, Laredo Heat.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_00: So they're hosting.
1:25:19
SPEAKER_00: Laredo, Texas is hosting.
1:25:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:25:21
SPEAKER_00: Heard it's like 110 degrees there today.
1:25:23
SPEAKER_03: That sounds fun.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we'll see how that goes.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_03: Um hydration break.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, multiple of them.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_03: You guys might get a hydration break today.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_00: You think so?
1:25:33
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_03: The first game probably will.
1:25:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
1:25:36
SPEAKER_00: If it's at three, especially.
1:25:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think usually it's like if it's 85 or above.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_03: It's only gonna be 82 today.
1:25:44
SPEAKER_03: Okay, and there's no humidity this week.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_00: Should should be the ref's call if the ref is kind of like this is okay, you know.
1:25:51
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, ash.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_03: Does he make it like on the fly?
1:25:55
SPEAKER_03: Or does he usually say it before the game?
1:25:57
SPEAKER_03: Hey guys, we're gonna do a hydration break.
1:25:58
SPEAKER_00: I think you you're supposed to before you should do it for both halves, but if it's 85 at game time, and then 75 in the second half is like we don't know.
1:26:10
SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna do it.
1:26:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's a little more spontaneous.
1:26:15
SPEAKER_03: Why are we having an a hydration break indoor in climate-controlled air conditioned right?
1:26:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, whatever.
1:26:23
SPEAKER_03: But uh, I see what one of your players has a kid, like his son here or his daughter here.
1:26:27
SPEAKER_00: It's our coaches, yeah.
1:26:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
1:26:29
SPEAKER_00: That's Coach Mike's son.
1:26:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice McQueen.
1:26:31
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool.
1:26:32
SPEAKER_00: He's two, he's so cool.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_00: He uh my kids are three and one, and um my wife is very creative, so she bought some.
1:26:40
SPEAKER_00: I think it was actually maybe her mom, but they bought this small kitty drum and they put the Peoria City badge sticker on it.
1:26:47
SPEAKER_00: There's some McQueen uh last game, wanted to play the drums, and so he's playing the drums, so it was sweet.
1:26:54
SPEAKER_00: So usually we have the 309 folks um who they bring their drums and their flags, like I said.
1:26:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a local high school band um called Southside Steel.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_00: They're with Manual High School.
1:27:06
SPEAKER_00: If you ever look up Manual High School, very historic basketball team for sure.
1:27:11
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:27:11
SPEAKER_00: But they're about 10 drummers and they come out, and so it's the three of them.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a drum line.
1:27:19
SPEAKER_00: I love drum lines.
1:27:20
SPEAKER_00: You would like this.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_00: So we we do a march of the carp where the drumline and the fans and some of our non-rostered players will be out of the stadium well on the stadium concourse, and they'll walk through and they'll go up through the stands and go all the way around to the the field, and they're just playing their drums, and it's sweet.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a lot of fun.
1:27:40
SPEAKER_00: We launched that this year.
1:27:42
SPEAKER_00: I I think it's been good.
1:27:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've I've always loved drum lines going all the way back to high school, like football games and stuff.
1:27:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you ever listen to like our goal videos, especially like if we're in the second half and we're attacking to the south side, um, it's very loud.
1:27:58
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of drums going on, so it's pretty cool.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
1:28:01
SPEAKER_03: Yep, thanks for doing this.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_03: Of course, it's been fun.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_03: It's just uh just learning everything about you guys and you really.
1:28:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, yeah.
1:28:12
SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much.
1:28:12
SPEAKER_03: Good luck.
1:28:13
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:28:14
SPEAKER_03: And then hopefully, hopefully you guys make it to Sunday and then right.
1:28:18
SPEAKER_03: What time is that game on Sunday?
1:28:19
SPEAKER_03: Do you know?
1:28:20
SPEAKER_00: So it's usually another 7 30 at night, but sometimes we might have been at six or something like that.
1:28:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes if the local team doesn't make it, so like if we were to win, they might make it like at 3 p.m.
1:28:34
SPEAKER_00: or earlier in the in the day game just for travel and stuff.
1:28:38
SPEAKER_00: So we'll know after.
1:28:39
SPEAKER_03: So then you guys can get out of here a little bit earlier.
1:28:42
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:28:43
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:28:44
SPEAKER_03: Thanks, man.
1:28:45
SPEAKER_03: We'll see.
1:28:45
SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it.
1:28:46
SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much.
1:28:47
SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
1:28:48
SPEAKER_03: And we are dumb.
1:28:50
SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much.
1:28:50
SPEAKER_03: Just I hate soccer.