Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #87 - Andrew Kaltsounis & Mirnes Biscevic from Blackhawks Sports Club

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I Hate Soccer #87 - Andrew Kaltsounis & Mirnes Biscevic from Blackhawks Sports Club · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: This episode I got to go to the Black Hawk Sports Club uh in Detroit, Michigan, and I got to sit down with two of their directors, Maris and Andrew, when they started their club, when they started the soccer portion of their club, uh they had a facility before they had the players.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: When they had tryouts, they planned on 150 kids showing up.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: They ended up getting 400.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest reason why I wanted to talk to these guys was that they did the facility first.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been on this kick lately that more clubs need to be they need to have their own facility, they need to have their own space.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's a training space.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need an 11v11 field, you don't need to you don't need to buy land, you don't need a a brand new facility.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I hope this shows more clubs out there what is possible, and that every club should be able to do this.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I did a deep dive into my YouTube analytics and just views on the podcast, I've I noticed that 70% of you that watch this don't subscribe.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, it would help get out in front of so many more people if you hit that subscribe button.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I hate soccer.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: First and foremost, what I want you guys to tell me about is what Blackhawk Sports Club is, but also the importance of this place.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Most importantly.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: You want to get into the financial reasons why it's important or more just for the club roots and sustainability?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: I would say for or all of the above, I guess.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I guess all of the above, but I would say roots and it's almost like if you build it, they will come, kind of.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously the there's financial benefits of it too.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So anything you guys can share.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Go on.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's all you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: You want to start?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, man.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: Should we start about the club while we um how we became who we are?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: So our our club actually started probably three, four years ago with basketball.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: Uh there are a group of parents in the area.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't have any good basketball offerings, and so we all had kids in common age groups, and so we started a small little basketball program.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's been running for a number of years, and then earlier last year we decided let's let's take it more formal.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_04: Let's let's incorporate.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: Let's incorporate it as a 501c3.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: Because we didn't feel that uh profiting from teaching kids, there's there's a bit of a there's a bit of a moral dilemma, I guess some of us have.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: And so we we started a 501, 501c3, and uh we started into then basketball, obviously, but we went to soccer.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_04: We all had kids playing soccer.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um we have a big running program as a result of that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_04: We kicked off our lacrosse program, we're starting a cricket program, so we we spread out.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_04: But the biggest animal in terms of um player participation on our group is definitely the soccer side.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so we we went into tryouts last spring.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_04: It was our first tryout.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think what we're expecting five, ten teams, and and you know, we were hoping to get 100 kids signed up for tryouts, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_04: And and we got to try out week, and and Myrnas and I were looking at each other and says, we're we're almost at a thousand, you know, I think we had over 700 registrants.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's like we we didn't see this coming, right?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: So he and I are scrambling tryout week.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_04: We got to find coaches.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: Can we upscale?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_04: Can we can we do what we want, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_04: But I I think what we learned is we we fell into a gap in the market where we were creating an affordable program and we weren't trying to profit from it.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: When people recognized the cost, they recognize that we weren't loading like team fees and hidden fees here or there, whatnot.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_04: It was a one-time price.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_04: They they seemed to really appreciate that, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_04: And so we fell into this this this gap that you know was really nice and it was an accessible gap for a lot of people.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of people that get priced out of soccer, it's gotten real expensive nowadays.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_04: And and I think there's a lot of people with European backgrounds, myself, he included, you know, that are used to not paying for anything more than the kit to pay a part of a sports program like in Europe and things like that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_04: And so um, you know, we had the they had the overwhelming community feedback.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: I think, you know, right now we're over 15 basketball teams.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, like I mentioned, we had over 700 kids signed up for trials, and we had to cap how many kids we would bring into our program.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I think uh track and field, 60 kids across country, probably around 40 kids.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_04: And again, we had to limit those because we only had a couple of coaches and we're looking to expand that this coming year and make those better.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, we we had well over a thousand people reach out to on our various programs, and now our lacrosse is going and that's just gonna keep growing and things like that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: So that's kind of the origin of how we got where we are today.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what that ultimately led to was our need to fire indoor space, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_04: And hence the building we're sitting in right now, which is is our clubhouse, we call it, right?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_04: Excuse me.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: And um uh so when when we realized that we were gonna have over 30 teams, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_04: And we we had to find a way to to manage where we place all these teams.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_04: Our original plan was a futsal program, similar to what you see on the west side of the state of Michigan, where a lot of the clubs play a lot of footsal in the wintertime.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_04: And and so that was our initial plan, but we soon realized that even with that plan in place, we don't think we had enough space to accommodate 30 teams, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_04: And we had already secured some space at Oakland University using their dome um for a few time slots, which helped offset it, but we still had a huge need, and and so we started searching for um a facility.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: And luckily I lived not too far from here, and I knew this was available, and I took a peek through the window one day and and it was wide open, and and and it's kind of um it kind of just fell into place from there.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_04: And so we we actually knocked down the wind, knocked out the windows and plugged it with brick because we want to use the windows for playing purposes.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: But um this this facility is is a great step because it, you know, we had our we had our um our uh ribbon cutting in uh uh I think it was late August or late October, and we had the city out here, the mayor was out here, we had representatives from the school districts, every department in the city.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_04: And it's because we have so many kids in our programs, we have pretty much represented kids in every their parents have people in every group, either city council, planning commission, mayor's office, wherever it might be, um, school district, and things like that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: So we had a great community support group behind us and promoting us and and uh you know it's it's us basically setting roots into the city and and the sustainability of our club going forward.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that having your own facility or actually do you think having multiple sports makes you more financially stable than just relying on one sport?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: I think yes, it will ultimately it'll help grow our soccer program.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: It'll help grow our our soccer program will help grow our basketball program.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um we're gonna ultimately have multiple sports that are engines, if you will, financially to run right well.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um and right now the biggest engine we have is is the soccer program, but the basketball engine is not too far behind.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's it's you know it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: I look at it like we're trying to develop kids for high school.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: My kids, my daughter played volleyball, and then she went into basketball season at high school, and then she went into soccer in the spring, right?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_04: She got a little bit aggressive, and then she decided to switch sports after she made varsine and others so she can collect as many letters as she could, right?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so we, you know, when I look at the boys, you know, they play uh soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, running or lacrosse in the spring, or even baseball, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_04: And so when we design our programs, we're trying to design them in such a way to where the kids can participate in all the sports they might want to participate in high school.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_04: And so by by letting these kids play multiple sports and developing each of them and really accommodating the schedules within our own programs, I think it benefits every program because it kids feel like they can play more than one sport.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: They're not they're not exclusive at five years old, like a lot of things, you know, a lot of that's happening right now.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_04: Sports exclusivity is another story we're probably gonna get to later, right?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_04: But um just just preparing kids so that they can keep active spring, winter, fall, yeah, or the other way around, fall, winter, spring in the high school word world, um is really what we're trying to do, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_04: But yes, they're definitely gonna complement each other financially in the end.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You were at Troy, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you guys were at Troy.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: How many whoop I knew that was gonna happen.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: How many players came over from Troy to this new to the Blackhawks?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_04: So roughly about 80% of our athletes in the soccer program are Troy.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_04: Really?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_04: Citizens, yeah.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: And then the rest are from the surrounding areas generally.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um we we had a very heavy Troy push at the beginning, right?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_04: We do, we do, we're gonna do a lot more, I think, on school facility sites.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: We do our training right now on school sites when we're not in here, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and you'll see an expansion to that going into the coming years.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_04: Got it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: How okay, when you you're the soccer director, when you're planning for four teams, and you're you're like, oh yeah, this space is gonna be perfect, you know, four teams in and out, and then four hundred kids show up to tryouts.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: What what could go what went into your brain with that?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's like overwhelmed.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you get a little bit overwhelmed, but it's it's a coordinated effort, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: When you have uh a team, like myself, Andrew, and others involved.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: We get together, email, phone call, chats, and hey, this is what we have, these are the numbers.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see what access do we have to fields, what facilities can we obtain?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really a team effort.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's ultimately what we are, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I may drive a certain message, but at the end of the day, yes, him and I, we collaborate basically on all of the items.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: And if if I do it all by myself, it's not gonna get done in time.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a team effort.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_04: We talk about what five times a day, meeting still.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and even more.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, my wife has said I talk to him more than I do hers in time.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, go into why, okay.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Little background on you.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: You played at University of Buffalo when they still had men's, and then what brought you into Michigan event uh originally?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: My ex-wife.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then stayed.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then ended up staying.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And how long were you guys at or uh how long were you at Troy coaching?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh six plus years, almost seven years.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then came over here and stayed.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean wait, why why do you have a Rochester number?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: I used to live in Rochester for the first couple of years because I went to um MCC, Monroe Community College.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Did you come over here straight for college soccer?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: No, I came here with a family.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: Got it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: So we moved actually directly from Germany.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm an immigrant of the former Yugoslavia.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I've immigrated to Germany.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: My dad had some connections in there working in the early 70s, and then um we came to the US September of uh 99.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: September 99.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then where were you?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Where were you in the United States?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Syracuse, New York.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Syracuse, New York.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Who'd you play for growing up?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Did you play?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh did you play club at all?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: I did not play club, no.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: We um so I played for William Nottingham High School under Coach Andy Hazeltine.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: And um big shout out to him, by the way.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: He was the one that has helped me to get into college.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Luckily, I can say humbly that I was good enough and was being recruited to play college.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: But um it is it is through his guidance that I was able to kind of um vet out some of the colleges that would best serve me academically and athletically.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it started out with MCC with um and then transferring over to um the University of Buffalo.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: MCC under Coach Capello, Nelson Capello.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Nelson Capella, okay.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then you had uh who was at Buffalo?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: No, it was uh Coach John S.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Sadillo and um um Dave Hesh.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Dave Hesh, that's right.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about that.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, right.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So la so yesterday I had a conversation with a young club director.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's in Long Island, and his last question for me was like, okay, what is your advice?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And my advice to him, uh like what was your la what was my last standing advice to him?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, one, youth academy, three, uh ages three to seven, and then number two, facilities.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because if and I and I brought this up in my uh last episode with uh Lewis from Midwest United.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Staff is gonna come and go, but if you have a facility that can last forever for the club, and if your club is built off of just coaches or having coaches, it's gonna be volatile because you're gonna lose and it might disappear overnight.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and my coaching uh I uh this is at my B course, and they said basically rank all these things, and it's curriculum, uh coaching staff, technical director, all this stuff, and then facilities was one of them.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Okay, rank these in in amount of importance, and all of us ranked facilities last, and they went and and they just like ripped in all of us, like guys, facilities come first because again, the staff comes and goes.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: This episode is brought to you by the North American Soccer Expo.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you remember last year when I had Alexi Lawless on, so many of you were blown away and kept on messaging me like, how did you get Alexi Lawless to talk to you?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest with you, it was the North American Soccer Expo.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: The expo has workshops and seminars and field presentations from top coaches and industry experts.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I will be there this year 100%.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be set up on podcast row.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: North American Soccer Expo, July 30th to August 1st, Novi, Michigan.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'll see you there.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: How long does it take your players to get to send out an email to a college coach?
• 16:18
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• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: You guys basically have this before you even knew what you had in terms of numbers, right?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_04: Well, we had our eyes on a couple facilities.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: When numbers happened, we worked fast to close it, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you we didn't put the cart before the horse necessarily.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_04: We had a plan.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: Our plan was a little longer term than what we had to execute because of the numbers increased so quickly.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_04: But as soon as we came out of the tryout season, we immediately went and I I at the same time of tryouts, I was meeting with me having a lot of meetings on on getting a hold of this facility for our club, right?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_04: And so we we we acted quick.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: And and we're we're ongoing with the same search right now for next year, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_04: We we you can't sit down and wait.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we we've got to have more.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: And and so especially to allow our other programs to grow and things like that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_04: So we're actively pursuing other facilities right now, just based out of pure need.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've been on this facility kick for really since I met uh met with you guys last time because everybody is obsessed with having an 11 v11 space.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need it, it's overrated.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then people are like, Well, do you know how much land costs?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I know how much land costs.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to rebuild.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: This used to be a grocery store.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: How old do you think this building is?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: 77.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: 77.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was how old my facility was.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was like 75, 77.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this is all you need.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And even a club with seven, ten, fifteen teams, it's doable in smaller spaces like this.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: You just got to be creative with the schedule.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_04: Well, then if you think about it too, and even the clubs that get the 11v11 space, they're putting 10 teams on it, right?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_04: And so when we when we when we were looking for a facility, I basically took a field.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_04: I said, okay, how many square foot is in 11v11 field?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_04: You put eight teams on it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_04: So each team's getting roughly 7,000 square foot, you know, and I broke it down per player per square foot.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: I think it was 135 square feet each player needs to train.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: And that translated to basically we could train 25 kids in here, which is the same thing as putting eight teams on the 11v11 field, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: And so it's it's it's mathematical.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'm an engineer, so I go down mathematically, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: But I, you know, you you talk about the facilities kick.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: I've always wondered why we need facilities, though.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: I've wondered why we don't play in the summer and just turn off in the winter, right?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: Think think about they do that in the West Coast, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_04: Because it's too cold for them to play in their 60-degree winters, then you know, and and and it's too hot for us to play in our summers, apparently, right?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_04: But if we if we you can create the exact same offering, the exact same number of training sessions, shut down November, turn on in February, you know, or or maybe flex to December, turn on in February, take the three months off in the winter, you alleviate so much cost.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_04: And and part of our initial push was maybe, you know, we we have we we studied a lot of things on what we can do when we started.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we go with the summer model, eliminate the winter.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: We would cut, you know, significant amount, probably 10% of our cost structure right out.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_04: And and we thought about it, but the challenge is if you're the first one, everybody else can throw too many eggs at you, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: Even though it makes sense and it's cost effective, you get the same development you want out of it, everybody else is gonna throw eggs at it.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I would argue training in the summer is a great advantage.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: Sure, people are gonna go away for vacation for one or two weeks, but man, you can extend your training sessions, you can go during the day, you could do so many things with that that would be advantageous to the family, but it's a it's a paradigm switch that's really hard to convince the world of locally.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that would happen here, but Buffalo is kind of like that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: With with some of their youth programs, they go all the way till August, and then their new season starts in August.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like when Canada does it too, they do it the exact same way.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had players saying, Oh, you should come to my tournament, and like, when's your tournament?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, July 15th.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I got there, you know, I came from Michigan, obviously, and I never knew.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we never played in July, ever.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I uh we would just start back up in high school in August or whatnot, and then we would go up until June, and Father's Day weekend was the tryouts and stuff like that.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: What are you guys doing for tryouts?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: Normal tryouts.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: Normal tryouts.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're you're gonna do them in what May?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: April?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Father's Day.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Father's Day weekend.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Father's Day.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_04: Because all these clubs are just are moving them all up and going to So there there's a lot, you know, there's a lot going on right now with US soccer changing the rules, right?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_04: You can re sign your players early.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody's pulling these ID sessions up.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's muddied the waters quite a bit in how it works, right?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_04: And we've had to react as a result of that by you know opening up early registration for our players as well.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_04: If they want to sign for next year, um, we're permitting our players to do that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the things we're doing at, you know, we I uh you you're familiar with Arizona Ice T?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_04: Arizona Ice T, famous since 1999, never raised the price, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: 99 cents still, right?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: So I I I you know, I've I I I've got uh MBA, so you always do case studies on things, and I remember doing a case study on them, and it was a fascinating study because their goal was how do we sustain our price throughout, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_04: And they haven't changed their price in 30 years.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_04: Nothing else has held their price in 30 years in our world at all, right?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, one of the things we've talked about is let's do something real different in our second year.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: We can try to reduce our price, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's challenging, but what we were able to do this year is allow all our families to early register for the exact same price they paid last year, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_04: So if the kids getting older, it's the same price the older group was last year.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: But um, you know, we're we're trying to push that model.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: And since early registration was permitted, where it said, okay, let's take advantage of it at least from that perspective and offer our families a chance to re-sign with us at no cost increase from last year.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_04: But it's muddy the waters a lot, that's for sure.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's eye deception is going on all the time.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: Everywhere.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: You can't you can't make heads or tails.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_04: You have some clubs telling families there will be no tryouts, which uh from to me, to be honest, feels a little bit deceptive, right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_04: But there's a lot of strange things going on in in the soccer space right now with people trying to grab players and get them to sign right away and tell them there's no tryouts going to happen, and it's it's it's unclear what's gonna happen going forward, how that all's gonna work.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_04: But I don't think it's good for the game.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, are you guys looking okay?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: So think about everybody that is going to re-sign with you is gonna stay in the at the same price.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: What are you guys doing for the new ones, new players?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna raise it a little bit?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_04: For so our prices for next year for new, there's gonna be a small price increase for new players coming.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_04: New players.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but it's not very significant.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I ran my training company is like, okay, if you were with me when it was whatever an hour for a private session, I never raised it on some of my longest clients, but if you were brand new, yeah, that's the easiest way to raise prices, I think.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's the smartest way.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, how many times has lease gone up, you know, in certain places like this?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, every uh new lease, it's it's uh it's increasing, and parents are just like, it's ridiculous.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_04: Taxes go up, and you know, everything goes up, you can't avoid it, right?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I just went for a haircut and it went up.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is going up.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: How can you lower prices?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Especially if you're gonna do well, more kids.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, so last year we were we built our cost model on uh 150 kids.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_04: We we we we we did significantly this is just soccer that you're talking about.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just soccer, just soccer.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Just soccer.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_04: And so right now we're over about 700 in our pro and soccer is well over 400, basketball are almost 200.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they're they're everywhere right now.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, and I remember he and I sitting down with we got a couple of our sponsors here, right?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember sitting down with them saying yeah, you know, we want to give our kids uniforms, right?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so part of our our our uh our our sponsorship is when you sponsor a shirt, you put your name on it, and the parents and the families aren't gonna pay for that shirt.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_04: It drives me nuts when you go somewhere and you got names on of companies on shirts, and all the families still have to buy the gear for the full price.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's if you got a sponsor for the shirt, you should pass those savings on to the kids.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_04: And that's what we did in our club, right?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_04: We found sponsors for each of our kids.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_04: So we got two game shirts, OMPT did sponsorship for there.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_04: And when we sat there, we said, This is how many kids we're gonna have.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember Michael saying, Oh, you're probably gonna do a little bit better than 150.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_04: We we had no idea.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: He he knew something we didn't, but um um as a result of having 450 kids in our program versus 150, we did find ourselves with an opportunity to do things like give each kid a ball, um, give each kid sweatshirts.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh there's gave each kid backpacks.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_04: Backpacks are ridiculously expensive, by the way.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_04: It's insane what they cost.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_04: We were able to afford the facility and the build-out for the facility, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_04: Which is not cheap.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but we had a lot of those one-time costs this year we don't have this coming year.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_04: And so, like the facility, for example, so we were able to kind of offer uh the same pricing next year as we did last year and even you know considered reducing, but we've got to also manage the business properly and be careful and stuff.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: How many clubs have you been a part of where when they do put a logo on the jersey, they don't lower the price.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh ours are free.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: No one paid for a uniform or a bag in our club this year.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and we're the only club I think doing that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know of any others doing it.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_04: I've never been part of one.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: Have you?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: But it seems like the logical thing to do, doesn't it?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_04: If someone grant gives you money to sponsor the jerseys, they there should be a benefit to the athletes.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it's uh where is that money going?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think clubs attack sponsorships.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is sponsorships uh real in terms of I saw who did I see?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Stolar.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I saw their their financials because they're a 501 3C or whatever.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it said they they brought in like 6.7 million dollars and 7,000 of it was sponsorships.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're not at is it just effort or is it what is it?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's absolute effort.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_04: We're about to make a big sponsor push right now.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and um um it's it's critical for our organization to deliver on what we want that we're successful in sponsorship.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_04: Got it.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_04: We have a board, all of which are very well connected with significant organizations in the area, and and so I I think as we grow as a community in the in the area, I think we're gonna get more and more sponsorships.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we we've gotten some great sponsor partners.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I know we've got a scholarship fund sponsored by a local family that you know um has some prominence through some online res some online media, the Andy Isaac Foundation, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_04: And and so sponsorships are important for us, and and we want to make sure when we get them, we use them the right way.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: Like our sweatshirt, we're sponsored by a local um doctor's office, and um gotta use it.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's important, you know.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_04: That's what builds a community, right?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_04: Businesses in the community are supporting the the kids in the community, then you've got the synergy you need in the environment.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Your sponsors, do they have kids in the program?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_04: Some do.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Some do.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_04: Not all, but some do.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: What about fundraising?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys do any fundraising, or does that not really carry a lot of weight either?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_04: We have discussed fundraising.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_04: We haven't executed on any fundraising.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_04: Got it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um there's there's we've had a lot of debate internally about you know using our athletes to raise funds.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: Is that the right or wrong thing to do?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_04: And and given that we've had success on acquiring sponsors with our program, we've kind of held off from that yet.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_04: But it might it might come in the future, we'll see.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Directors.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Directors.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have a director for each sport, or are you still working on some of the others?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_04: No, we have a director for each program.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_04: So he's our director of soccer, we've got a director for basketball, we've got a director for lacrosse, we've got a director for a running program.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_04: We have a prospects on our cricket program right now.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't quite nailed that one down yet, but I have a couple individuals who are interested, and and we'll have some more programs here coming next year.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh maybe a volleyball program, maybe a baseball program, maybe a softball program coming in the next year.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: We've already got some individuals identified who've shown interest in that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: What sports do you guys use this facility for?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_04: Soccer, cricket, lacrosse.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: And lacrosse right now, yeah.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_04: We'll we'll we'll get some batting lanes in here next year so that we can have baseball.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: We've already costed out the the putting in baseball lanes.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_04: We can fit 10 lanes in here, so we'll go there next year with this facility, probably in the next few months in the summer months at least.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then you could do uh two lanes are open, and then you can still do soccer training or uh other sports.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's how my original facility uh uh in Buffalo, I was in a baseball facility.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's very easy to do.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean the business model is simple, right?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_04: You could either let someone rent a space and play a sport in there, or you can develop the sport yourself and utilize the space that way.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: And so we've we've chosen to go and develop the sports ourselves to keep this building occupied pretty much all day long.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_04: And by doing that, we're able to offer lower cost sport opportunities for our local community.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: For your directors, for you, how many teams are you actually coaching right now?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: I have two teams.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: Excuse me, three teams.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're coaching three teams.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And how many coaches do you have that you oversee?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: Are we at 12 coaches?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: If um, yeah, I believe 12, and we've got some new ones who are kind of in our training development.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh looking more like 13, 14 coaches total.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how do you train and develop them?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like shadow, or they they have to shadow the older coaches or the more experienced coaches, or yeah, yeah, we we engage them in in in a um shadowing environment, whether it's myself, sometimes Coach Andrew or others.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then um, you know, we just talk about the game and we show them what we want to do in the small-sided activities.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when we feel comfortable, we get them engaged and hey, here's an opportunity.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to run a warm-up session?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to run an activity?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: And we let them do it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: So we take good two months, give or take, to kind of really get him on the field, get him comfortable with with the players by the time all the players know them, and you know, if they're ready to take over a team, it's an easier transition just to put them in there and off they go.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: How how long has it taken coaches to get used to the space?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because some coaches, when I was trying to rent out my facility, oh, it's too small.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I can't work on set pieces, or I can't work on team tactics or building out of the back.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you coach 10-year-old girls.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, what are you doing?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to work on that stuff.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the newer coaches or the younger coaches, is it hard for them to utilize the space or or figure out how they're gonna use the space?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, some of the greener ones may be a little harder, a little longer, but let's be honest.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, some of us who are more, let's call it seasons, more veterans, it takes a little time to get used to the small space.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: When you actually truly put on at home, you look at your training session like this is what I want to do.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: And when you prepare yourself, you step on a field, you know exactly what you want to do and how you want to go about doing it.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then the delivery to the players is consistent and it's clear.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't prepare yourself and knowing what space you're working on, it it then it becomes a you know, what do I do?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: So preparation is key, and and that's something that um we strive.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: How uh go into your like curriculum and what uh you tried to build out for the coaches and everything, because it seemed like when I was here a couple weeks ago, it seemed like everything was kind of very, very similar.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't the exact same stuff, but it was the exact same concept.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you uh and you're behind the curriculum and everything?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: We we both are.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: We both are.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: We definitely have ourselves, including some of the other seasoned coaches who help um continue to develop the curriculum, continue to add on to activities, pieces, whatever it is that we have learned over you know a number of years that we've coached, we continue to develop that.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the day, is that's what the younger kids need, right?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: That need that solid technique that allows them to be able to play one and two touch soccer, that allows them to you know not only understand the physicality and the and the physical aspects of the game, but really be intelligent up here, right?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how to scan your shoulder, how to find that plus one scenario, how to, you know, do an underlap, how to do an overlap.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: All of that can be done and can be recognized in 2v2s, 3v3s, 4v4s.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: That all can be done.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you look at this wall, it's a solid wall.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: You can't tell me that you can't go against the wall 10, 15 feet, five feet, and do one touch passes against against the wall.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what I used to do.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: I would spend up to three, four hours after school and just pass against the wall, shoot against the wall, use all surfaces.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: You just learn how the ball bounce bounces, how the ball shifts, how the ball kind of rotates.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: So um the small side of activities is is definitely where you build that technique and then you take it from there.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of what we've done is born out of his experience coming out of Europe, right?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_04: Because you you know, when you're in Europe and Germany specifically for him, it's a different environment in the winter there.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they're not trying to rent out 11v11 facilities and play like this.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_04: He always says this reminds me of the clubs in Germany and all that kind of stuff.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_04: It does.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we're trying to get that charm out of it.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_04: But but when we first started November, he and I were kind of, you know, we got cameras around, so we were keeping a good eye on all the coaches, and we we we had a lot of conversations.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: All right, this person's not kind of settled in the space yet, you know.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_04: And so there it does, it did take a little bit of guidance and and it did take a little bit of work with some coaches, but I think once everybody adapted to it, it worked out really well.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_04: We have teams that actually prefer to train in here now than go to the big space, which is really surprising.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I designed my facility, it looked exactly like this, but I had to do the plywood route.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the brick wall, and the brick is probably even better, and it's obviously more durable.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: But a ball on a wall is the most important thing in development, yeah, to be honest with you.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: I had a brick fireplace and I was a goalkeeper growing up, and I would punt the ball against the brick fireplace, and then I'd just work on my handling, and it's like that's what developed me.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not I didn't have goalkeeper trainers and stuff like that that everybody has these days, right?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: How often could let's say a a parent or somebody wanted to bring up, like, hey, five of the boys want to come up and just do pickup or six of the boys.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys do that and then like just like open up the doors and then how are your doors set up?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys have automatic doors where you can uh open it up remotely?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_04: I got my phone, he's got a fully automatically to unlock and like.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly exactly.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly how I design my place because I don't want to have to go and unlock it.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then everybody I everybody thinks that this is so hard.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the man hours to do this, to the to do this building, it's very hard.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously you need the capital and the money and the support.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: But once it's up and running, once you have, if you have people that come in here that care about the space, it's gonna be taken care of.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I say it all the time.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's we're fortunate in our board, we have a bunch of stewards of the building, right?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_04: Guys, you know, Myrnas is in here, whenever he's in here, I see him cleaning up.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm always coming and cleaning up.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: We have a couple other people in our off our board that are always in here taking care of it.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we put in the nets ourselves, we put in the turf ourselves, we put up everything you see ourselves, right?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and as long as you have the right group of community people who care about the community and can care about the club, everybody's gonna put the effort in, right?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_04: Any any anything we need as a club, the first thing we typically do is reach out to our member families, you know, whether it be our snow plow removals, a member family just lives across the street, or or you know, we're we're we're gonna be putting up some other stuff outside.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna have member families helping us up clear land and do stuff like that.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, having all those local stewards is important, especially for sustainability, right?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna own, you're gonna feel like you own the club if you're leading our marketing efforts.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we have we have a young lady who who leads our marketing efforts who's got a brilliant background, and marketing is able to help us out considerably, right?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: Using our own community really helps us become more sustainable and really achieve more as a group, you know, give more to the kids in the end is what we're trying to do.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: You guys did the netting.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: You guys painted black uh you painted Blackhawks Sports Club with the with the what did you have?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: I did a projector.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: The projector.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: My daughter, actually, I gotta give my daughter credit.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say you gotta give your kids credit.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I gotta give my daughter credit.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_04: I gotta give uh Ben Nasser credit.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_04: He was helping out with some of the bottom letters, but my daughter had the idea of projecting it and stenciling it.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean those letters are like seven foot tall each, right?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: They don't look so big, but they take a long time to paint.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's better than what I had to pay.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't even think about that, and I had it professionally done, and it was like two thousand bucks.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I should have saved money doing that.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Turf?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did you guys do the turf?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we did.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys laid the turf.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys have padding under this?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it just coming?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_04: That was an experience, let me tell you.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_04: When the guy came to drop off the turf, you've got a what a 1,500-pound roll that's 17 feet long.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: And we had like we we had about uh, you know, we had our board there and about 10 family members, guys that are had kids in the club, yeah, and we're looking at trucks and we can't get it out.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's a big round thing, you can't lift it up by hand, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_04: Took us about an hour or so to get the first one out, maybe, and then we figured out a process and we got it all in here.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_04: But it was uh it was experience, that's for sure.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Did you learn everything like through YouTube and everything?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And just uh just learning how to do things or or the netting we did kind of independently on our own.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_04: We talked with a few people, gave us some ideas, and then ultimately we just said, you know what, let's try to do this on our own way, and and it worked out all right.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_04: The turf, um, the manufacturer of the turf out, you know, all the turf in the world comes from Atlanta, I learned.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but uh um there's a couple factories in Atlanta that are cross street from each other that make all the turf.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_04: But uh the the company that made it, um it costs as much to have someone install the turf as it does to buy.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_04: And given that we're trying not to drive costs up, you know, artificially, we I figured out how to do it ourselves.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_04: Got some videos from the manufacturer of people that he recommended and didn't seem that bad.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: And and you know, the first couple I can't say we did perfectly, but we reset those and we got the rest in pretty well.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So see, like there's a way to do this, and everybody just say, Oh, well, the cost, the cost, the cost, the cost.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: See a lot of the stuff that you you can do on your own.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, like HVAC system, the obviously you can't do that stuff, but everything else the painting, yeah, the logo, the the netting, the turf, uh, the tarp or the tarp was given to us by a local high school, they were done with it, and and we took it, you know, and and uh Esteban on our board was able to get a hold of that for us, and it was great.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's you can do it yourselves, but you gotta be willing to put the work in.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_04: To put the work in, and you've gotta be willing to serve a kids.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's it when you're a nonprofit, your focus is create an environment that's optimal for the kids.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_04: So if you have extra money, you give it to the kids.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: You have, you know, you you you want to pay for something, you either charge the kids or you figure out a way to do it yourself for no cost, right?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_04: If we're a for-profit organization, you you care about you're serving the profits, right?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_04: That's what you do as a for-profit.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_04: So you you don't want to do things that would cost you more money because that comes out of your pocket, right?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's a different business concept.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, it goes back to what I said in the beginning of the the meeting.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_04: Here is that it's it's you have to decide do you want to serve the kids or serve profits in the end?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_04: Do you want to sacrifice to help the kids?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: Because frankly, teaching kids is our responsibility as an adult, right?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh or do you want to try to make money off of it?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_04: And and you know that's a that's a question every organization leader has to ask of themselves, and every parent has to ask of themselves as well.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_04: Do I want my kids in an environment where they're trying to develop athletes and create something for our local community, or do you want to make someone else a lot of money?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_04: And that and that's really what comes down to youth sports nowadays in a lot of ways.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what's I think that's what scares a lot of people or a lot of clubs from doing this is because they're looking at it like, well, what's the ROI?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: What's the how much how can we make money off of this rather than just saving money?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: They don't realize how much money they're saving.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where it could be a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred and thirty thousand dollars like Midwest, where you're saving money by doing uh having your own place and it's ownership and And every time a kid was walking through the halls, it's like, hey, this is my yeah, the kids the kids feel tied to it for sure.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_04: We had a bunch of kids come in here before we put the top coat on and write their names on the wall.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_04: So there's a bunch of names behind some of the paint, right?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_04: But the kids take ownership and and and you know, there's a lot of times where I'll get a call and and a bunch of kids say, hey, we want to just kick around and like, yeah, I could go for it.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we'll open the door, they can come in there.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's a great resource to have, that's for sure.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, we're gonna create some more resources on the site here for our other programs pretty soon that are just people can walk up and use it, and that's the idea of a community space, right?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: What are you guys playing in soccer-wise in terms of state leagues?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Are you NYSL and MSPSB, or what are you guys doing?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we participating in in all of those.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: So NYSL, uh, MSPSB, and then we have um NLC as well.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: What's NLC?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's the um uh National League Conference, the Great Lakes Conference.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: The US Soccer Pathway.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you guys use uh for home fields?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh for games, obviously.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: So for games we use all Troy City fields for majority of our teams, and uh we do have the ability to get onto Clawson Stadium field as well for several of our games.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we we do have that access.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys have a percentage of your roster that has to be Troy residents?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you can go into that?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Are you guys considered a Troy club?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_04: I I wouldn't so so to utilize the Troy resources, you have to have at least 70% of your athletes um in the program.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_04: 70.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_04: 70%, right?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_04: And and we're closer to 80% in our program.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's good.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so do do we consider a club Troy?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_04: Our name is Blackhawks because of um Troy High School's colors are black, yeah, Troy Athens high schools are the red hawk.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_04: They're the Red Hawks.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_04: So we said Yeah, yeah.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's kind of the that's where our name came from.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: That's where we we've set up our schools.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_04: And so we we um and we work closely with the school district.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_04: We use school district resources and we'll probably use more of them in here in the coming years.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: And so we're we're gonna help design programs that help our high school programs, is the goal.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody, everybody's worried about the platform and let's get into MLS next, and let's get into ECN, who cares?
• 46:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't help kids.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm I'm convinced these for-profit platforms they're made to make money, just like for-profit clubs, right?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_04: And so yeah, yes, there's some great competition, but I mean, you've been around.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's also regional.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_04: MLS Next might be strong here, but it's not going to be strong in somebody.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: In Washington, it's all ECNL clubs.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_04: And yep.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's all it's all regional.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_04: And NLC is stronger in other parts of the country.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's and when you're in the little envelope of Michigan, we don't recognize that, right?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_04: But I I I always go back to, you know, two things.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_04: Do do all these for-profit leagues, which ECNL is, which MLS is, do they make our athletes better?
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_04: Has U.S.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_04: soccer improved?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_04: You know?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_04: And and I can't say that the end product has gotten better.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_04: I I can say a lot of people have made money off of it.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know that U.S.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_04: soccer's got better, and I do know the participation numbers have significantly dropped.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Especially on the girl side.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_04: Significant drops, and it's scary, right?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_04: And no, you know, you gotta ask why that's happening.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_04: Why has our our our high-level ability not really gotten better?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we're gonna see how our World Cup team does this year.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_04: Hopefully they can do well.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I'm hopeful of it.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: But what do you guys think about the drop?
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: What uh uh of of participation.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had a couple high school coaches on one in uh on the Patreon podcast that I'm just doing remotely and stuff.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: One was in St.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: Louis.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: He said that he had on the boys side, he had about a hundred boys come out and try out on the girl side forty.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then I talked to somebody in Montana where it was 70 on the boy side, 30 on the girl side.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think that cause is causing that?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: I have my own opinions.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: What what are you what are you thinking that you want me to ride on this one?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, go for it, take it and I'll add on to it.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_04: I I I get I can get passionate about this, so it's it's it's it's so I I don't want to date myself here, but I'm old, right?
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um when I was a kid, there were basically two academy programs in the state of Michigan, right?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_04: Those two programs, you know, you travel around the country and play games.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_04: One to three percent of soccer players participate in those programs, right?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone else was in a community club.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_04: So you had one to three percent of the players paying what today's equivalent would be$20,000,$25,000 a year to participate and travel and do all that stuff, right?
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_04: And then you had all the community clubs playing in community regional leagues, paying what would be a um uh um a community club rate, which is far less, right?
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_04: We'll say$2,000 today's rate.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_04: Fast forward to today, those two academy programs, you know, while those clubs still exist, the structure is not there, right?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_04: And now you have these for-profit leagues that I think were created by a lot of clubs that recognize hey, if we get a team like that where everybody's paying$20,000 a year, we can make a whole lot of money, right?
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_04: And so you have all these clubs emerge, these for-profit environments.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_04: And now instead of one to three percent of kids paying at that high rate, almost all the offerings, more than 50%, are in this world, right?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_04: And everybody now is nobody's special anymore.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_04: You had the one to three percent, now nobody's special because 50% of the kids are in these programs.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_04: The other 50% are wrecked, so there's a huge disparity, and that's the gap we tried to fill.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_04: That gap in between, we came in with the professional coaching, but with the nonprofit price, right?
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_04: And and now you have 50% of the kids, and there's talent that's getting lost, undeveloped.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there's these clubs that are trying to win games, they're trying to win competitions so they can promote the club.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: To do that, they're taking hyper-advanced kids that are hitting puberty at 10 years old, throwing them on the field because they're six foot tall, winning games, but if Leo Messi was born in the United States, Leo Messi would have never played soccer because he wasn't big enough.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I mean really think about it.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_04: If Leo Messi was born in Rochester, New York, he would have never played soccer at the highest level.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_04: He wouldn't have been big enough to play.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_04: And so we're we're rewarding hyper or fast developing kids, right?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_04: They're 10 years old, they're six foot tall.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_04: Let's put them on the field, they can run through everybody.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_04: That kid then gets burned out by the time he gets to high school because everybody else caught up in size and he didn't really have any true talent, he's just big.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_04: So when the true talent matriculates up, he gets he gets to his U14, U15, he's six foot tall, so is everybody else.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_04: He can't run past anybody anymore.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_04: He quits, and you have a 70% drop rate that U.S.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_04: soccer is reporting right now.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_04: You know, never mind the fact that everybody's selling the the college dream, right?
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: To 10-year-olds, and oh, we're gonna go to a ID session, not an ID session, but a uh a college showcase for nine-year-olds, U9s, U10s, and and um the chance of a high school athlete playing in college according to the NCAA is less than 3%, right?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_04: Less than 3%, but we're gonna we're gonna spend college tuition money trying to get there for 10 years, and it's it's um I I I think the root cause is it's gotten too expensive.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_04: Talents, the right talent's not getting developed.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_04: The good talent is either can't afford it or getting overlooked.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_04: Families don't know what to do, right?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_04: They don't know the space, so they have a have someone with the wrong intentions in their ear say you can make a lot of money, whatever, or they can make a lot of money by pulling your kid in, and and they they don't know what better to do and they go that route, right?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: I mean we we put a we put a page on uh uh tab on our page, um, what do we call it athlete guidance, right?
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_04: Which bunch of data on it.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it talks about specialization before 13 means you're gonna 70% of the kids are gonna drop out.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: It means 50% higher chance of you having a leg injury or from repetitive injuries, right?
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um there's just a lot of reasons what's what why what's happening is happening, but in the end I think it's coming down to the fact that we're getting too greedy.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think what it is for me is if it's there is very little organic growth, right?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna use my experience, kind of where I came from and and how I grew through the youth environment.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I in in the forming is lobby, we didn't have any clubs, right?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: And if there was a club, it was one or two clubs that you eventually would go and make it if you certainly were a good player.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_03: But what you did have is quite a bit of local youth trainees and call them just pickup games.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: I would go and play with adults all the way through the age of nine and ten before the war broke out.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: We immigrate to Germany, and I go to Germany, and we're in a small town called Hum, and I am playing for my community.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: There were only two large clubs calling the academies, that you eventually had an opportunity, and it was by invite sometimes that you were good enough, you go, you get invited, you try it out, you don't make it, you go back to your community club.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: And the community feel is something that players, we we said earlier, when players walk into a club right here, the clubhouse, they don't fit in here, they belong here.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: They feel that they're connected to the coaches, connected to the club.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I felt when I was in Germany.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel like I was connected to the club that I played, local community club.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then eventually, if you wanted to go and and and try out for some of those larger academy clubs, you did that by an invite.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then those two clubs then push players wherever they they they belong thereafter.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you go to the Athens, you go to the Troy Highs, and when they play each other, how many how many show up there?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, a couple thousand, right?
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that environment is something that I was exposed to in Germany under the community level.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: Not under the academy level, but under the community level.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then you got good enough, you went on and you played for the academy.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll be the first one to tell you, you're good enough, go do it.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_03: So that community feels truly where there is that organic growth, organic development.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something where I feel like if if we can just continue to focus more on that community, um the numbers would rise.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: You would see families wanting to participate, wanting to be part of that.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: So that's why I feel like there's there's a little bit of a of a shift in in quality America soccer versus at least in my early 90s when I moved to Germany, what I experienced.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: What's that uh what's that saying?
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's something like if everybody is the same, then nobody's special, or if everybody's special, nobody's special.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is that because you're talking about like I'm pretty sure you were talking about Wolves and Vardar?
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes, they were the original Academy program.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now everybody is in that platform.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is it still special?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is it still exclusive?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_04: Wolves and Vardar, you had two teams in every age group.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_04: Two teams.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_04: Now you have probably over 20, probably almost 40 teams in every age group traveling across the country in competitions, right?
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's watered down.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's it and again, the the goal isn't to matriculate the best talent anymore, it's to show off how strong our club is so that we can make more money and draw more people in.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_04: Again, you're serving profits, not developing athletes in the United States, and that's a challenge.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_04: And you gotta find a model like they have in Europe or the other parts of the world where if you develop the next messy, you but you profit from developing the next messy.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's in and here we don't profit from developing talent.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no there's no benefit to developing technically.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's not, I mean, think about uh what do you get to if if you have a player that was one of your former players and they go and sign with Michigan State, what do you get in return?
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: You just get to post it on Instagram.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't get you know, it's not like solidarity payments or training compensation over there and whatnot.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_04: But even signing with Michigan State, think about it, right?
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you got the way the way college is is presented to people in this country, we think of basketball, we think of football.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_04: Basketball and football, these players are getting NIL money, they're making money, they go to the NFL, they go to the NBA, right?
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_04: If you had your you let's say you have a son, do you have a son?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_04: Nope.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_04: Say you have a son, he's 10 years old, he's he's he's national team quality, right?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_04: You have your choice to take your son anywhere in the world, where would you take him to play?
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would take him to the like streets.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: But I'm I'm just saying, if you were gonna find an academy?
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously, I would uh I mean if I could, I'd probably go to Barcelona just to see.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_04: But I mean So the first tier is gonna be the Man Cities, Barcelona.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_04: Of course.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_04: Those those massive international clubs.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_04: Where do you where do you think the second tier will be?
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be like his community clubs.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_04: It'd be a European club, probably.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_04: But a second tier, Bayer Leva Kuzen.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_04: Someone like that, right?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: Where would you where would you call the third tier?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: The third tier?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Here?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe MLS?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe MLS Academies?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe, maybe.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it it maybe it's an a a third, maybe it's somewhere in in in Netherlands.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it's IX.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it's true.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe IX would probably be in that top tier.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm thinking, IX team.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I the two.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, but uh it's a good development program in IX.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, but it's also the culture.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean, and so many of these clubs, and what you're getting at is culture of I mean ML MLS academies, although it's very good and it might be our very best option, it's so we're so far removed.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have an MLS academy in in the state.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a free state, you know, where kids can go to any MLS club.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_04: But so let's say go back though.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_04: MLS is third.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_04: Where does college rank?
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_04: So what what tier of soccer is college?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_04: Because it is it four?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_04: Because I could argue with USL might be.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Further down.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we're talking differently.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking women's.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about girls.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different scenario.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different sport, basically.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, you're right.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because what are what's happening with men's soccer?
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's all internationals coming, right?
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: All the colleges.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: And they're all older.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and I don't blame college coaches for doing that or anything.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_04: But man, you're right.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_04: 75% of the kids that were on the field when Vermont played, I forget who they played for the national championship this year, were foreign-born players, right?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_04: So when I reference 3% of soccer players that play high school can play collegiate in the United States, the number's probably much lower when you take the foreign-born athletes and integrate them into the numbers.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_04: But, you know, for the boys' side, you've got all these clubs promoting the soccer collegiate pathway.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_04: But there really isn't one.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_04: Because even if you get to college, which might be fourth or fifth tier of soccer ability globally, then what?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_04: Then what?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_04: You're not getting a scholarship typically, because if you're going to Michigan or any of the big 10 schools, they got football programs that are consuming all the scholarships, right?
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_04: There's no NIL money for soccer kids.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they they the all these major schools, these D1 schools, typically have football, so they have about five to ten soccer scholarships that they divide amongst four classes, right?
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to go to a um a D2 or D3 school or a D1 school that doesn't have a football program to get good scholarship looks, right?
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_04: The girl side, it's a totally different scenario.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_04: College is still the premier spot, but on the boy side, it's it's like we're promoting the local form of soccer.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's very rare.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to have some big time success in.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like Clemson, right?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Clemson did sign a kid and gave him$60,000 a year.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it does happen, but it's not much.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of girls, there is a local program that is a playing in a mid-major that it can pay a girl on top of scholarship$20,000 a year.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you're right.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like Clemson, the we're talking the one of the best players in the United States, 60K.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Girls at a mid-major are making 20, so you're right about the NIL and stuff like that.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: When you were in Germany, so we have our focus of college scholarship, college scholarship, college scholarship.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: When you were at the community clubs in Germany, was there a goal?
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: Was there we're gonna get you to Bayern Munich or that?
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or was it just what was the goal?
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well uh have fun.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's definitely supporting the community um was the was the number one goal entirely.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean say you get that's what they call it, probably falls under like U12, U13 age approximately.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: When we would play call it a stageup game or some kind of you know higher-level league game, we would have people show up, the entire community, a hundred plus people show up to watch us.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_03: And there, by the way, sorry, I do want to point this out, is you can't sit in a touchline, right?
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: They have the field.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Fenced in or block.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like they have some kind of like fence, and everyone knows, and it's at least five, six feet outside of the actual field restriction.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_03: So number one goal is definitely serving the community, right?
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_03: But then you as a club, you know you recognize who you are, what you stand for, what your core values are.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_03: And if that one kid happens to be good, well, guess what?
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_03: He is indeed going to go ahead and be invited to go and train in in if he makes it, he'd great.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_03: If he doesn't, he's coming back with um with that academy or the higher level player.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then vice versa, they do the same.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: So there was there was a system that was honored by all of the clubs, all of the local clubs, and then they that one kid that makes it to the next level is is exactly what um what they would support that family and guide them into going there.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_03: But if you didn't make it, you played for your community.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I could go play for another club that was literally maybe two kilometers, three kilometers away.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_03: But no, where I lived, that that was like I found pride.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_03: There was there was just a good feeling that I wanted to participate in that community club.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_03: And if I got called to go and train with the next level higher club, perfect.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'll take the chance and if I make it, great.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_03: If I don't, I continue to play for my community club.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_03: But the ultimate goal is really the community, and then if you know uh uh local homegrown talent comes out of that club, it's it's really cheered and celebrated by everyone, not just the club, but also those community clubs.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_04: Kind of like high school, yeah.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: And think about most clubs.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you guys got the 70% rule.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: That means two high schools, right?
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh basically Troy and I mean some some will go private, probably, and whatnot.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_04: And you have Avondale too getting a sign like where we are as an actually, we're in Troy, but in Avondale school district, there's a significant portion of Troy that's in Avondale school district as well.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: So so your teams, your older teams might be made up of four max high schools, a maximum of four or five, maybe.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_04: Could be, yeah.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_04: Could be.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_04: Like we have a 2010 team where I think 10 or 11 of them are from Troy High.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and we have a couple of things.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't exist.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: These kids aren't friends.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, uh at these big conglomerate clubs, they're not friends.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: They they're represented, they have 24 kids on a roster, and there's 18 high schools.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then they all go back to high school, and the high school team, everybody's from a different club, they don't know each other, there's no chemistry, there's no harmony of play.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then you add the fact that a lot of the clubs are trying to convince kids that high school soccer is lesser than.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and historically you can make an argument because a lot of high schools did not have quality coaching, right?
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_04: But if you look at the coaches all in this area, they're all from the bigger clubs of the region, they're all certified coaches, right?
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_04: So that that argument doesn't exist anymore, but the clubs are trying to pull the kids out because it's again financial motivation.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_04: You if a kid plays with your clubs.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_04: For the full year and said, well, in half year, you make more money off that kit, right?
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_04: And and uh there's too many misguiding messages for people nowadays.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and it happened so quickly.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_04: COVID really instant you know flipped the switch fast, I think.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_04: Because resources got resources through the COVID era all of a sudden went to affordability to unaffordability, right?
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_04: And and and that's really what drove the costs up.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's is a lot of the community-based clubs couldn't afford to indoor space anymore, and they just got swallowed up by other organizations.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_04: And um and there's no filter on the the the the facilities from lifting prices, because if they lift their prices, everybody's just passing it on to the consumer anyway.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_04: Doesn't matter to them.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm a business owner, right?
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_04: Independent of this.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_04: And in my business, if if inflation hits, price goes from ten dollars to fifteen dollars, I'm still making my five percent.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm actually making more money.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm happy with it, right?
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_04: And that's what you saw happen in soccer, is the clubs are happy to just pass the cost along because now they're taking a percentage off a bigger number than a smaller number.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's uh goes back to what I said earlier.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_04: Do you really want to make money off of training kids to play the sport?
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_04: Or do we have to find a model that is focusing more on developing the athlete and benefits from developing the athlete?
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: How many of your athletes play multiple sports within the club?
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_04: I would say at least 25% of our soccer players are playing other sports within the club at a minimum.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've never done the numbers.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but I would yeah, I would think.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_04: I mean Yeah, I gotta be at least probably higher than that.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's probably closer to the city.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's at least 25-30% if they do other sports.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is that how most clubs were in Germany?
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: Where they had multiple sports, right?
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because Barcelona, that's Spain, but Barcelona has a best has basketball, right?
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and there's there's derbies and and um you know and other sports as well.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: So go into that.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: Was that part of your thought process and all this?
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is just the European model of like an actual club.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're all called clubs, but you're not a club.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're a bunch of teams with the same jersey.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_04: Well, how how was how was it and you're paying to be there, right?
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_04: Remember that.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_04: We're all paying members for this club, right?
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_04: I I always get I always I always laugh when I hear a kid saying, I'm gonna go to an ID session, and they're paying$200 to go to an ID session.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's if you're invited like he was describing in Europe, that's one thing.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_04: If you're paying to play, it doesn't mean you're good enough to make the team.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_04: It means you are good enough to make the team and pay, right?
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_04: There's probably a dozen more kids that were better, but they can't afford, right?
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_04: Or they're not willing to pay.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_04: You're just good enough to make the team and can afford it in the end.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: I get e or I get DMs from a lot of parents who are like, okay, is this a generic college invite email?
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's because that's exactly what it is.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's oh, I was invited to an ID camp.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a public ID camp.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and it's$250.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, and you have to travel.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in football, like my nephew went to like Penn State ID camp because he's a three-star tight end, and he was invited to Penn State, and he didn't pay a dime.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so it's basically the exact same setup as you know, the invite, but go into the clubs in Germany and multi-sport clubs.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and how they're funded too.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so please I mean you've got to remember that was this was um I moved there early '93, right?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_03: So in and I lived all the way through ninety uh ninety nine, September of '99, that's when we arrived to the U.S.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: So that was a time frame.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm speaking factually from that time frame.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know what it's like today.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_03: But the community club that I participated is it had a tennis court, a couple tennis courts next to it.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_03: It had a clubhouse similar to this.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_03: It had a bunch of table tennis set up, indoor and outdoor.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we did have, but it was like a half basketball court that we can play and shoot hoops.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um certainly track available.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um in the winter, a couple times they would actually make us go and do gymnastics.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_03: At least I don't know the duration, but we would we would have to do gymnastics.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_03: I myself would pick up and go and play tennis, right?
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_03: And as soon as I'm done playing tennis, my buddy and I were playing football tennis or or you know, using our feet to to play, or we would go and play Batman, right?
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_03: We had a Batman that was just whatever, two, three kilometers away, all associated to the community.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_03: So um it was heavily encouraged to be part of a club and and feel like you're you're part of the community.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Did you have to participate, say, in tennis or batmint or basketball?
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_03: But it was an option, it was available.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I participated in all of them.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I played um a whole year um recreationally, but then another year competitively Batminton.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_03: So um it is heavily encouraged in that model to participate in as many sports as the club or the community can offer.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And how is it funded?
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't have to pay anything for it.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_03: The only thing that I may have had to pay for it is actually to be able to provide a picture, like a uh photo, so that they can properly register me.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_03: I know my parents, if they did, I don't know, they probably didn't have to pay anything.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_03: So the the all of it was basically funded through either fundraising or some kind of community event or however they got the funds, but the family did not pay for it.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_03: If you did pay for it, it was actually just a picture or whatever document you had to print, scan, and hand it in, hand it into them.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_04: And I think you get a lot of corporate sponsorships in Europe too, right?
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_04: There's a certain, I think, ta it's built into the taxation, yeah, from what I understand.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_04: So they they uh just like churches are funded by taxation, I think the same works in community athletics in a lot of European areas.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's yeah, government funded and makes everything and I don't think we well, I don't know.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to get involved in college sports to fix all this NIL and transfer portal stuff, so we'll see.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_04: But that's that's our that's our stretch goal as a club, as we we've said since day one, is we want to draw as many sponsors as possible to make the program free.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_04: Now you really can't make it free because then you can't control the demand, right?
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_04: But if we can get enough sponsors, there's enough businesses in this area that you can get sponsorships to make a program for free.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's not it's not impossible.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but that's that's really our stretch goal.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_04: Wherever we get there, I don't know, right?
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_04: But our stretch goal is to attract enough sponsorship to get it as close to zero as possible.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you start the conversation with sponsors?
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you do?
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just begging.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Please, please, please, please, please.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you explain who we are, you explain what we're doing.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, and you know, we identify a lot of sponsorship opportunities, right?
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_04: There's a price tag on the game jerseys, there's a price tag on the practice jerseys, a price tag for the bags, sweatshirts, whatever it is, right?
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_04: And if they want to be a cash sponsor, which we receive a lot of, um, you can just use it as a uh uh uh donation, right?
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_04: And you can use it to write off because we are a 501c3, and so um any money donated to us is is is a tax write-off for these companies.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So 501c3, well we talked about this because everybody complains about like, well, they're making this much money and they're supposed to be a nonprofit and not non-profit doesn't mean that you don't pay your employees.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Correct, correct.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_04: All our coaches are professional coaches, and our soccer program, our basketball program's got a different outlay.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we um we pop we pay our directors of our programs unless they choose to defer.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_04: Some of our directors choose to defer.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but you know, we being a nonprofit we we we can invest in our coaches in a different way, right?
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like um, you know, we've got I think coming into the spring season, which is our new coaching editions, we'll have five C license coaches, um, you know, a few B's and do we have an A?
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_04: We do not have A.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_04: We do not have A.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, we we have a coach that just finished his D license, Club paid for the whole licensing.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_04: We have a couple in the C license program right now.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_04: Club is paying for the C license.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing that?
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Are you paying that are you paying for it up front for them or are you doing like tiered out over a few years?
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_04: Once they pass, we pay them for the full amount, right?
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_04: So once they got their certificate, they get paid the full amount.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we have coach, we do a lot of things to invest in our coaches.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_04: We have um, I won't go into the details of it, but we do also have a um a program where we incentivize our coaches in a way that if a certain number of their players return, they will see a financial benefit as a result of it for the next year, right?
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Part of that includes also some you know curriculum requirements.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_04: We want to train certain ways, do certain things, right?
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_04: And so we've got a coaching incentive program we put in place.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um he mentioned the development program that we have, which is really the probably the most important program we have related to our future sustainability, because when you start a new club, you got to pull coaches from everywhere, right?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_04: You know, a lot of the coaches we have here are Troy residents.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_04: They were coaching in Troy for over 20 years.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_04: They're like me.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_04: I played in in Troy when I was a kid, right?
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so a lot of them are really happy to be on the staff because they're from the city anyway.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and and so you take all these coaches with very diverse backgrounds, it's hard to get them on the same page from a curriculum, right?
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_04: And the first year, I don't think we have a hundred percent solution on getting there, but we do know we can progressively get to that hundred percent solution by developing the coaches we have in the curriculum we want.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_04: And then rather than bring in new coaches from the outside, which we're still gonna continue to do, we need to develop our coaches so that you know, we have a couple coaches in our development program this year that are gonna be able to take on teams next year.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_04: And they sit hand in hand, as you said, with with our experienced staff, see what we do, how we do it, so that they're ready to execute it in uh in the next soccer year.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_04: And if we take four coaches, one's gonna be able to do it, one's gonna be great at it, and two of them are gonna be average at it, right?
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_04: But you need that that development program to identify the stars, the average, and the ones that you gotta say, yeah, you know, it's not gonna work out, right?
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_04: And we couple that in our club also with uh take our athletes that are high school athletes, and we offer them paid opportunities if they want, or for some of them, they would rather use NHS hours, national honors, society hours for school, and we allow them to help and sit and support coach some of our younger teams, right?
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_04: So our younger athletes are getting exposed to our older athletes, which they always get excited about.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and it I think long term that'll also breed a few more coaches into our club as time goes on.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_01: What do you guys have, or what do you guys have in plans for the ages three to seven?
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Anything right now or anything in the future?
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Should we talk about our fall plans?
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_03: We can touch base on that.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we we do have some plans um on paper.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_04: And um keep in mind, we're only nine months old right now.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they already have this building.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: So think about that when you're when you're listening to this.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_04: Go for it.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um we are gonna we are gonna start a recreation recreational side of our club now, and we're gonna start it in the fall.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, the need in the area has come up, and so we are going to be targeting the younger age groups.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we are also working on developing a preschool program as well.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_04: Love it.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and we have some of our coaches that are already participating in some local preschool programs, but we're gonna make an independent one.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we're gonna have a recreational side.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so that's that's in the development stages right now.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_04: Takes time, man, to make all this stuff.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day, before I went to New York, I helped Matt Pakovitz build uh what was at the time Lake Orient Soccer Club, and his priority was a youth academy.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the reason why.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like it's kind of like having your own facility, but let's say in three years, you guys are killing it, and you guys have like a legit team, but a coach leaves, coach leaves you and wants to go to Liverpool or whatever, and he takes two teams with you, and then you're like, man, we were oh that team was so good and it was important to the club, and you just kind of wrecked our club by leaving or whatnot.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have that foundation, if you have that youth academy that uh that you can always draw from in terms of new teams.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not maybe if that coach leaves and it's a U-14 team, obviously you're not gonna replace that quality, but you do have something coming up at eight years old, at seven years old, where you have you have you're always having that feeder that pipeline that pipeline into your full club.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's that's why that kid that I talked to yesterday, I call him kid, but he he's an adult, but I I'm getting old too.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um, no, I said two things.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I said youth academy that feeds into your club, and then a facility is the number, those are the two most important things, and then uh the coaching staff will come because uh who wouldn't want to be a part of something like this?
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think coaches will draw.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_01: How did you guys okay?
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly uh the staff is from Troy?
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, a lot of the staff is from Troy.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Were they a part of Troy Soccer Club or whatever?
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: What is it now?
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's Nationals?
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it Troy Nationals?
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I who knows?
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_01: It broke up, it's five different clubs now, it's two clubs.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who knows?
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it it's it's we we um you know, you to go back to your example about club coach takes players.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_04: Our our measurement tool is really twofold.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_04: Number one, how many of our athletes made the high school team or the middle school team they're trying to get on?
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, we we again we're nine months old.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_04: We just had our first round on soccer on the girls' side, the boys' side, we didn't how many girls' teams do you have?
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_04: We have one girl's high school team.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_04: One girl's and I believe every girl that tried out made the high school team, is what I heard.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, we we did have a couple girls go play lacrosse, right?
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_04: But um our basketball program, we had over 50 athletes try out for either middle school or high school in our program.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_04: And I think of them we had one or two did not make their respective teams, right?
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's really going forward gonna be the measurement tool we have.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_04: A, are we successful in delivering kids to the high school program they're trying to achieve to?
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_04: And B, are we retaining players within our club, right?
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_04: And the retention of the players is really gonna fall on the coach.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's their responsibility to make sure they're communicating with the families properly, developing the players properly, and doing all the elements that he's he's created in terms of their responsibilities.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then our responsibility as a club is to bring some of the coaching staffs from the local high schools to see these kids in advance, make sure our kids are exposed the way they want to.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not gonna try to bring a collegiate coach to come scout my 10-year-olds.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_04: That's it's silly.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_04: No, but their next level is high school, and we're gonna bring that to them.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I like that though, because a lot of the ECL clubs and whatnot, they're bringing in college coaches to come in and train.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you guys do that with the high school?
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just bring in the high school varsity coach, hey, run this touch and be like, oh, and then so one of my employees back in Buffalo was also a high school local coach.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever it was gonna be one of her players, I was like, hey, that's a Williamsville South guy.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Oh, yeah, you know, I mean, she got really excited, and that is gone.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's gone.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_01: That connection with clubs and their schools are is almost gone, and you guys are like the last.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_04: Well, maybe we're the first.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we're the first, not the last, right?
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_04: We're coming into the game new now.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're bringing it back.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's think about that.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because people uh that want to have a local club again are gonna see this and hopefully be like, hey, okay, uh who who instills the 70% rule?
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_04: That's a city requirement.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's a city requirement to be able to use their facilities and correct and whatnot.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm still I I'm sure every community is still like that.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_01: It still has that.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_04: There's there's civic resources that they have to make available to well, you've got to be a nonprofit too, right?
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um to utilize that.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_04: But um it's it's and and when I say maybe we're the first, I say that because there are other communities that have reached out to us about trying to replicate the model in their area, right?
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I I think you're gonna see more of this going forward.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_04: I think if people think through what youth athletics have become, they come to the same conclusions that we're discussing right now.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_04: And and when when you think it through and understand the landscape properly, you realize what's best for your kids is a step-by-step approach, not elementary school kid looking at a college he's gonna go to, more like elementary school kid looking at middle school.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_04: And we don't have middle school soccer in Michigan, but I will use basketball's example, that's where they go next.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then you know, a middle school kid playing soccer, basketball's gonna go play in high school next.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_04: And so you have to go step by step by step.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_04: You can't go from elementary school to college, it's silly.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but didn't you say uh in our last meeting uh that uh one of your board members is the director of Troy Athletics?
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or he was at the ribbon cutting?
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_01: He was just at the ribbon cutting.
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, the director of athletics was yeah.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_04: Got it.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, that's gone.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_01: That that connection is just completely gone.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_01: How did you guys you guys didn't really market this?
• 1:25:13
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't market at all.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_04: Again, again, 400 kids.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_04: 750.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's all score.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, that's the top tryout.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_04: 750.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yesterday that has 400.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_01: 750.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys are hoping on 150.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_04: We were hoping to get 150 sign up for tryouts.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_04: We were we're we were we were, you know, we actually had the conversation.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_04: Do we want to start with four or five teams, or do we want to go with 10 teams?
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and and we got a bit overwhelmed.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we had a very busy tryout.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_04: Not that the open house week was extremely busy for us.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_04: I think, I think we had to fill the gap with four or five coaches, and we were out searching away.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_04: But uh, luckily he and I are connected well enough in the area where we're able to reach out to enough people to make it happen.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Does everybody know about this facility though?
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like the people that are outside of Troy, outside of Rochester.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I consider it as Rochester.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_04: I could throw a rock and hit Rochester, but you know, I can't say that I'm too tied into the pipeline of soccer in the area.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_04: I you're probably closer to it than I am.
• 1:26:20
  SPEAKER_04: I I I uh it's uh you know, from a management of the business perspective, my I've always said we have to identify our vulnerabilities and correct them, right?
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so vulnerability is winter space, you gotta have something cost controllable.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so you gotta see your business vulnerabilities and risks, and you gotta address them before they become a problem.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's why we have a facility like this.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's why we're actively looking for more, and we just we have to protect the kids that way.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_01: How much do you rent this space out?
• 1:26:57
  SPEAKER_04: Depends.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_04: I I don't really, you know, we we've I I can't say that, you know, we we have some adults that use it to train, play in here on themselves, you know, and they they I think they they train every two hours, they give ten bucks each person.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um we've rented it to some club people for birthday parties, a hundred bucks.
• 1:27:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, I I think the value of the space is somewhere around 250 to 300 an hour, but we haven't really um we haven't gone that road.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're not relying on it.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't build our business model that way, exactly.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the key.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna have your own facilities, don't rely on rentals to keep the doors open or the lights on.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the the few clubs that do have their own facility, at least in New York or Western New York, you had to rent it out.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have to rent it out to make any money.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_04: We're all volunteers on the board, man.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_04: We can't afford to.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_04: We don't need another full time job renting out a facility.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_04: I mean Maybe if we had a facility the size of UWM, we'd then, you know, do something different and hire someone to do that.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_01: But um So my facility, uh my facility in Buffalo was 5,400 square feet, but the plane surface was 4,500 square feet.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_01: It uh was 60 by 80 or something like that.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the building was a 1975 build and it was destroyed.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh it was old like uh countertop, granite countertop company, and they destroyed the place, you know, with what there's water damage, uh an entire south wall had to be completely replaced.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it had mold, asbestos, it had uh something else wrong with it too.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the owners had to put in a hundred and like ten thousand dollars just to get the building up to code.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it allowed me to uh just design the place the way that I wanted to.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_01: I paid for the turf, I paid for the fencing, and I paid and we split the cost of the netting.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so all in, we're talking for me, it was around not me personally, but with the owners of the building, because I just rented the owners and me all in for under two let's call it two hundred thousand dollars.
• 1:29:35
  SPEAKER_01: How much money do you think that you're saving by doing your own facility versus having to go out to where I don't know what what is around here right now?
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_04: I mean you get evolution, you have evolution the bubble, yeah.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oakland, uh you said a thousand dollars an hour.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's expensive, yeah.
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and and think about the demands of some of these parents at some of the clubs, they want they want four nights a week, or they want three nights a week, and they want an hour and a half session and they want their own half of the field.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, good luck.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's not happening.
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh can you go into like what you think that you're saving?
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_04: Well, it's incomparable because when you you we have access to this 24 hours, you know, seven days a week every day of the year, right?
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, it's it's for the price of a facility, it's basically the same cost as renting uh 11 v11 field four hours a week.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's it's not all that different, and we get to use it all year.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_04: Financially, it makes a lot of sense, right?
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_04: But you have to there there was this had a quarter million dollar build-out, right?
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_04: There's build out costs related to it, and there's there's you know, you gotta pay taxes, you gotta pay insurance, you got a lot of other costs, but it's still it's still a greater benefit than it is to to rent out a facility.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys own this or did you guys lease this?
• 1:31:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lease.
• 1:31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, and you're already thinking about doing another one.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I I think we're limited in growth if we don't.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_04: So um that it's it's you know, last year we had to cap how many teams we had, and we'll be in a similar situation this year if we don't find more space.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_01: So are you guys worried about tryouts?
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, we wanted 150.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've got 100.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_04: I mentioned I mentioned to you our early registration, right?
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_04: That we opened that up.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_04: Our early registration numbers came in much higher than we anticipated, right?
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_04: So we know that we're gonna have a really good repeat.
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_04: We've had ID sessions and we've had a significant interest outside the club.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_04: We've received a lot of direct interest of people reaching out to us individually.
• 1:31:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, it's a bit intimidating.
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_04: We don't know what we're gonna walk into in the spring.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when you started, it was really just the stats that you had in place and the word of mouth, and be like, hey, by the way, we're going we're uh I'm going to Blackhawks, and we're like, oh, what's black?
• 1:32:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's word of mouth for the most part.
• 1:32:10
  SPEAKER_04: We just we just created a website.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_04: We put out a couple videos, he and I both about what we were about.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_04: We put up lawn signs, and we talked about that last time, yeah.
• 1:32:21
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, and that's about it, you know.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Lawn signs, it's amazing how long how well lawn signs can work.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, people you see them, right?
• 1:32:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_04: We had a lot of people reach out to us and say, Oh, because of the lawn signs, this is why we're here, you know, and and it's uh we still get people come up to us all the time and don't even know we exist, and they start seeing one of our teams and they start inquiring about it.
• 1:32:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um always strikes me odd when someone from Troy does that.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_04: Because, you know, we we did a couple of things this year, like when when we gave the kids these these sweatshirts that he's seen.
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we did we did blackout days at school where all the kids went and wore them to school.
• 1:32:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we had a you know, a lot of things like that, so kids show the pride.
• 1:32:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's smart.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_04: At the Troy High Troy Athens game, we we had these um, I don't know if you heard last year, soccer.com had to fire at one of their facilities, right?
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_04: So all the uniforms were late.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_04: And so we went out and made special bright yellow uniforms, put all the kids' names on the back, put the logo on the front, and made sure all the kids that had them wore them at the Troy High, Troy Athens, one of the initial soccer games, so they could see the club there, right?
• 1:33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:33:24
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, outside of that and some small publications that we've advertised in, um, we have uh really not advertised.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_04: Really, we we've we purposely not advertised after we started to get overwhelmed with you know registrations.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think that and I said this to you before, I think everybody, I think every soccer club should have their own podcast.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_01: I also think every club should have their own facility, at least like this.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Don't don't and don't fall in love with a new build.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Don't feel like you have to buy the land, don't feel like you have to be 11v11 or has to have a hundred-foot ceilings.
• 1:34:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, you don't need to work on punting, guys.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't.
• 1:34:07
  SPEAKER_01: You just have something like this that you have 24-7 access to, and the club will reap the benefits.
• 1:34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:34:17
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you got to convince families too, right?
• 1:34:19
  SPEAKER_04: You know soccer, right?
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_04: We we've all been engaged in it.
• 1:34:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you recognize what you can do in this space, and you also recognize that training in this space is probably better than training in a big space for most clubs.
• 1:34:30
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:34:30
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go chasing balls.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_04: You get the touches you need and everything.
• 1:34:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I I don't think the average person recognizes that, right?
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_04: So it takes a little bit of education sometimes to explain, hey, you're in here, small space, you're gonna touch it twice as much as in a bigger space.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna get more touches, and really in a training session, you want that kid to touch a ball a thousand times, right?
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_04: And and the more touches, the better, the better his feet get, you know, and the better player he becomes.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, when you get older, you do have a need for larger space, right?
• 1:35:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so we do have 11v11 fields that we we we we secure so that we can do some of our larger team concepts.
• 1:35:07
  SPEAKER_04: But every team, even the ones that train on the bigger fields, are in here at least once a week.
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you yeah, you get so much more done in a tighter space because you're getting so much more repetition on the ball.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and even if you're just playing, think quicker.
• 1:35:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you had two teams on here the last time I was here, right?
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_01: You had two teams, both going this way.
• 1:35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, and it's just it's all you need.
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need that big of a space.
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_01: But anything else that uh you want to touch on uh that we missed or didn't bring up?
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to keep you guys, and you guys probably have sessions, what, starting at four?
• 1:35:45
  SPEAKER_04: We do, yeah.
• 1:35:45
  SPEAKER_04: I got a little bit of a big thing.
• 1:35:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they're coming at four.
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we go from four to about ten.
• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_04: Although tonight, do we have a tentacle?
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_01: This episode is brought to you by Salt Athletic.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_01: A couple weeks ago, I'm training one of my college players.
• 1:35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she plays at Kentucky.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I noticed that she has uh one of these salt bags.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I see them on social media all the time, and I was wondering, I was like, okay, does this thing really work?
• 1:36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she opened up her bag and pulled her cleats out, and it was the worst smelling pair of cleats maybe that I've ever smelled.
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_01: While they were in the bag, I didn't smell anything.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was amazing that it could trap in all of the smell so that her bag doesn't stink, that her car doesn't stink.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_01: I could not vouch for this product more.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_01: As a goalkeeper, I wish I had this 20 years ago to for my gloves.
• 1:36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they do have a glove bag.
• 1:36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Go to the link in the description for 10% off and get rid of all the smell, guys.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Nine to ten.
• 1:36:47
  SPEAKER_04: Tonight we don't.
• 1:36:48
  SPEAKER_04: So it's always a challenge too getting the older teams to come in nine to ten.
• 1:36:52
  SPEAKER_04: But I mean, that's where you're the only time to train anywhere, right?
• 1:36:54
  SPEAKER_04: When you got so many teams.
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:36:56
  SPEAKER_04: Every club is running their kids late, and it's always it's always tough.
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_04: But um, no, it's just we're uh we're happy to had us on.
• 1:37:03
  SPEAKER_04: We're we're uh we're doing our best for our families and our kids, and that's all we're here to do.
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's blacks blackhawk sportsclub.com.
• 1:37:13
  SPEAKER_04: Blackhawksportsclub.com.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_04: Mouthful, that's right.
• 1:37:16
  SPEAKER_04: Not really.
• 1:37:16
  SPEAKER_04: Don't you don't want to type my email address by the time you type andrewtoon?
• 1:37:20
  SPEAKER_04: Blackhawksportsclub.com.
• 1:37:22
  SPEAKER_04: You get writers cramp.
• 1:37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Anything you want to add?
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, thank you for having us.
• 1:37:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's um it's been great to um you know share a little bit about our club.
• 1:37:32
  SPEAKER_03: And um yeah, thanks for having us.
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but we don't make too much trouble with you.
• 1:37:36
  SPEAKER_04: I get on the soapbox sometimes about youth sports and college and how these clubs are running things, and it just drives me nuts nowadays.
• 1:37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's upset with it.
• 1:37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody is, and it's just like it's a good it's good because somebody in California will watch this and be like, man, those guys spot on.
• 1:37:54
  SPEAKER_01: They think exactly like I because we're all in the same boat.
• 1:37:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're all we all think the same way, we're all fed up with the same system, and we're all just wanna know that we're not alone.
• 1:38:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:06
  SPEAKER_04: And all we want to do is develop kids in the end, right?
• 1:38:08
  SPEAKER_04: And developing kids, I'm convinced, doesn't mean if you know he was mentioning playing badminton and and other things.
• 1:38:15
  SPEAKER_04: Playing badminton is gonna make you a better soccer player.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_04: I can't tell you how, but I know it does.
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_04: Playing basketball makes our kids better soccer players.
• 1:38:23
  SPEAKER_04: I can't tell you how, and it doesn't even have to be at a high level, but the influence of that sport to soccer and vice versa is is is it's incalculable, right?
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I wish I was smart enough to understand body kinematics and what causes what, where, and why.
• 1:38:39
  SPEAKER_04: But playing multiple sports is definitely better for these kids and getting out of this specialization world and and really focusing on the whole human being, right?
• 1:38:48
  SPEAKER_04: Making sure they're doing well in school, making sure everything is comes to the comes to the party, right?
• 1:38:54
  SPEAKER_04: Caring about that whole individual is really what we were trying to do in the end.
• 1:38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:38:58
  SPEAKER_01: I heard something about tennis actually, about how if you want to develop uh you know a what the most well-rounded athlete, have them play tennis at a young age.
• 1:39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's the same it's the same concept with Batman.
• 1:39:11
  SPEAKER_01: Lateral movement, yeah.
• 1:39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it said longevity too.
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_01: They said that they live longer.
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe tennis is a great sport.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_04: I when the kids are younger, um, I always recommend to parents tennis and soccer.
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I and as I get older, I like to say soccer and wrestling.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_04: And and the reason is is you know, you're in that tennis environment, you're moving laterally, the emotions are good, um, but you learn how to be accountable for yourself, right?
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_04: And soccer is a team sport, so there's not a lot of individual accountability.
• 1:39:39
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta learn how to play with others, right?
• 1:39:40
  SPEAKER_04: But there's also good understanding how to be accountable yourself at tennis brings.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_04: And as you get older, I've always liked wrestling because it challenges you in a different way, it challenges you emotionally, you know?
• 1:39:51
  SPEAKER_04: And it doesn't, I don't know how it benefits soccer athleticism.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_04: But when I think of the mental fortitude you have to have to be a uh a wrestler and a sport like that, and by the way, we'll never have a wrestling program because our insurance won't permit it in this building.
• 1:40:06
  SPEAKER_04: But if you think about what um wrestling brings in terms of internal fortitude and what you learn, that's definitely something that helps you play in soccer or any other sport, right?
• 1:40:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's just uh structuring other sports.
• 1:40:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like discipline for me, from my experience, is is it teaches you so much of it?
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Roger Federer, right?
• 1:40:27
  SPEAKER_03: Tiger Woods, how many times have they hit that ball?
• 1:40:31
  SPEAKER_03: How many times has Roger Federer served that wall?
• 1:40:34
  SPEAKER_03: How many times do we ask our kids to stand against a wall and just pass?
• 1:40:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 1:40:38
  SPEAKER_03: It teaches you discipline.
• 1:40:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it can be soccer, it can be tennis, it can be table tennis, it can be you know golf, right?
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_03: And if you have that built within you, now you have that discipline to really, really work hard and and and sharpen that that skill of yours, you bring that on the soccer field, that's a different energy.
• 1:40:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's a different mentality.
• 1:41:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the school.
• 1:41:01
  SPEAKER_03: And the school academically, absolutely.
• 1:41:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:41:04
  SPEAKER_04: That's what we're trying to do, develop human beings in the end, not just soccer players or athletes, right?
• 1:41:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's just that they're human beings and we want them to be good functioning members of society, you know?
• 1:41:14
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
• 1:41:17
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you very much.
• 1:41:17
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate it.
• 1:41:18
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:41:19
  SPEAKER_01: We are done.
• 1:41:20
  SPEAKER_04: I hate soccer.