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Ten Years of Success for Supercuts SoccerFest
Supercuts SoccerFest Is Seeing Growth In 10th Anniversary Event
By Patrick Strohecker
In 2002, the first ever Supercuts SoccerFest was organized by students in the sport management program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In the first year, they had mainly local organizations, such as Bruegger’s, Bueno Y Sano, and the Mullins Center, act as key sponsors. The tournament only had a few dozen teams sign up for the event, clearly allowing room for improvement.
Now entering its 10th anniversary, the soccer tournament is seeing great success. Over 100 teams signed up for this year’s tournament and tournament sponsors include Coca-Cola, Blackberry, Verizon, Comcast, Puma, Subway, and of course Supercuts. The growth of the tournament has been substantial, but since students put on the tournament, a new staff is needed every year, making it difficult to continue to put on a great event.
“Even though the event is in its 10th year, it is like a new one every year because it is all of the students’ first years,” said project facilitator professor Mark McDonald. “If I had three full-time people working on SoccerFest, it would be easier than having 24 part-time students.”
McDonald, or as his students call him “Doc”, has been involved with the intensive learning assignment for over 21 years. Prior to the Supercuts SoccerFest, the sport management department put on the Haigis Hoopla, a 3-on-3 basketball tournament that took place at the Haigis Mall. That event took place from 1991 until 2001, when it was replaced by SoccerFest beginning in 2002.
This year, students involved in the intensive, six-credit course were separated into five event departments: sponsorships, registration/hospitality, marketing, tournament operations, and finance. Each student requests to be put into one of the departments and is responsible in taking care of operations in his or her specific areas needs for the tournament.
But, before a student is admitted into the course, they must volunteer in order to fulfill hours and meet certain requirements for the event.
“Being a key volunteer has been a great experience,” said sophomore volunteer Kevin Wyman. “It gives me a head start for next year.”
Once students complete the volunteer process, they are admitted into the class, which counts as six-credits toward their graduation requirement, and are part of the event staff for the rest of their time at UMass.
“It is a lot like a live learning experience. It is like holding a real job,” said senior Matt Graham.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, the students meet with McDonald to go over any questions that they have regarding the event. However, McDonald leaves close to 95% of the operations up to the students, really forcing the students to work together to put on the best event. That means exchanging dozens of emails each week, sending thoughts and ideas, questions, and any Google Docs that the students have that could be helpful to other departments and the overall operations of the event.
“I facilitate everything. I see them twice a week and they give me questions and I rarely ever give them answers back,” said McDonald. “I leave it up to them to solve the problems and work them out amongst group members.”
For the 10 years that the event has been going on, each department has only been a half-year course, with the exception of the sponsorship department, which is full year. However, beginning next year, every department will require a full-year of commitment from the students in the program.
“I think by making all the departments full year, it will only help make the event better and help it grow,” said senior study abroad student Andy Eastoe.
Currently, SoccerFest is the largest grass-roots tournament in the Pioneer Valley, amassing over $27,000 this year from sponsorships and entry fees to use toward the event and make it as big as possible. But in order to keep the tournament growing, the students had to branch out to different areas in order to get the name out there. They had an article written and published in the Springfield Gazette, multiple radio advertisements can be heard on the radio on tournament sponsor station Hits Now 94.3, and even reached out to local youth soccer leagues in Connecticut.
Prior to this year, the majority of the teams that participated in the tournament came from local soccer organizations in the surrounding communities. On top of all of that, they have even tried to gain UMass student awareness to enter teams in the event.
“This year we did an event called Hall Wars where each dorm had the opportunity to submit a team of students who wanted to participate in this year’s event,” said Graham. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the type of student response that we were looking for out of that.”
Despite the failed attempt at Hall Wars, the event organizers held the first ever Southwest Shoot-Out on April 12th to gain student attraction to the upcoming tournament. Students had the chance to come out and take part in great games, such as a penalty shootout and dribbling obstacle course, while also given the opportunity to learn more about the event and have the chance to sign up a team for the upcoming event.
This year’s event has taken over 260 members to organize, with only 24 of those members being actual students that have gone through the necessary steps to be enrolled in the six-credit course. The rest are the key volunteers who still have a big hand in the tournament and are expected to pull their own weight before, during, and after the event.
“I fully expect close to 200 members of the staff to help out during the event, expecting that many won’t actually show up for the early-morning shift and they will scatter in throughout the day,” said McDonald.
This year’s event will take place on Saturday April 28th on the practice fields behind the Warren McGuirk Stadium on the UMass campus.###
Intramural Basketball Championships and SoccerFest Tournaments Give UMass Students Something to Be Proud Of
Last month, at the end of the Spring Break, the UMass recreation center hosted the UMass Regional Basketball Tournament. The tournament pitted teams from all over the New England region in a multiple-division basketball tournament to see who would receive a bid into the National tournament.
Seeing pictures from this event got me to thinking about how similar this is to the upcoming Supercuts SoccerFest. In the largest comparison, the intramural basketball tournament was also put on and organized by students. The volunteers for the tournament were all college students, making it an all-college event. Now, despite the fact that there are numerous age groups for the SoccerFest tournament, it is still a eerily similar to intramural basketball tournament. Students are the sole organizers (minus the professor) in charge of setting up and making sure everything goes and runs as planned before, during, and after the event.
These two events are giving UMass students a reason to be proud of the hard work that they are putting in as just college students. Despite the fact that the 10th Annual Supercuts SoccerFest has yet to happen this year, the fact that a student-run and organized event is in its 10th year is a great feat in itself.
If they can continue to put out a great product year-in-and-year-out, then these students will be ready for the real world in no time.
The Marvelous World of Joe Posnanski
I encountered sort of a weird scenario over the past weeks of covering sports blogger Joe Posnanski. Posnanski was a well-known and renowned columnist for Sports Illustrated. However, in the past week, he has slowed up on blogging on his own personal blog “Joe Blogs” because he is currently leaving SI and starting a new venture in what he calls a “joint thing” with USA Today Sports Group and MLB Advanced Media. So, I explored over to his SI blog and began reading some of those publications.
His SI blog, that he properly titled “Joe Posnanski Curiously Long Posts” are similar to the posts that he puts on his personal blog. Not all of the stories are the same, but the way in which he writes and interjects his opinion in the pieces helps you get a sense of what type of personality Posnanski has.
Although he is really a baseball nerd, he seems to look deeper into certain sports issues than what the everyday fan sees on the field. Everyone knows about March Madness and the hype that surrounds “filling out your bracket” and hopefully being the one that has the best bracket in their pool and wins hundreds of dollars. In his post “Madness, Money, and Mayhem” Posnanski went rouge and explored the ever-so-complicated world of Las Vegas style betting during the first four days of March Madness.
Posts like that one interest me because he gives his readers an insiders look at something they may not have known existed. But, the world of money and numbers is something that Posnanski lives for. The one thing that I noticed while reading some of his posts is that he is a huge numbers guy. Take his post “Happy Pi Day” for example. Pi Day may be one of the most celebrated non-holidays in America, so he took the 3.14 number and put a sports spin on it. He looked into all of the players in baseball who have career statistics that closely resemble Pi to the furthest decimal (Mike Marshall is the closest to Pi…).
So as Posnanski leaves SI for his new venture, he lets it be known that his time there was nothing short of fantastic. On a number of occasions he had a cover story for SI, one about now Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Zack Greinke and his battle with anxiety, LeBron James being the next NBA superstar, and his story about Jim Thome and his prowess to bring back postseason baseball to Minnesota. Posnanski is a wonderful writer and will be read and respected wherever he goes.
University of Arizona’s Own Soccer Fest
With this year being the 10th annual Supercuts SoccerFest hosted by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst sport management program, I began to think about what other schools around the country hold soccer tournaments that are organized by students. The one that I found most commonly on a search was the University of Arizona’s soccer tournament (which has only been around for two years) that helps raise money for students to study abroad in Germany.
The tournament, called the Deutscher Studenten Cup, has been held for the last two years and is a put on by students of the University of Arizona German studies department that helps the club raise money to send students abroad to study in Germany. Much like the SoccerFest tournament at UMass, the Deutscher Studenten Cup is comprised of local teams, students, staff/faculty, and local professionals to help raise money for the club. The style is formatted much like the World Cup format, pitting 32 teams against each other until one team is crowned champion.
Once the event has ended and all of the proceeds and money is added up, multiple students from the German studies program are selected from a large pool of candidates and are given a scholarship to study abroad in Germany.
The event, which has only been held twice, is growing in popularity among the UofA community and looks to be an event that will be around for a long, long time.
SoccerFest 2012: About the Sponsors
Like any good event, the Supercuts SoccerFest needs sponsors in order to put on a good tournament. And, going into its 10th year, the tournament has had many long-running sponsors, many of which are large, brand-name sponsors. So, without further ado, here they are!
Supercuts: Might as well start out with the main sponsor, Supercuts. The nationwide hair salon/stylist chain company has been a partner of the event for many years. Founded in 1975, the company has over 1,200 locations around the United States (and in Puerto Rico) and has amassed over $100 million in revenue since it opened.
Puma: The European athletic company founded back in the mid-1920s is primarily known for its association to soccer. Being involved with SoccerFest gives Puma the recognition amongst a soccer community, but it is also a big-name sponsor that can be a long-running sponsor with the event.
Blackberry: The company that invented the smartphone is one of the largest companies involved with SoccerFest. The worldwide phone company has been involved with the UMass event for a few years now and is a large, brand-name company that SoccerFest can put its name and event behind.
Coca-Cola: The largest soda company in the world, was founded in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia. Coca-Cola has been a company that has been involved with many sporting events in the past, especially on the professional and collegiate levels.
New England Revolution: The Boston based professional soccer team is a member of Major League Soccer and has been involved with SoccerFest since its first year. It is one of the few teams that has been associated with the event including the Springfield Armor (NBA D-League) and the Springfield Falcons (AHL).
Other sponsors for the event include: Hits 94.3, the Mullins Center, The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, Bueno Y Sano, Comcast, Verizon, and Peter Pan Bus Lines.
Supercuts SoccerFest Entering Its 10th Year
After beginning in the spring of 2002, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst sport management program is organizing the 10th annual Supercuts SoccerFest. The event will take place on April 28th on the campus of UMass.
The event is a way for the students in the UMass sport management program to hold an event that is targeted to promote the game of soccer in the Amherst and surrounding communities. But, the event is not just centered around the game of soccer. Included in the event is live bands and DJs, games, food, and many other activities that make the event appealing to many different groups of people, not just in soccer.
The event is organized strictly by sport management majors, who are enrolled in an intensive six-credit sport event management class every spring. The goal for these selected students is to manage a 100+ team soccer event. Each of the students selected into the course, is divided into six different categories, each position responsible for a specific part of the tournament: finance, sponsorship, marketing, volunteer management, registration/hospitality and tournament operations.
In recent years, the event has gained many top, brand-name sponsors to help put on the event, including Nike, Blackberry, Hits 94.3, Coca-Cola, Country Nissan, Clif Bar, and of course Supercuts.
After the event, the students in the sport management class will then take a portion of the proceeds that the tournament made and donate them to various charities, not only in Amherst, but around the United States and the world.
Supercuts SoccerFest 2012
SuperCuts SoccerFest is Arriving for Their 10th Year in Amherst
This is the 10th year of the SuperCuts SoccerFest held on the campus of UMass-Amherst. The tournament is a non-profit tournament that is put on by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Sports Management program. Since this is a growing event, this could be a way to cover a large-scale event for the area, which usually has dozens of teams participating in it. I am looking to take the angle of what it takes to put together an event like this, but to also take a look at how the event has grown since its first tournament 10 years ago. There are a few angles that I can incorporate into this story to lead up to the tournament on April 28th.
Since I am taking a behind the scenes look in setting up the tournament, hopefully I’ll be able to attend one of their meetings and get some photos of the organizers in action.
Interviews:
1.) Jake Evers and Molly Powers- Both work in the registration aspect
2.) Rob Cohen, Nick Corcoran, Andy Eastoe, Matthew Graham, Demi Staluppi, Jake Flyn- Members of the marketing team
3.) Stephen Christ, Justin Handerhan, Hyun Sun Lee, Kevin Lombard, David MacIntre- Members of tournament operations
4.) Any sponsors
You can obtain further information about the tournament at the tournament website: http://soccerfest.org/ Or by calling the tournament phone: (413) 545 0454
Five Tips to Personal Success
1. You need to have the “hustle”- The drive to want to go out and try and experiment with new ideas that, if they don’t succeed, at least give you the experience, but if you don’t do them, you’ll be left behind by everyone else.
2. Becoming a good entrepreneur- You need to surround yourself with good staff members to get your product going and then once it is up, surround yourself with good personnel, such as investors and other people that can build your company.
3. Reading- As a journalist, you need to take advantage of the various sources of media out there: blogs, social media, print, etc… and by reading them, you will inform yourself and it will help your product as well.
4. Generate arguments- As a reporter, you will not always be supported by readers, therefore, you need to be able to write something, but support your writing with valid arguments so that you don’t come off as sounding uninformed.
5. Working with data- Data and numbers are as important as anything that you could use as a reporter because they can add clear-cut facts to your story if introduced properly. It helps give your story depth, substance, and credibility because it is something that is proven, rather than something that people may as interpret as opinion or false.
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