Dayton art student and master cake artist connected through cake

Nicole Manzo shows off her autographed sketch that was the inspiration and blueprint of the Charm City Cake that was displayed and eaten at the TourneyCentral booth at the 2011 NSCAA Convention in Baltimore.

Charm City Cakes aces display booth at the NSCAA

The 2011 NSCAA Convention is being held in Baltimore. Naturally, we had to get a Charm City Cakes, Ace of Cakes cake. Just had to! But what was it going to look like?

Back in June when we were planning the booth, we had all sorts of ideas. The one that finally emerged was a Maryland blue crab tearing at a soccer ball. The big problem was nobody here at TourneyCentral could draw.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just go to a toy store, find a soccer ball and a toy crab, put them together, shoot that and send it over to the cake folks.” Only in Ohio, Maryland blue crabs are hard to find. Any crab was hard to find. I was just about to give up when I tweeted:

Can anyone draw a Maryland blue crab attacking a soccer ball like a monster truck?

A few days later, I got an email with a sketch attached from Nicole Manzo. Nichole is a talented artist who loves being creative but was apprehensive about studying art. Art doesn’t pay the bills; business skills do.

But the world could not lose one more artist to “practical thinking” and her sketch was going to be my cake. I sent it over to Duff’s crew and they pounced on it, confident they could make an awesome cake from that.

And they did. And they not only made an awesome cake, they each signed Nicole’s sketch which we are going to frame and present to her when we get back home to Dayton.

And this is Nicole’s sketch Katherine and Ben used to build her cake. The Charm City Cakes crew is just awesome for doing this for us. We’re fans forever! (My favorite edit is the lipstick on the crab. Awesome!)

And just because Mary Alice’s voice was in my head, saying “It’s cake. Eat the cake.” and I didn’t get a piece the last time we got a Charm City Cake, we sliced into the cake at about 8:00pm and started serving pieces to hungry soccer coaches who stopped by the booth.

There may be some left, so if you are hungry, booth 1527. Remember, cake at 8:00pm is dessert, but at 8:00am, it is pastry. Yellow cake, chocolate butter cream filling. Awesomely delicious crab cake.

UPDATED
The Fairmont High School Newspaper published the story about Nicole. You can read it here.

Tweet Inspires Local Student to Design Ace of Cakes Soccer Cake

“Can anyone draw a Maryland blue crab attacking a soccer ball like a monster truck?” That tweet from TourneyCentral.com President Gerard McLean moved 16-year-old Nicole Manzo, a junior at Fairmont High School, to try her hand at designing a cake. McLean forwarded the design to Charm City Cakes, the star of the popular television show, “Ace of Cakes,” on the Food Network.

TourneyCentral.com is using the resulting masterpiece cake to promote their complete end-to-end soccer tournament management system at the upcoming National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Convention in Baltimore, Maryland on January 13-15, 2011. The annual event is a showplace of soccer education, awards and exhibits for soccer coaches and youth tournament organizers nationwide.

The request actually got to Nicole secondhand through her mother Karen Manzo, who is a business associate of McLean’s. According to Karen, Nicole is an “Awesome artist,” whose first job was as a face painter at the Italian Fest. She continues to volunteer for that event and others as time permits. In addition to artistic pursuits, Nicole is a dedicated business student who is, “determined to own her own business some day.” On the extra-curricular front, the younger Manzo is a three-sport athlete spending time competing in field hockey, swimming and track.

ABOUT TOURNEYCENTRAL
TourneyCentral is the only fully integrated, event-focused online solution for youth soccer tournaments. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, advertising tools provide tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Baltimore in January 2011. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

TourneyCentral announces major updates in 2011

TourneyCentral, the only fully integrated online solution for youth soccer tournaments, announced today it has included several new features in the 2011 release of the popular soccer tournament software. The features will provide additional capability via sophisticated integration with new media, including social media. Soccer players, coaches and fans will be now be able to combine their tournament experiences with their personal Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts. TourneyCentral is the only event-focused youth soccer tournament software that provides a complete end-to-end integration solution.

“Our customers continue to ask for leading edge features as the soccer tournament market develops and grows and we continue to respond,” says Gerard McLean, President of TourneyCentral. “At the same time, our competitors have become more aggressive in their attempts to mislead the market regarding our capabilities and strengths. As the established leader in soccer tournament software, it’s time to make another giant step ahead of the market by providing these unique and unparalleled new features.”

In addition to participants, TourneyCentral has also integrated its online DEALS section with advertisers’ social media spaces like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Fans can now connect with advertisers in multiple ways, providing a stronger and more robust experience for important sponsors of the software.

“All our advertising for our tournament has moved online,” claims Dan Monahan, tournament director for the Mead Cup. “The tools that TourneyCentral provides for us in their online DEALS area are far more comprehensive than anything we can print in a program. We can sell more quickly, distribute to a wider audience and drive significantly more traffic to our advertisers.”

“We’ve listened carefully to what the core soccer market wants, and this newest release is our response,” says McLean. “We’re making the tournament experience even memorable for our participants by integrating today’s vibrant new media environment even more tightly with TourneyCentral.”

The only solution of its kind that does not rely on external partners to provide functionality, TourneyCentral offers a stable, secure environment for advertisers as well as fans, coaches and players.

ABOUT TOURNEYCENTRAL
TourneyCentral is the only fully integrated, event-focused online solution for youth soccer tournaments. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, advertising tools provide tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Baltimore in January 2011. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

TourneyCentral.com is owned by Rivershark Inc., based in Ohio. Companion and marketing partner properties consist of The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Baltimore in January 2010.

Contact for more information
Gerard McLean
gmclean [at] rivershark.com
937-836-6255

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What GotSoccer GotWrong about TourneyCentral

Recently, GotSoccer sent out a press release outlining the difference between their tournament management software and TourneyCentral. We, of course, were immediately flattered; not because we particularly care about what GotSoccer thinks of our product but because that told us that their customers and prospects were asking them about TourneyCentral. And they had to defend their product against ours.

That makes us happy.

But GotSoccer did get a few things wrong about TourneyCentral. After all, accuracy at a soccer tournament is very important, even more so when you trust software to drive your event. Accuracy makes sure the right teams (including referees) show up on time and at the correct fields and the right teams advance. Accuracy is critical to most soccer teams, coaches, parents and players when it comes to standings and who gets the trophy. If you are going to start comparing yourself to the big dogs in the yard, it’s important to get the big things right.

Here are just a few things GotSoccer GotWrong about TourneyCentral:
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