Soccer Tournament Review

Yesterday, I received an email from YATL (Yet Another Tournament Listing) web site called The Scoreboard News at www.scoreboardnews.com. In their invitation, in big red letters, they said: [Please do not … refer us to any other web site for additional information]

I found that mildly entertaining, but also a glaring indicator of just how bad most tournament web sites are. How many times have you been told: “Just go to our web site for information on that..” and when you get there, you’re left staring at the site, wondering how you would get to that bit of information about the scores or tryouts or a news item on the club, etc, etc.

The Scoreboard News, whose entire existence depends on information about tournaments, camps and leagues is begging its posters to please not send them a reference to their web site. Just fill out the online form they provide for you.

Our Advice: Giving people the “Just go to our web site..” is the same thing as saying “just down the road, can’t miss it.” It hardly ever is just down the road and 90% of the time, you will miss it. Unless you have a TourneyCentral.com site.

In the web industry, we have what is known as the “bounce rate.” That is the number of folks who come to your front page and don’t go deeper into your web site. I think it is poorly named.

Our TourneyCentral.com sites have a sightly higher than average high bounce rate. But, that is good because when you go to one of our tournament web sites, you can immediately see the Who, What, Where, When, How Much at a glance. We don’t leave your visitors staring at the screen, wondering which link will get them where they need to go.

If you miss what you are looking for on our sites, it probably only means that you have become conditioned to ignore the useless front page most sites put up and start clicking without reading. But, that is ok too, because our About, FAQ, Application, etc. pages all have the Who, What, Where, When, How Much info on them as well.

Today is Friday and with it comes the flood of email to tournaments going on tomorrow from coaches who suddenly can’t make registration night for their teams. My favorites are emails that say: “I can’t make it to registration tonight. We’ll see you on Saturday.” and then leave it at that.

Wow! How arrogant and self-centered. For tournaments that host more than one team (oh, you all do?) that presents a challenge. Do you stand firm, take a hard stance or allow this team to register on Saturday morning? If you take a hard stand, they may not show up. If you cave, other teams are going to find out and do the same.

Our advice: Don’t cave. But have an option. This is a negotiating tactic and should be treated as one. First, the coach sending this email on a Friday morning assumes that you will be away from your computer and on the fields setting up. Don’t be. Assign someone to pick up email and response immediately back with your pre-determined response. Secondly, have a pre-determined response. One of my favorite “no responses” would be to offer to check the team in on Saturday morning, between 4-6am, for an additional $100.00 cash per team. Oh, and offer them a free cup of coffee while they wait. If it truly is an emergency, they will be there early in the morning, with cash in hand. If not, greet them warmly on Friday night! (But if you guess wrong and they actually do pull out of your tournament over this issue, never, never, never refund their money. But thank them for their donation.)

As an afterthought, it amazes me as a soccer parent that the first thing the coach does is read us all the “riot act” about being on time for practice, games etc., yet these same coaches assume the rules of a tournament do not apply to them.

I’m cheating when I look up scores for the TourneyCentral tournaments that are running in the current weekend. I set up some scripts that pull and refresh the scores continuously every 10 seconds. When I am away from my desk, I get them non-stop on my Treo. This is the way I keep track of how the tournaments are doing with posting scores, etc.

While I don’t play favorites with our tournaments (they are all great!), the two tournaments going on Mother’s Day weekend, Sidney Mayfest Classic and the Novi Jaguar Invitational were OUTSTANDING in reporting scores in almost real-time. It was almost like being there (and, with several parents taking and upload photos, it was even more real.)

Our Advice: Report your scores as close to real-time as possible. If you have a TourneyCentral System, you already have the tools to report quickly, even if you don’t have Internet at the fields. Several tournaments call the scores in to someone hanging out in their living room, entering scores from their laptop in front of a large screen TV! Because it is Internet, the scoring input is always available, anywhere in the world. And, you just never know who is watching your tournament… could even be someone blogging and bragging about you!

Invariably, when you publish a game schedule, some teams get early morning games. The loudest teams to complain are those that are “only an hour away,” they gamble that they won’t get early games and they lose. When they are wrong, it is your fault that they have to get up extra early.

But, what is really sad and frustrating is when they use the “now my kids have to wake up an hour earlier” and “you are putting my team at a disadvantage” and my all-time favorite “I’ll never go to your tournament again.”

Please. From a soccer parent who has had more than fifteen years of early-morning tournament games, I can tell you with 100% certainty that no matter how early the kid needs to “wake up” to drag his or her sleepy butt to the car, they are not going to be missing one minute of sleep on the drive to the tournament, regardless of how far away it is. And, if the parent is sleepy, then that is why Target, Wal-Mart and Amazon.com make soccer chairs.

Our Advice: Someone has to get the early morning games. Some teams don’t like it, but if you had your last year’s schedule published, it did not come as a surprise to the teams. They applied in full knowledge that they ran just as much a risk of getting early games as did every other team. The fact that they did not book hotel rooms for Friday (or the day previous) is not your fault. You should tell them as much.

Teams should plan to compete at the first possible game and should plan to go all the way to the finals. If that means getting extra rooms for the entire weekend, then that is what it means to compete at the travel soccer level. If the only reason they don’t come back to your tournament next year is they had to play an early game, that is ok… there is always a coach out there getting up even earlier; staying healthier, wealthier and wiser than his competition.

I was in Oxford, Ohio on the Miami University campus this past Saturday. Right before I pulled into town, I heard the commencement ceremony was scheduled for later that afternoon. Since my son was not graduating this semester, I thought little about it except that the traffic on High Street would be horrible (it wasn’t).

As I pulled into town, my glance caught the front of the Uptown Cafe (if you have not yet been there, go. Best pancakes anywhere!) What really stunned me was the line of moms and dads waiting to get in. The place was jam-packed with people. And this was bad.

This was bad because the Uptown is one of those little local places where you go to “experience” breakfast or a casual lunch. This is one of those places where they don’t mind if you bring your dog and hang out on the sidewalk tables, nursing a cup of coffee, grazing on a burger and fries for an hour (burgers are good, too.) I am certain that the moms, dads and almost newly-minted graduates had not stopped into the Uptown just for food, but to have one last “cafe experience with their child-now-an-adult.” And, because all the other parents were looking for that same experience, they were robbing each other of that one moment of convergence that would have become a memory. Instead, that moment will be forever as a rushed and crowded hassle. And it is sad.

Our Advice: Figure out what your “tournament soul” is and fight like hell to preserve it. The Uptown could have spent a few moments every morning throughout the year taking names and numbers of graduating seniors who eat frequently at the Uptown with the intent to “auction” a place on commencement morning. They could have opened at 3:00 am only for graduating seniors and their families whose parents wanted to slow down the day just a little bit before losing their child forever to employment, their own family, the outside world. (I would have gotten up early!!) For a student who has made the Uptown Cafe a part of their college experience for four-plus years — and shared breakfast there with their mom or dad when they were in town — the 30 minutes or so spent on graduation day would have been the most precious graduation gift the Uptown Cafe could have given.

If your “soul” is your registration night party for the coaches, make it special. I know of several tournaments that do a dang good job of using the registration for reacquainting with old friends. If your soul is allowing the teams to have fun, don’t invite or accept teams that will use “win at all costs” tactics (you know who they are.. so does everyone else.) You get the idea.

A soul is a terrible thing to sell. Once it is put on the market, it can never be bought back. Treasure it, grow it and above all, protect and preserve it.

I went to the local high school to drop off a book my daughter forgot for one of her classes. As I pulled into the parking lot, I swung in next to the Hummer that the local US Army recruiter drives.

This is one organization that understands its brand and its market. A Hummer screams power, domination, muscle.. What high school kid would not be seduced by a US Army branded Hummer?

Our Advice: If your tournament is a muscle event, be a Hummer! If it is a fun tournament, be a VW Bug. You get the idea. And, while we are at it, why not approach your local car dealership (one that sells what you are) and ask if you can borrow a “brand wrapped” vehicle for a couple weeks and drive it around town. Your tournament brand will be everywhere with very little effort.