Soccer Tournament Review

Zach Blaine with Athletes in Action talks about how soccer tournaments can partner with AIA to use their facilities as well as have faith-based events during their tournament.

Athletes in Action Web site, click here.

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Last weekend at the 2008 NSCAA Convention in Baltimore, TourneyCentral had a cake on display, made by the awesomely cool artists of Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes, The Food Network) It was big, it smelled delicious, it drew a crowd and it was awesome.

The cake artists at Charm City Cakes OWN their market. Duff decided at some point that being a good cake creator was just not going to be enough and that he was going to own awesome. As examples, the piping of the goalie gloves was intricate. The ball was perfectly round. The gloves were to scale with the ball. The cake was a product of years spent honing a craft and a unwavering dedication to awesome. Even a simple sheet cake from Charm City Cakes, I suspect, has elements of awesome baked and decorated in and on it. In spite of their fame, they were just regular people, taking calls, answering emails, fretting over whether I was happy with the cake or not.

Our advice: We’ve all been to “just another tournament” and it always has that certain “nothing special” feel. And then we’ve been to AWESOME tournaments when it almost doesn’t matter that our team didn’t place or even win any games. But everyone wants to go back.

Strive to be that tournament that everyone wants to come back to, win or lose. Look at your tournament from the point of view of the teams. What makes these events awesome? It may be the simple things that have nothing to do with the competition on the pitch, like a smile from the volunteers at every turn, a great hotel stay, upbeat energy from the HQ tent (yes, teams can feel tension!).. simple things — like awesomeness — that are hard to describe and harder yet to create as a formula. Yet, you know if when you “feel” it.

Behind the scenes as an attempt to get into the essence of awesome. When we booked into the NSCAA in Baltimore, I knew I just had to get an Ace of Cakes cake. This was back in September, 2007. I dropped them an email, asking if they would be interested in making a soccer cake for the exhibit booth, how much, etc. I really didn’t expect anything back because these guys are famous and I’m not, but Jessica sent me an email back within a day with a “yes, we can and want to” and a price (which I thought was way too low for an “Ace Cake”) We signed an agreement, did the money thing and we had our cake booked. On a phone call later that week, Mary Alice then asked what I wanted the cake to look like, what flavor, etc.

My response was “You guys are the artists, so whatever you want within a soccer theme. And pick your favorite flavor for the cake.” The phone call immediately turned from an order-taking into a creative session, where the tone of her voice got that bit of excitement edge. We hashed through several design ideas and came up with a soccer ball being caught by a pair of goalie gloves. And, the entire bakery would sign the “game ball” (which I thought they would charge extra for, but didn’t.) I suspect the creative process kept going all the way through until delivery.

From the emails through the phone calls, through the on time delivery during a Baltimore snow storm, to the excitement Mark (he delivered to the show) felt about the huge soccer show (while we were “ooing” and “ahhhing” over the cake; he was “ooing” and “ahhhing” over the huge soccer show, which made US feel like WE were the ones who were doing something special!), these guys were about the most awesome folks I have ever bought anything from. Ever.

The real product they are selling is not really just cake, but awesomeness that focused everything on the customer experience. Never for a moment, did they forget that the real product was an intimate, authentic customer experience. And they were responsible for managing and steering that. And they did it with ease, grace, professionalism, genuine excitement, pleasure and a sense of humor. Simply awesome

I went into the Verizon Wireless store the other day, looking for an extra battery for what my daughter now tells me is a very old Razr. The Voyager caught my eye and I asked the “velvet rope bouncer” how it compared with an iPhone. “It has a touch screen,” he beamed. Ok.

One day this past week (I don’t know when and I forgot my password to get into WSJ.com, but that is another post!) they had a columnist write about how the Voyager looked cool, but it took 3-5 times more clicks to get to anything, the interface was different from application to application (phone, web browsing, contact book), etc, etc. As I read, it was clear that the voyager was no iPhone. What Verizon had apparently done was take the most obvious feature of the iPhone and slapped it on an old phone model. They put lipstick on a pig.

I find this being done a lot with soccer tournaments. A coach or a tournament director goes to another soccer tournament and sees something interesting being done, rushes home and immediately adopts this “great new idea.” Most of the time, it doesn’t work as successfully at home as it did “at the other tournament.” So, it must be a failure. But not really.The reason the idea worked “over there” but not “here” is because the other soccer tournament didn’t start out with a pig. The red, rosy lips were real, not just lipstick covering up a problem. Their “pig” is their culture, part of who they are. The rosy lips is a manifestation of that culture, not just makeup.

As with the iPhone, the touch screen works because it is an extension of Apple’s culture of the computer working as an extension of the body. For example, their culture includes a vocabulary like files and folders, calendars and drawing tools.. not directories, databases and input devices. The touch screen on the iPhone is the next 2 millimeters of the human fingers, not the clunky push-dial of a computer. Entirely different.

Our advice: The next time you see a great idea being implemented at another tournament you visit — before you become convinced that it is something that you should also implement — examine why it works, not just how. Perhaps the volunteer system works because the club has a large population of Red Cross volunteers, not because they have a great volunteer management software package. Or, perhaps the advertising program works because the there is a large population of brand managers of a CPG company whose kids all play in the same club, not because their printed program looked cool.

And the same goes for tournament management software, like TourneyCentral.com. The stuff works because it is meant to manage soccer tournaments, not just some scheduling software that got draped with some soccer ball clip art. It works because it addresses the needs of the parents and players attending your soccer tournament. It works because the people at TourneyCentral understand the needs of the soccer tournament director, their teams, their parents and their sponsors.