Dear BWP Lee County Player and Family,
Welcome to our Club! I am looking forward to meeting you over the course of the year. Last year was our first year working together to transition the programming of the Club to meet the needs and demands of the ever-changing soccer landscape. We jumped into this project in December of 2018 when I was with our U18 team at Disney, and Jesse and the Board asked me to come down on my team’s day off in the competition. Jesse and I have a long-standing relationship and that landed me in the rental car and in the office at the Kelly Road Soccer Complex listening to the Club’s leaders and current state of the Club. The Club had the desire to improve its programming on a couple fronts, administratively and technically. So, we went to work trying to build a sustainable model that would meet these improvements as well as the daily delivery of this work.
There are no shortcuts in operating a soccer club or any personal development vehicle that has daily responsibilities, if it is truly going to deliver what it says it is trying to deliver. Our Club operates very close to 365 days a year with only some holidays off which we all know leads to traveling on those days for events. Getting this balance between the work of our technical staff and the addition of needed admin personnel in a world when volunteerism is unfortunately less and less available, has been some of the work. Our Club functions based on the quality of the instruction and care for each player and management of each team. Therefore, our technical coaching staff is our number one priority. That is where we invest our resources…in our technical staff. It is our technical staff who inspire our players, correct inaccurate and ineffective decisions in play, message players individually and collectively, manage match play and in essence are the gatekeepers of our sport. Our admin team is designed to enable the technical staff to focus on what they do best, coach and reflect on their coaching.
Sustainability can only be achieved if we are all clear on our vision and mission of the Club as well as its execution, so we can provide exactly what our families of players are wanting…a soccer Club which provides high-quality instruction through a competent coach who inspires our players to want to be better on and off the field in a collective environment. To do this work that sounds simple, however, it is simply not that simple. We have to create an annual budget that meets those objectives. The strength of our collective environment will be evident in trying and difficult times. Visiting with some of our players from three age groups in February on our BWP Winter Team Training Center, it was evident that there is energy and excitement within the players and staff. We are not where we want to be yet, but we are underway. The transition of the Club has one more hurdle to effectively address sustainability. We will be bringing team plans into the Club’s operations as well as the team account for each age group. This transparency will effectively enable all expenses from Club tuition to team-level registrations and travel plans to be known at trials/tryouts. This will also protect a volunteer from having been in charge and managing other families’ money for the team. This account will be your family’s account and if you decide to leave the Club any remaining monies will be returned at the conclusion of the season.
On behalf of Black Watch Premier (BWP) and BWP Lee County thank you for trusting us with your player’s development. It is a privilege and we hope to inspire them to improve, to engage their thinking, to challenge their decisions, and to evoke passion for the sport of soccer.
Yours in soccer,
Steve
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