UMass Sport Management SoccerFest Blog

Alright folks, we have alot of pictures so heres the plan: We are going to attempt to make all the pictures thumbnail images. So click on the picture you want to view and then it will open a new window with a bigger size. This is the best way to do it or else our blog will become around 60 pages long. Also, we have more pictures on the way so stay tuned. Shawn and I (mostly shawn, I just pretend I know what i’m doing) will be updating the winners gallery on the main page as soon as we get a chance.

 Here are a couple media pieces on SoccerFest. (And yes, they all took the story from the same press release, but hey news is news right?)

Daily Collegian:

http://media.www.dailycollegian.com/media/storage/paper874/news/2008/04/30/News/6th-Annual.Clif.Bar.Soccerfest.To.Return.To.Campus.May.10-3357380.shtml

CSTV:

http://www.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/stories/050908aaa.html

New England Soccer News:

http://www.newenglandsoccernews.com/article.php?article_id=3147

NCAA:

http://www.ncaa.com/soccer-mens/article.aspx?id=233382

First off. We know everyone wants some event pictures, and we promise we will get those to you ASAP. Right now our photographs are being digitally edited by our good friend Todd (hes the man) up in New Hampshire. As soon as they arrive we will get our winners gallery and event pictures up. After all who wouldn’t want to see this event??

Secondly, Shawn and I want to thank everyone who has been reading this blog during the semester. We had an amazing time making it and we hope you all had a pleasure reading it.

For me personally this class has been THE best I have taken here at UMass. None other comes even close (and no I’m not trying to suck up for a better grade haha). In all honesty, this class turned 27 classmates into close friends, and in the process we all got to put on what we feel will turn out to be a legendary soccer tournament.

Since I’ve been blogging here for a semester I figured I would give a message to everyone in the SoccerFest class. Thank you guys for making this semester so memorable, all of you have immense talents that will propel you to big things in whatever path you chose to take. Never forget what we accomplished this semester and never lose touch with each other.

To the marketing department: I love you guys, together we all made the dream of 137 teams a reality.

-Matthew Weinberger- class of 2008

and in typical SoccerFest 6 fashion:

Heres a view of FANtasy Fenway..we got it up in a record time despite the rainy weather in the wee hours of the morning.

Ari and Katelyn -what a moment.

A side view of our stage and Fenway. The stage will be the home to many different acts on Saturday and will feature Maxxtone later in the day. http://www.maxxtone.com.

Front view of the stage.

Phil proudly wearing his nice PUMA red jacket, and conducting some business on the telephone.

Sam (yellow sweatshirt) probably trying to explain something. Most likely no one understood what she was trying to say.

With SoccerFest hosting a record number of teams, it has been the Volunteer
Management Department’s challenge to raise enough volunteers to be able to host
the event.  Corey Biechele, Dan Faggella and Anthony Tynan have been hard at
work to recruit and train volunteers to assist each SoccerFest department.
This includes referees, field monitors, staffing the Fun Zone, help with
registration, set-up and tear-down crews, and any other jobs that need to get
done.

Volunteer Management also hosted a party at The Hatch in the Campus Center this
past Monday to get all volunteers excited for SoccerFest.  First, we unveiled
our raffle prize for anyone who visits SoccerFest - Rock Band!  Then, after
raffling off some other prizes, we had pizza, drinks and pool.

With our big day coming tomorrow, Volunteer Management is ready to help Tournament
Operations set up our site and make final adjustments and preparation
to be ready to go Saturday morning.  Feel free to stop by and say hi and don’t
forget to thank the volunteers you see!  We couldn’t put on this event without
a real team effort.  Good luck to all teams and we will see you on Saturday!

-Volunteer Management

We decided to take out our SoccerFest blimp for a ride yesterday. We got a nice shot of where all the action will happen in just a few days!

 Aren’t you all impressed at how much we are blogging lately?

-The SoccerFest Marketing Team

A recent marketing endeavor. A banner in the center of Amherst.

Here are the final additions of sponsors that our sponsorship department has secured. We are proud to have the following companies onboard with us for SoccerFest 2008!

While the registration department tries to go through money like Paris and Nicole, the marketing department remains slightly more grounded in their requests. We are still trying to expand the Fun Zone, and here is our latest proposal. It only costs… well, just watch the video first:

How cool does that look? Sweet, right? Well, it costs atleast $1,500 to rent… Needless to say, our finance manager will not be very pleased to hear about this idea. So if you want the excitement of the Euro Bounce at SoccerFest, feel free to contact Dave. Call him in the middle of the night, facebook stalk him, stop by his house- whatever it takes- and demand the Euro Bounce! (And if not, maybe we have some more flattering pics to put up for him!)

If you are in Amherst this week (would you really rather be anywhere else?), then you should be on the lookout for our sweet posters designed by poster extraordinaire Shawn.

Check it out:

Some of you may be confused as to what “Phase 2″ means. Let me explain. Our marketing department has broken our marketing efforts into two phases to help simplify our lives. Phase 1 was all about recruiting teams for the event. The main objective for our department was to get 120 teams–well we surpassed that with 137 teams! Phase 2 is all about getting spectators and fans to our event. We want this to be THE biggest event on campus this year. The goal of Phase 2 is to draw people who aren’t necessarily playing in our tournament to our exhibition games, our live entertainment and extra activities like the rock wall.
SO if you aren’t signed up for the tournament be sure to stop by the fields on May 10th we have a ton of things going on for you to enjoy.