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MSSL 2008
IMPORTANT
INFORMATION Dear Coach / Manager: Welcome! We expect you are reading this because your team has been
accepted to the MSSL 2008 WINTER COLLEGE SHOWCASE on Friday November 28th,
Saturday November 29th
and Sunday November 30th. Please review the following information
carefully, ALL OF IT IS IMPORTANT! Yes, its lengthy,
but 90% of what you will need to know is all here in one place! A) APPLICATION Please note that your application is not complete until payment has
been received. We will accept teams after their online application has been
accepted and their payment received. Teams not accepted will be placed on a waiting list. If not
ultimately accepted, any refunds will be issued after the event concludes. MAKE SURE YOU CAREFULLY CHECK THE SCHEDULE AND THE LIST OF ACCEPTED
TEAMS TO CONFIRM HOW MANY DAYS YOUR TEAM IS ACCEPTED FOR, AND WHICH DAYS IT
HAS BEEN ALLOCATED. B)
LODGING A
requirement for acceptance for out-of-area teams is that your team utilizes
sanctioned tournament lodging. We have reviewed these facilities, and they
meet our standards for quality and reputability. Note that we reserve blocks
of rooms at these facilities well in advance to ensure that our participating
teams’ needs are adequately met. If we do not utilize these reserved rooms,
the hotels may not make these rooms available at future events, especially at
times of the year when lodging demands in the area are greatest. Therefore,
your cooperation here is expected. If your
room situation has still not been squared away, please contact Lodging
Coordinator Kristi at kristi@titanlodging.com
as soon as possible. Online information is found at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/Lodging/INFO_Lodging.htm. C) CONTACTING COLLEGES Now it is your
job to make this showcase meaningful for your players. College coaches know
that the Showcase will offer a wide variety of players appropriate for a
variety of competitive programs. However, Coaches will gravitate to watch those teams whose players have
called, emailed or written them! There are only a limited number of Top
25 NCAA Division One colleges in the area, but we email (multiple times!) a
regional list of over 500 male and 500 female programs in NCAA Division One,
Two and Three, NAIA, NJCAA, etc. There are programs for virtually every skill
level among dedicated players! But Coaches in all these schools know that
landing a player is much easier if a player is already disposed to consider
the school. Coaches can only know who those players are if the players make
their interest known to them! HAVE YOUR
PLAYERS START CONTACTING COACHES IMMEDIATELY! Even if they are only vaguely
considering a school, contact the Coach, it costs little or nothing (by
email), and one can never be sure where it may lead! Your players should
follow up their initial contacts again when we release the schedules, to let
coaches know what times and fields they will be on. Remember: The key point
is Contact, Contact, Contact! D) ENTERING PLAYER PROFILES
ONLINE Once you have an
application on the system, you can follow the steps provided below for
entering your team's Roster / Player Profiles. You should plan on completing
this process by November 15th. As it usually takes a while, you
should get started as soon as possible. The Player Profiles
will be available to college coaches online in their full version. Also, a
truncated version for each player with key data will be printed into a
Coaches Binder that allows two pages for each team; these binders are
distributed to each attending coach at Registration. Even if you have
entered Player Profiles for previous or other events, you should still have
your players review their profiles. Information needs to be updated: SAT
scores, school grades, change of address or email, soccer achievements, etc. Remember, one
advantage to this system is that you can log out and log back in and resume
where you left off. You do not have to complete all players in one session.
IMPORTANT NOTE: When we print the Player Profiles for the
coaches binder to be distributed onsite to coaches, each player's vital data
will appear on a two-page per team summary: contact info, graduation date,
GPA, SAT scores, etc. More extensive information will only be available to
college coaches online. CRITICAL RECOMMENDATION to ensure player gets maximum benefit: The ONLY information entered online which will allow narrative text to be printed in the Coaches Binder is the entry for "Provide Details of Sporting Achievements". Players should not list team achievements here, but rather their own most important player info: ODP, high school honors, all-star teams, acceptance to significant training programs, etc. Use this space to get across the most important info being brought to coaches’ attention. About four lines will print up, so edit remarks succinctly and wisely. USE OF PLAYER PHOTOS:
Also, we will print a small thumbnail of any player photo submitted
next to the player info. It is best not to waste this on a full body shot,
use the opportunity for a head shot. Otherwise you will just have a tiny,
indistinguishable stick figure show up in the profiles. Please COMPLETE the roster / profile
information about BY NO LATER THAN
NOVEMBER 15th. This will allow us time to review submissions, ensure
that they will print up correctly, then publish, collate, bind and transport
the binders to the fields. If you
receive an email that your Player Profiles are not
showing on your Roster, DO NOT IGNORE
THE EMAIL, even if you think you have fulfilled the requirement. Your team probably started a NEW Team Account (with a different
username and a different password) when you applied to the Showcase, rather
than re-using the account that had the profiles already in it. In short,
you probably have multiple accounts, with multiple passwords. I need to have
the team account with the profiles in it applying to this Showcase. The
solution is invariably the same: Go to the account where the profiles are
entered, and apply to the Showcase again from that account. When I see the
requisite info in the new application, I will transfer your financial info
to the correct account, then delete the application
without the profiles. Teams not
cooperating with the requirement to provide adequate Player Profile
information about their team are at risk of being dropped from the Showcase and
replaced by a complying team from our Waiting List. Coaches are annoyed if
they try to observe a team for which no data is available. The Showcase is
geared to catering to Coaches needs! We try to ensure that any coach
assessing players has access to a reasonable amount of available information
about the players they are scouting. E) VIDEOTAPING SERVICES FOR SHOWCASE TEAMS In our
continuing effort to bring suppliers of oft-requested services to your
attention, we are pleased to inform you that MAPS has again agreed to allow
NAME YOUR SPORT VIDEO to offer their services during our
events this year, for individual players or larger team groups. NAME YOUR SPORT is a videography company specializing in creating recruiting
films for college-bound athletes. More specifically, it produces films that
can ultimately be sent to interested college coaches and/or recruiters. NAME
YOUR SPORT intends to be available at our Showcases for teams that register
with them in advance. While
many teams have parents trying to create video for children and teammates,
often it is desirable to just have someone else handle the task, especially
if the company has professional editing facilities and copying
equipment. If interested, we encourage you to visit their website at www.nameyoursport.com and review
their service. PLEASE
FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO THE INDIVIDUAL PLAYERS / PARENTS ON YOUR TEAM. NOTE: All dealings are strictly between players
and teams and Name Your Sport. This communication should not be interpreted
to suggest that Name Your Sport’s services are appropriate, necessary or
desirable for every participant at our events, but it can be a helpful option
for many. F)
PLAYERS SEEKING TEAMS TO GUEST WITH A number of
players are seeking to participate in the Showcase that do
not have teams they can join. They are listed on the bottom of the Showcase
Homepage at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/2008/0811/showcase.htm. If you
are short players, please consider hosting a deserving player. Or do so
regardless. Many of these guests are very motivated to be seen by colleges,
and will contact many schools once they know they will be playing. In recent years,
we have had guest players seeking to play from G)
RULES & REGULATIONS
Major
items: No smoking, no alcohol, no pets, no abusive behavior. Please pick up
your trash. Simple. Also, in
order to accommodate as many teams as possible, we are taking advantage of every
possible minute of daylight. Hence we have had to slice our non-playing time
to the bare bone. Gametimes will be based on the
clock rather than on the stopwatch. If teams are not on the field and ready
to start at the designated start time, the time they lose is their gametime. Halftime will be a short stoppage to exchange
halves and grab a drink. Also bear in mind that, at a showcase, players need
to show the discipline they have learned from their developmental programs.
Lengthy coaching instructions should be unnecessary at this point. Evaluators
are there to observe the players play, not the coaches
coach. And for all these reasons, refs will have a very short leash on
dissent from the sideline bench, which only detracts from the players on the
field. Note the
Substitution Rules, special for our Showcase events, intended to let players
easily get on the field for their scheduled minutes, and to avoid
unnecessarily lost time due to coaches' and players' indecision. Section 4
can be summarized as follows: SUBSTITUTIONS H) TEAM REGISTRATION We will have
Registration at the fields where your first game will be played. You must
arrive to register at least a full hour before your first game. All teams must
have: A copy of the
Team Roster they can leave with Registration officials. Pencil in any Guest
players being used. Player Passes
for all participating players, rostered and guest. Authorizations
for Medical Treatment, more commonly referred to as Medical Releases, for all
participating players. The ones executed when the
player was first registered with the team for the season are usually
adequate. Remember, these documents are critical to ensure that a
player can be admitted to an ambulance, clinic or hospital for treatment,
especially in the absence of a parent or legal guardian in attendance. These
documents have to show original signatures. (And preferably be notarized, as
we have heard of clinics that questioned how they could confirm the signature
was actually a parent’s or legal guardian’s.) Permissions To
Travel for those out-of-state teams (non-New Remember:
All players on your team must have player passes from the SAME governing
body, whether USYS or US Club or AYSO, etc. I)
GOALKEEPER & STRIKERS
EXHIBITION We will
be conducting a Goalkeeper Exhibition at our Showcase. Keepers choose from a
variety of time slots to sign up, and should contact schools in which they
are interested once their time slots are confirmed and posted. Evaluators can
observe keepers take a concentrated series of shots from a variety of angles
and distances. Your
keepers are invited to participate. Once
the schedules are posted, players can register for sessions that do not
present conflicts. We also
need a small group of talented strikers to shoot balls on goal, so truly
skilled players are also offered the opportunity to sign up as strikers in
the exhibition. (Careful, though: If your shot is inconsistent, you may do
yourself more harm than good in trying to showcase your abilities.) More info
& registration can be found at: http://www.socceragency.net/maps/INFO_showcase_keepers.htm J) SCHEDULE OF GAMES The
schedule of games for the Winter Showcase will be posted on the MAPS website. It will be posted in two
formats: the Field/Timeslot GRID Schedule form, showing all games on all
fields. It will also be posted as separate schedules covering individual Age
BRACKETS that you will be able to print out to track your team’s specific
competition. All schedules are accessible from the Showcase Homepage located at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/2008/0811/showcase.htm Please check and
re-confirm the dates, times and fields of your games as soon as possible
after they are posted. After Monday November 24, any changes in the schedule
will be shown in blue on the Field/Timeslot GRID, and teams will be notified
by email if they are involved in a material change. Team Contacts (as
provided on your application) are responsible for checking their emails on a
regular basis, especially the last week before the event, to ensure that no
last minute communications are ignored. Occasionally a
typo occurs when transferring information from the Field/Timeslot GRID
Schedule to the individual Age BRACKET schedules. Please bring these to our
attention. Usually, the information on the Field/Timeslot GRID Schedule is
the correct info. K) AWARDS Awards will be presented
to each Bracket Champion. Please come to the field HQ after your last game
for a presentation if your team qualifies! L) REFRESH
YOUR WEB BROWSER / CONTACT MOBILE PHONE# / MESSAGING Whenever
checking your online information, click REFRESH on your WEB BROWSER. This
ensures you are seeing the actual information available online, and not a
previously-memorized page being stored in your computer cache. (Failure to do
so is the most common reason teams discover they have incorrect information.) Please check
your team account on www.GotSport.com
and make sure there is a valid mobile phone number listed for the TEAM
CONTACT PERSON INFORMATION. This will be the first number called if there is
a scheduling or weather problem at the fields. Also, make sure
you avoided using corporate or government email addresses for your team
contacts entered in www.GotSport.com.
These networked computer systems tend to have strong firewalls and spam
filters that invariably prevent group messaging functions such as we rely
upon from operating. Please provide email addresses from residential accounts
(AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Comcast, Verizon, Optonline,
etc.) Finally, do NOT
list the same person for coach, manager and team contact. If there is a
problem in communicating with that individual, it is useful to have
alternatives. That is the whole point for the system allowing multiple
contact listings. M) TRAVEL
DIRECTIONS
Directions to all venues is posted on the Showcase Homepage
on the web. You can also find field layout maps on the Homepage. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR TEAMS PLAYING AT To obtain directions to the Also, READ the boxed section that comprises the second half of
the Travel Directions, for important information about your N)
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