MEMORIAL DAY 2008 MSSL EXPLOSION

TOURNAMENT & SHOWCASE

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

 

Dear Coach / Manager:

 

Welcome! We expect you are reading this because your team has been accepted to the MEMORIAL DAY 2008 MSSL EXPLOSION on Saturday May 24th and Sunday May 25th. 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!

 

[NOTE: If trying to obtain directions to the FORT DIX fields online, try www.google.com, and click on MAPS. For an address enter: "7000 Doughboy Loop, Fort Dix, NJ 08640".]

 

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.

 

B)  LODGING

 

A requirement for acceptance for out-of-area teams is that your team utilizes sanctioned tournament lodging. We have reviewed all these facilities, and they meet our standards for quality and reputability; they are also available at their lowest posted pricing. 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 Linda Hogancamp at linda@titanlodging.com as soon as possible. Online information, including the Room Reservation Grid, is found at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/Lodging/INFO_Lodging.htm.

 

C)   FORT DIX SECURITY & ON-SITE CONCERNS

 

Please advise all team members who will be entering the base that each vehicle must have:

**  Valid Vehicle Registration

**  Valid Vehicle Insurance Card

**  Valid Drivers License for the Driver

**  Plus a Drivers License, Passport or other Picture ID for each additional adult in the vehicle

 

The first three items are required on a vehicle by law at all times, yet it has become surprising how many vehicles trying to enter the base can not produce these items upon request. Failure to produce these documents has required parents to leave their vehicles at the entry gate.

 

Each team also has to submit online a Security Roster, listing all team members and spectators entering the base. This Online Security Roster is accessed from the Explosion Homepage by clicking on FORT DIX ONLINE ENTRY DATA INPUT. We will be contacting Team Managers to provide them with their screen name and passwords. If your roster is not fully settled, if you are still waiting on guest players, and so on, just forward the best roster you have as of the moment. If in doubt, always err on the side of being more inclusive rather than less. This roster will not impact the "playing roster" you present at registration.

 

Teams that have done such an online security roster for an event in the last eight months will only need to update their existing entries. (Same will apply to attendance at future Fort Dix events.) You can start preparing for this procedure by reading the FORT DIX GATE ENTRY INFO LETTER accessed from the Explosion Homepage and posted at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/venues/FortDix_Security_Info.htm.  There is also a form you can print to help you start collecting data on the Homepage, posted at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/Venues/FortDix_SecurityData.pdf.

 

Make sure to allow yourself 20-30 minutes additional to get through the gate, in addition to the team’s normal pre-game / warm-up time. Security gate entry time has become substantially less than this since its peak last summer, as we have been working with Department of Defense personnel to streamline procedures. Nonetheless, Memorial Day will be a heavy traffic date, and we want to make sure everyone has adequate time to prepare for their games.

 

D)  RULES & REGULATIONS


Rules of Play and conduct are found at:
http://www.socceragency.net/maps/INFO_showcase_rules.htm
Your team is responsible for being familiar with the contents.

 

Major items: No smoking, no alcohol, no pets, no abusive behavior. Please pick up your trash. Simple.

 

Note the Substitution Rules, unique for our Showcase events, intended to let players easily get on the field for their scheduled minutes, and to avoid unnecessarily lost time in a tight schedule due to coaches' and players' indecision. Section 4 can be summarized as follows:

 

SUBSTITUTIONS
a.  FIFA rules (e.g., throw-ins by either team, free kicks, corners, etc.) are modified to allow unlimited substitution with the referee’s permission, at every stoppage in play.
b.  Players must be clearly standing and waiting AT THE MID-FIELD LINE to be substituted (and not merely waiting “in the vicinity of mid-field”), and the referee’s assistant should be alerted, to the extent possible, of the request to substitute at the next stoppage of play.
c.  Players standing at midfield MUST be substituted into the game at the next stoppage of play, unless they remove themselves from the mid-field position prior to the stoppage of play.

 

E)      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 Jersey) using USYS passes from state associations that require a Permission To Travel.

 

Remember: All players on your team must have player passes from the SAME governing body, whether USYS or US Club or AYSO, etc.

 

F)      SCHEDULE OF GAMES

 

The schedule of games for the MSSL EXPLOSION is posted on the MAPS website. It is posted in both its Field / Time Slot Schedule Grid form, showing all games on all fields. It is also be posted as separate schedules covering individual Age Brackets that you will be able to print out. All schedules are accessible from the Showcase Homepage located at

http://www.socceragency.net/maps/2008/0805/explosion.htm

 

Please check and re-confirm the dates, times and fields of your games as soon as possible after they are posted. After Tuesday May 20, any changes in the Field / Time Slot Schedule Grid will be marked in blue on the Saturday and Sunday grids on the website, 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 / Time Slot Schedule Grid to the individual Age Bracket schedules. Please bring these to our attention. Usually, the information on the Field / Time Slot Schedule Grid is the correct info.

 

G)  U16 & OLDER TEAMS: CONTACTING COLLEGES

 

If your team is U16 and older, it is now 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 450 male and 450 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!

 

H)  U16 & OLDER TEAMS: 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 must complete this process by May 13th. As it usually takes a little 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.

 

ENTERING PLAYER PROFILE DATA

 

If you are entering Player Profiles for the first time, please follow these steps (if only updating, obviously some steps will be omitted):

 

   1 - Go to the web site http://www.gotsport.com/ and click the mouse on the “Individual Teams” selection. Enter your team username and password.  The username and password were created by you when the online application was completed on the system.

 

   2 – On the next screen, click the mouse on Roster.  It is located on the grey top bar.  Enter the player profile information following the system instructions.  A username and password is needed for that player at the end of the profile for future updates.  Save the player profile data at the end.

 

   3 – Review the player profile data on the next screen and make corrections.  If corrections are made, click on save again.  When the player profile is completed, you can click on “Return to Roster” or “Delete Player”.

 

Note:  An email is sent with the username and password to the player’s email address entered on the roster, so that player can complete profiles or make updates on their own!

 

   4 – If you need to change a player’s profile on the roster, click the mouse on the N/A column to make the change.

 

   5 – After all the profiles are completed, you can click the mouse on “Log Out” to end the 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 MARCH 8th. 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.

 

 

K)   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.

 

*********************

 

Some simple rules for each facility we use:

·         Park only in designated spots

·         No pets, on a leash or otherwise.

·         No smoking anywhere near the showcase.

·         Please pick up your trash. The pitch is sacred ground, and shouldn’t be buried in discarded water bottles and wrapping tape.

·         Cooperate with tournament officials and field marshals. Anyone caught abusing the above items will be evicted from the premises, and it may lead to early termination of an offending team’s participation.

 

Sorry to sound restrictive, but there is no reason to feel constrained if everyone uses common sense.

 

**********

 

Thanks for your cooperation. We are looking forward to an exciting Showcase tournament.

 

Bohdan E. Porytko
Director - MAPS / MSSL Programs

973-998-9731

bohdan@mssl.org

 

Tournaments and Showcases: www.socceragency.net/maps
League Information: http://www.cjysa.org/