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NSCAA / MSSL 2011 SUMMER COLLEGE SHOWCASE
for BOYS IMPORTANT
INFORMATION Dear Coach / Manager: Welcome! We expect you are reading this because your team
has been accepted to the
NSCAA / MSSL 2011 SUMMER COLLEGE SHOWCASE on Saturday July 30 and Sunday July 31. 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. Titan Lodging has reviewed these facilities,
and they meet our standards for quality and reputability. Note that Titan
Lodging has reserved 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 Titan
Lodging Coordinator Alan at
alan@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 July 10th. 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
JULY 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
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 GotSoccer.com, and information on accessing that info is found at: http://www.socceragency.net/maps/INFO_showcase_guests.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. 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 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. 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. Do not register before schedules are released. 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 Summer
Showcase will be posted on
the Showcase Homepage. We are using SoccerScheduler.com (affiliated with
GotSport.com) for posting schedules, and results will be relayed to
GotSoccer.com immediately upon the conclusion of the event. The SoccerScheduler.com
schedules will be presented in a printable form for each bracket of
competition as soon as the schedule is completed. All
schedules are accessible from the Showcase Homepage located at
http://www.socceragency.net/maps/2011/1108_showcase/homepage.htm Please check and
confirm the dates, times and fields of your games as soon as they are posted.
After Monday July 25th teams will be notified by direct 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. 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,
Gmail, etc.) Note that the
online registration form has space for at least three individuals (manager,
coach, contact) who can receive team email notifications. Please DO NOT
list the same person for all positions. If we are unable to get through
to this one individual, it leaves us no alternatives to pursue. 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 JOINT BASE
MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST: Do NOT rely on GPS SYSTEMS indiscriminately
to get to the base, you will almost always be
directed to the wrong gate. Carefully READ the TRAVEL DIRECTIONS posted at
http://www.socceragency.net/maps/Venues/directions_JBMDL.htm
. To obtain directions to the military base
fields online, go to
www.google.com, and click on MAPS. For an address for the Special Events Gate enter: “New
Jersey Avenue and North Pointville Road, Fort Dix NJ” Also, READ the boxed section that comprises the second half of
the Travel Directions, for important information about your JBMDL
visit.
O)
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