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MSSL
2011 WINTER COLLEGE SHOWCASE for BOYS IMPORTANT
INFORMATION Dear
Coach / Manager: Welcome! We
expect you are reading this because your team has been accepted to the MSSL
2011 WINTER COLLEGE SHOWCASE being held on Friday November 25th, Saturday November
26th and Sunday November 27th.
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, or for
less than the number of days requested, 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 Alan at alan@titanlodging.com (or
732-658-0331) 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 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
NOVEMBER 10th. 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 We will be posting
news with regard to the available services shortly. Do check back. 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 Texas, Minnesota,
Ontario, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Illinois, Hawaii, California and even
ODP Europe (Armed Forces), that have generated substantial interest from
colleges! The more coaches are drawn to watch them, the better for all the
players on your squad. 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 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. 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. All schedules are accessible
from the Showcase Homepage located
at http://www.socceragency.net/maps/2011/1111_showcase/homepage.htm
Please check and re-confirm the dates, times and fields of your games as soon as possible after they are posted. In the last ten days before the event, 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.
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
If you are having difficulties seeing information clearly on the MAPS/MSSL Tournament website, note that the site seems to work best on Internet Explorer. Consider changing your Web Browser when accessing the site.
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 JOINT BASE
MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST: Do NOT rely on GPS SYSTEMS indiscriminately to get
into 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 Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst
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.
N)
WEATHER-RELATED ALERTS
In the event of lightning, we will cease
play immediately. We may also suspend play in the event of a substantial
downpour. Games in the second half will likely be declared as completed.
Please have your team get to shelter, and have a system for contacting each
team member. Twenty minutes after a stoppage, send ONE team representative to
HQ, where we will inform all affected teams of the current status of play,
and when we expect to resume. The first place for off-site information is
the Tournament Schedule Homepage, where weather
updates will appear as warranted. This is the GotSoccer
page you are directed to when you click on the SCHEDULES BY AGE BRACKETS
button on the Showcase Homepage. (This is the fastest webpage for us to
update quickly.) When circumstances warrant, we will also
leave updates on a Weather Hotline at
732-432-7200. Please do not try to leave messages on this number, it will not
be monitored during the weekend. O) JOINT BASE
MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST 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. If you have a rental or leased vehicle,
make sure you have your Driver’s License, and the documentation for the
rental or lease. All documents need to be current, and should clearly inform
gate personnel that the vehicle is properly insured. (Since the documents
vary from state to state, we will NOT be further elucidating that last
stipulation.) The person behind the wheel entering the gate must be a named
driver, if one or more are listed on the documents. Make
sure to allow yourself at least 15 minutes additional to get through the
gate, in addition to the team’s normal pre-game / warm-up time. No
bicycles or motorcycles can be used on the Base. Use of these highly-mobile
vehicles by guests is considered a security risk. ******************
Some simple rules for each facility we use: · Park only in designated spots. You may be ticketed! · 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 973-998-9731 Tournaments and Showcases: www.socceragency.net/maps |