President's Letter

"So What's With The Tournament??"

With our first tournament fast approaching, we are hearing this question more and more frequently. Hopefully you are getting team specific information through your Managers or will be very soon. But let me tell you how we arrived where we are.

There are several motivations for adding tournament sponsorship to what NNFC does as a club: it brings exposure to our Club, it brings visitors to our City, it brings money to City businesses (which hopefully gets the attention of our city's government), it brings money to our Club, and most importantly, it gives our Club opportunities to showcase our teams and players. Every game played means more skills learned by our players and that is our Club's ultimate goal.

If you review the list of motivations you will see that financial considerations dominate most of them. Whether that is a cynical view of the world is a debatable point; that it is a pragmatic view is not debatable. Every sporting group needs money to pay it's coaches, to purchase equipment and to provide support for it's players. There are many solutions to these needs, such as increasing player fees, sponsorship by a community, private funding or public funding or fund-raising. our Club's leadership weighed the options available and for now decided that fund-raising was our best option and rather than doing bingo with required hours, we decided on soccer tournaments because it is related to our primary purpose and provides additional opportunities for our players.

We are asking for further support from our parents through contributions of time for our tournaments. By spreading the requirements we hope to minimize the burden on our parents while still gaining the help we need to make the tournaments a success. The primary principle on which we have based NNFC is to put our best efforts into what we are doing. So, whether that means recruiting parents to help create the B.C. Charles field for the U10 and U11 teams, the driving you do for practices, games, and tournaments or in helping with the tournaments, we hop you will remember who is benefiting most from all of our combined efforts, our players!

So, I hope this answers some of what's up with the tournaments. We are excited about the Colonial Shootout and hope you all enjoy playing in a tournament in your own backyard!!

See you on field,

Steve A. Meade, President
Newport News F.C.


	"So What's With The Tournament??" With our first tournament fast approaching, we are hearing this question more and more frequently. Hopefully you are getting team specific information through your Managers or will be very soon. But let me tell you how we arrived where we are. There are several motivations for adding tournament sponsorship to what NNFC does as a club: it brings exposure to our Club, it brings visitors to our City, it brings money to City businesses (which hopefully gets the attention of our city's government), it brings money to our Club, and most importantly, it gives our Club opportunities to showcase our teams and players. Every game played means more skills learned by our players and that is our Club's ultimate goal. If you review the list of motivations you will see that financial considerations dominate most of them. Whether that is a cynical view of the world is a debatable point; that it is a pragmatic view is not debatable. Every sporting group needs money to pay it's coaches, to purchase equipment and to provide support for it's players. There are many solutions to these needs, such as increasing player fees, sponsorship by a community, private funding or public funding or fund-raising. our Club's leadership weighed the options available and for now decided that fund-raising was our best option and rather than doing bingo with required hours, we decided on soccer tournaments because it is related to our primary purpose and provides additional opportunities for our players. We are asking for further support from our parents through contributions of time for our tournaments. By spreading the requirements we hope to minimize the burden on our parents while still gaining the help we need to make the tournaments a success. The primary principle on which we have based NNFC is to put our best efforts into what we are doing. So, whether that means recruiting parents to help create the B.C. Charles field for the U10 and U11 teams, the driving you do for practices, games, and tournaments or in helping with the tournaments, we hop you will remember who is benefiting most from all of our combined efforts, our players! So, I hope this answers some of what's up with the tournaments. We are excited about the Colonial Shootout and hope you all enjoy playing in a tournament in your own backyard!! See you on field, Steve A. Meade, President Newport News F.C.