Our Story: A Cliffs Notes Version
When our club's co-founder Aaron Graffam and I hosted our inaugural player evaluations in July 2014 we had a crest, a deliberately-misspelled name, club colors, and the ambitions to build a quality soccer club that was more affordable and accessible than a couple of the most popular options that had existed in southern Maine at the time.
But we didn't have any registered players or registered teams, and our bank account was bare.
Since that modest start in July 2014 many of us (see acknowledgements below) have worked to gradually build the program into a 13-team club that has more than 225 boys and girls ages 9-19.
A number of our club's teams have won their divisions in the Maine State Premier League over the years, and a couple of our teams have qualified as Maine's representatives in U.S. Youth Soccer regional tournaments in their respective age groups. And numerous players have not only enjoyed successful high school player careers, but have gone on to experience successful college playing careers.
We're proud of the administrators, coaches, players, and teams we've been developing, and we think we've cultivated a reputation as a quality club.
And there's one other thing we're proud of besides building a quality club: Since that modest start in July 2014 we've saved our members at least $1 million in registration fees.
That's right:
How We Do What We DoMember Mentality
Since our founding, we've become pretty familiar with the characteristics of what might be called the youth sports industrial complex: Professionalized amateur organizations; a disorganized and confusing alphabet soup of competing governing bodies, organizations, and competitions; mergers, acquisitions, and the growth of multi-state (or even multinational) franchises; de facto fiefdoms that are based on exclusivity and scarcity; consistent up-selling; capitalizing on FOMO; frequent recruiting and program-hopping; increased travel demands for players and their families; a focus on narrow self-interest instead of broad mutual interests; a disconnect between the organizations and the communities their members live in; and basically the overall customer-ization of youth sports.
That's a pretty long litany of issues worthy of another post (or two or three), but we'll focus on the overall customer-ization of youth sports, and how we've worked to generally avoid that approach.
Instead of looking to squeeze as much out of our members as possible, we've always tried to organize and deliver quality programming and positive experiences for as little as possible. And instead of creating an organization that is based on transactional relationships, we've tried to create an organization that is based on collaborative relationships and a social contract of sorts.
We essentially act like a cooperative that determines the most efficient and effective uses of our players' families funds, collects those funds, and acts as responsible stewards for those funds to ensure we pay our bills and deliver on our programming. We've also adopted a self-imposed participation fee (registration fee + apparel costs) cap that ensures our biennial participation fees don't exceed 2% of the median household income in the least affluent community among the four communities a vast majority of our players come from.
That approach and other more organizing principles (see below) is what has allowed us to consistently charge anywhere from $1,000-$1,500 less for participation fees than other franchise programs in the area (and even greater savings if we compare our fees to those charged by other franchise programs in other states), and that's also what has enabled us to have the financial flexibility to do things like pay our members prorated refunds each of the last two seasons when COVID-19 severely impacted the programming we were able to provide in 2020 and even when it mildly impacted our programming in 2021.
Besides leading to more affordable outcomes, our member mentality has extended to our processes and decision-making.
We've always been inclusive and transparent with our governance, and we've formally re-structured our club, so that our Board of Directors includes a Member Representative who is voted on by club members. We're also transparent about when our directors will meet, what topics we'll discuss, and members are invited to attend our meetings. And we give all our members the opportunity to weigh in on pretty much everything we do, both formally and informally.
This member mentality is a big reason why we've been able to keep our club relatively affordable.
We Keep the Money on the Field
Our club's annual operating budget has gradually grown as we've grown, and it's currently around $200,000. But our commitment to keeping overhead costs low has been a constant since our founding, which has enabled us to keep as much money on the field as possible.
A lack of full-time staffers allows us to offer our older (12U-19U) teams two indoor training sessions per week (and our youngest teams weekly turf and futsal sessions), even though we're paying $300/hour to rent an indoor turf field January-April. No administrative costs (office space, administrative staff, etc.) have also allowed us to not only register our teams for the same leagues and competitions as other clubs, but also to purchase a $1,500 Veo camera with an annual $1,500 subscription and record as many of those games as possible for our members. And on and on.
Even in situations when we are most like clubs when it comes to costs (our players' required apparel), we forego $5,000-$6,000 in revenue in apparel royalties every other year so that our members have to order required apparel every other season instead of every season.
Small is Manageable
Another reason we've been able to deliver our members at least $1 million in savings is because we've remained relatively small, even though we've had opportunities for more growth.
When we first started our club we anticipated having only two teams, a U18 Boys team and a U16 Boys team. We ended up also including U13 Boys team that first year, and we've gradually grown since 2014 to include about a dozen teams that have spanned 10U-19U on the boys' side, and 10U-19U on the girls' side over the last couple years.
When we first started, we combined a couple age groups (12U, 14U, 16U, 18U, etc.), but we have gradually evolved to mostly rostering single birth year teams now that our player pool has deepened. We've been aspirational in our growth in the sense that we've worked to establish 10U-19U pathways within our club, but we've been mindful to grow more slowly than we probably could have. And we've also been focused on ensuring our pathway is broad enough, but not deeper than it needs to be.
That means we've never rostered more than one team in any particular age group, which has allowed us to broaden our pathway and focus more on quality instead of quantity. And it's allowed us to provide more equitable opportunities and experiences for all our members, instead of having players even within the same age group have different levels of opportunities and experiences.
Another benefit to keeping our club small is it contributes to a more vibrant and healthier ecosystem in our state. Instead of rostering multiple teams in an age group ourselves, other clubs can roster those teams and give those players more individualized attention and programming. And we've also helped our members by cutting down travel time when we play in our leagues, because more competition exists in our area.
More practically, limiting our teams to only one team per age has enabled us minimize our overhead and keep our programming more affordable.
We're an Amateur Club, So We're Structured Like an Amateur Club
The biggest reasons for why we stay small enough to be manageable and keep as much as money on the field as possible is because we recognize we're an amateur soccer club trapped in a closed soccer system. So we're structured and we act like an amateur soccer club trapped in a closed soccer system.
In a more rational and open sports system like those that exist elsewhere, the professional sports organizations that have the most resources (gate revenue, concessions revenue, apparel revenue, etc.) to subsidize the costs of youth sports have the incentives and resources to make those investments, and the remaining amateur organizations are given a pathway to become a professional organization by utilizing resources (investors, training compensation/solidarity payments, etc.) other than youth players' participation fees to fuel their ambitions to become a professional club.
But the sports systems in our country aren't rational or open, so the professional sports organizations that are best-positioned to subsidize the costs of youth sports generally aren't making those investments, and the remaining amateur organizations who don't have a pathway to become a professional organization by utilizing resources other than participation fees (investors, training compensation/solidarity payments, etc.) choose between a rational route of nonetheless funding professionalized amateur operations with participation fees and an irrational route of remaining an amateur club that needs to be funded with participation fees.
We've chosen the more irrational route.
So that means the tens of thousands of hours our club's directors have devoted to administering the club and handling off-field logistics have up to this year been largely donated labor. Even now that we've recently restructured our club to allow us to compensate our directors for their work, those stipends are relatively modest ($1,250-$2,500 each season) considering the time and effort we all put into giving our members a quality experience.
Likewise, even though we've always paid our coaches a stipend, those stipends are similarly modest ($675-$1,750) compared to what other youth coaches are paid at other professionalized amateur clubs.
Fortunately, more professional soccer clubs in the U.S. are getting involved in offering more affordable opportunities for youth players. But most of the youth soccer landscape consists of professionalized amateur clubs who need to primarily rely on participation fees to fund their clubs, because they lack the opportunities and access to resources that exist for amateur clubs around the rest of the world. And that has the most direct and consequential impact on the affordability of youth soccer in the U.S.
American Dreamers
We're proudly amateur, we're stubbornly small, we're focused on keeping as much as our members' money on the field as possible, and we're member-focused. But that doesn't mean we don't have big dreams for our club.
We're still chipping away at our goal of becoming a professional club by 2050, but we're focused on doing so by fulfilling a couple tenets of the American Dream: To build something from scratch, and to help our stakeholders with as many opportunities as possible while doing so.
Continuing our efforts to be outspoken and proactive about how American sports need to be reformed for the common good, and keeping our programming as affordable are two ways we're working towards those goals.
But we're proud of this milestone, and we need to acknowledge not only our current and former members, but also a long list of directors, coaches, and team managers whose contributions of their time and effort have helped us reach this milestone.
Acknowledgements
Co-owners, who've so far earned equity in the club based on their years of service as a coach and/or director: Craig Broadbent, Rob Cook, Aaron Graffam, Stephanie Harvie, C.R. Huntley, Rob Krouskup, Joel LeClerc, Amy Miers, Darren Thayer, Greg Thornton, Ram Tray, and Andy Wight.
Current coaches, directors, and team managers: Don Blatchford, Peter Brooks, Sean Chase, David Coyne, Derek Davis, Sarah Davis, Nichole Decker-St. Onge, Matt Franzoni, Andrea Gooch, Leif Graffam, David Homa, Kate Leveille, Haley McAdams, Orlando Melado, Elisha Morgan, Meg O'Neill, Brian Penley, Marcy Rogers, Andrew Sawyer, Jeff Selser, Jason Tanguay, Shawn Varney, Nick Viola, Jason Weatherby, Karla Wheaton, and Jon Whitehead
Previous coaches, directors, and team managers: Hesham Badawi, Marty Bressler, Ben Brigham, Darren Brown, Danny Cavanaugh, Joel Costigan, Mike Cunniffe, Phil Darasz, Dennis Dobecki, Brian Dries, Beth Emerson, Austin Farwell, Ally Gant, Rob Gava, Ray Grogan, Mark Hamblen, Tim Higgins, David Kaplan, Michael Keller, Walter LeBlanc, Andy Lefebvre, Shari Levesque, Ben Schulz, and Chris Trafford
- John C.L. Morgan
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