Hockey Helping Hockey

Dear Readers;
I am a huge fan and follower of IHC and am grateful to Richard Graham for helping to keep the spirit of our sport alive and giving us an opportunity to be informed and even voice ourselves to the inline hockey community. I am also grateful to Richard for giving his attention and publishing articles and information I have produced and sharing with them with you. Richard fairly gives those same opportunities to others, including in his recent thread An Anonymous Post Worth Posting. I chose to begin this new thread with a more positive twist and so as to separate this and any subsequent content from any negatives, real or perceived, in the aforementioned thread, or with like threads including the reasonably productive Problems with roller hockey...

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an unpaid volunteer and an advocate for our sport, especially for children and the scholastic segment. I know there to be many IHC readers who also share in the spirit of giving, many are volunteers themselves and I believe we can all agree that this sport thrives on the dedication of its volunteers. I also acknowledge that there are many readers of these forum topics who will never post but look to them for information and positive reinforcement. It is for them and those who choose to share through positive and productive dialogue focused on building this sport for the today and the next generation that I write.

Having read numerous good suggestions in IHC threads, I would like to share the following for your consideration. Please feel free to add and collaborate. If it can result on any new children entering and staying with the sport, then our time will have been well-spent.


Connect with Your Community: It's Free. It's Easy!
 List your facility (rink) with your State's council on physical fitness and their resources directory. Be sure to be accurate with your entry and revisit to maintain your listings at least every six months. Example: California Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports: Activity Guide. The Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports' Activity Guide is an on-line searchable database of sporting activities, youth organizations and parks throughout California that parents, health practitioners and other Californians can use to connect California children and youth with physically active opportunities in their communities. Roller Hockey http://www.calgovcouncil.org/activeg...ler%20Hockey/; Ice Hockey http://www.calgovcouncil.org/activeg...tslist/Hockey/
 List your club, league and rink with your local City or Municipality and their directories for children's activities. Parks & Recreation departments and activity directors in many community promote local sporting associations and programs. A great place to engage young parents and their children with Learn To Skate programs, after school programs, special events, and more.
 List your facility (rink) with local newspapers and their web sites as an entertainment venue. Most publisher sites have Events sections and being listed as a venue gives you another opportunity to be found. Most give you a section to describe your business and services, and some even offer a free picture - happy kids posing in front of your facility?
 Add your events to web event directories such as Eventful (http://eventful.com), the newspaper and community sections. And don't forget to list your major events right here on IHC!
 Devise a brochure introducing your facility and youth programs and then distribute to local preschools and elementary schools. While many schools will resist a for profit group from doing this, consider using student-athletes from your middle and high school leagues who may be part of your learn-to-skate program, or invitations to watch the older kids in the neighborhood play roller hockey; maybe even a demonstration event on the playground or basketball court after school.
 Road Work! No, not a warning sign to avoid some patch in the road. Rather, consider employing outdoor skate workouts (road work) with players in Club T-Shirts and team jerseys skating through the neighborhood parks, neighborhoods and school yards. Make it a real WOW by having players do stick work with a roller ball while exercising. (Can you imagine the site of a four team high school club skating through the neighborhood?) Be sure to have brochures handy!

Cooperative Marketing: Others Need Help, Too!
 Some municipalities, YMCAs and communities have outdoor rinks with minimal or even no supervised programs for their community - a premium opportunity to co-op with them and run a clinic with your staff on the fundamentals to local kids, an evening adult program, stick ball Saturdays and such to then convert their interest to your leagues as as they grow. If not programs, consider signage agreements to advertise recreational activities at your rink while kids practice at their neighborhood rink and cul-de-sacs.
 Local sporting goods retailers are always looking for a co-op opportunity and roller hockey can give it to them! Consider conducting a parking lot event: stick ball tourney or exciting demonstration; maybe even tie-in with other roller sports. Work with the retailer and his product reps to sell street or hockey or roller skates and gear they have on hand while participants are instant mobile signs to street traffic and passersby. Don't forget those banners and set up a pop-up tent to promote your facility and youth hockey programs.
 2 Cool 4 Ice? Consider the opportunity of cross-promotion with local youth ice hockey leagues... most ice skaters grew up on roller and made the transition, but are they still competitive on roller? A parking lot match-up between ice and roller teams in a fun, fundraising setting could produce funds and get exposure through traffic and through media potential.
 Tournaments and giving back to the community. As demonstrated this past year by the NCRHA and Mission Hockey, their Mission Hockey College program used collegiate players as teachers during a one hour clinic session for youth skaters as one way to help give back and keep players in the game by demonstrating the path to the top of the pyramid. How many youth skaters, or their parents, are even aware that there is a collegiate league? There's now a few hundred more after this past season. With the top talent available at many tournaments, promoters have a unique opportunity to work with rink owners and their communities to get the message out and bring in new skaters for a wide variety of grass roots programs. Use the WOW factor of a skills contest following a learn-to-skate session and you've got 'em hooked!
 Charities - Give, Give, Give! If you're fortunate enough to be in a market with an NHL team or major hockey league team, work with the Fan Development department to help players who want to produce namesake events for local charities make their way to your facility. It takes a while to mature a program, but community involvement and new interest grows quickly with a hockey blood drive, a contest for cancer or an event to help disaster victims. Even if you don't have a major team, consider how impactful that charity events can be on traffic counts and new media impressions. These events really shine when presenting your facility's resume to prospective sponsors.
 Rinks Helping Rinks. This one is not an original, but it's message has been a common one raised in many threads here in the IHC community. Actually, I borrowed this from the motto of the six facilities in Southern California who bonded this past year and created WIHA (www.westerninline.com/) and are actually putting it into practice.


Business 101: Make it Easy to Communicate with Your Customers!
Customers want you to be easy to find, easy to reach and easy to communicate with. Educate your staff in best practices for quality customer service; don't treat customers like rink rats. Make your phone ring through local promotions and let the caller reach a real person when they call. Make your web site kid-friendly! Language (consider those seedy adult league names not being placed on the home page) and navigation should be easy and content entertaining to each age and division. Remember that content is king on the Internet and cheap to produce. Content should be updated regularly, not just the rink schedule and registration (cha ching) dates! If you have some proficiency, consider making landing pages relevant to a specific service. Example: mybirthdayattherink.com which could be searched separately but linked to the rink's main home page. Birthdays and other services are a natural for a multitude of directories in your locale and across the country.

If every rink owner or manager spent just one hour of each business day in marketing their business in some new way they would soon see the results with new smiles appearing on skates and filling their rinks. Then, with simple maintenance and re-marketing techniques, these newbies would be moving up the ranks toward the top of the pyramid. The next challenge will be to build more new rinks!


I am hopeful that your contributions of new ideas and collaboration of concepts will help in shoring the foundation of our communal bridge and reinforce the many positives that makes it fun to be involved with this sport.

Thank you in advance for all you do!

Great post!

Excellent ideas, for anyone who is not not familiar with the Interscholastic Hockey Federation, look it up it is an excellent program. I reffed a few game for them and they are great. It gives the high school kids a team that they and their school can be involved with. My son looks forward to playing for Newport Harbor in about 8 years.

Jeff Morgan

Good recomendations and posting have merit in certain areas of the country. The world that I live in is very different. We have tried just about every bullet that you outlined with varying levels of success. We are Buffalo In-line Hockey Group a completely not for profit youth in-line hockey organization. We have a robust full season (32 teams in several age groups this fall) and rapidly improving tournament programs. We are completely volunteer. We are not a revenue source for anyone. We rent rink time and no member of the Board of Directors, the administration staff, house coaches and advisors recieve a penny.

Two years ago I took time off from work and attempted to go to as many schools as I could to post information about our organization. The first 3 schools told me that they had no interest in putting our brochures on the bulletin board. The 4th school had a security guard at the door. He indicated that his school had receieved a phone call from one of the other schools telling them that what I was doing. If I attempted to enter this school I would be arrested for trespassing.

There is 1 major hockey retailer in the area and a few small, inadequate ones. Three times I have sat down with the manager of the major retailer attemting to get some type of ccoperative agreement. Each time I was told that our kids are coming to his store anyway so why did he need to partner with us.

Several ice leagues in this area tell thier players that in-line hurts thier skills.

We run 2 Ironman tournaments each season with the proceeds going to a local charity. When a picture and article was sent to the local newspaper we were told they would not publish it because "nobody cares about your street hockey". The Buffalo Sabres when contacted and asked if someone from thier organization could drop the opening puck indicated that the cost to do that would be $1,000.

The TORHS National was in Buffalo this July. After weeks of begging, the same local paper published 4 inches on page 5 of the sports section about TORHS, the tournament and Buffalo In-line Hockey Group. When asked why they would not publish anything during the tournament or pictures of the tournament we were told "nobody cares about your street hockey". The same paper published a story and 2 pictures about an ice hockey clinic that drew 50 kids.

I have only touched the tip of the frustration iceberg that we deal with daily. Despite all of this and zero corporate sponsorship we are moving forward. We have run a deficit each year of our existence and the extra $$$ come directly from my wallet. Each Board member works at least 20 hours per week for BIHG with many of us working 40+ in addition to our full time jobs. We do this for one reason and one reason only-THE PLAYERS.

With almost no exception when new players/parents many of them ice players/parents come into our league they are extremely happy with what they see on the rink and more than extremely happy with our organization, structure and profesionalism.

I think your comments are helpfull but remember some of exist in an alternate world

Rich Gurbacki
Co-founder and League Director
Buffalo In-line Hockey Group

Hi Rich,

Wow. I feel your pain. I've run into some of the same attitudes from INLINE hockey people. I plan to write an editor's note about that subject very soon.

Good luck!

Dear Mr. Gurbacki;
With all due respect, according to Mapquest, we're separated by 2533.10 miles. According to author John Guare, we're only separated by six degrees. And if you believe for one minute that we're separated by frustration, then believe me when I say that we're actually brothers in the same hockey community and of the same world.

Due to my time constraints I can't share but one experience, but hope to help address others as time avails. I will start with your Public Relations efforts and the local newspaper experience.

Orange County, CA has an adult population of 2.3 million. Small by some measure and large compared to others. Readership is divided between two major newspapers, the LA Times and the OC Register with the Register delivering daily major and weekly community-based publications. Sports coverage in this market (DMA) is split with local major league professional and nationally ranked college teams. High school sports get regular coverage for each State sanctioned, mainstream sport at the major dailies and the local community papers. When speaking with the Sports editors about our high school program, they're too busy and too understaffed with 30+ varsity sports to also give coverage or space to roller hockey. The challenge seems daunting!

However, after writing the articles, taking the pictures and submitting each to editors for their pretty much slam-dunk publishing, I have been published a short handful of times with over 20 submittals. Most any author or PR agent would say that ain't too bad. Most recently, it took this combination with the added fact of two high school roller hockey teams from the same city making the State finals to get into even the local community paper.

Frustrating? H E Double Hockey Sticks yes it is. Is it the same for any business to fight their way in to get this same attention. Yes! Answer: Persistence pays big dividends. Know the rules of their game, prepare your plan and then work the plan.

Again, I empathize with your frustration and know from your writing that you and your organization will continue to grow in spite of the odds.

Bless you for all you do, Brother!

Seriously, there needs to be a list and or promotion done with the kids who have been drafted by NHL teams who started/played roller hockey and how it helped their game.

I guess the people in Buffalo won't forget about Hasek and how he crosschecked someone in the face and was arrested in the Czech republic during a roller pick up game.

A lot of the pro's I have talked to tell me how roller has helped their games and gave them the ability to have better hands and see the play develop quicker.

With the support of these professional athletes. we can help get this great game the recognition it deserves.

The Ducks have Bobby Ryan who grew up playing roller hockey in Upland and was an original Gretzky travel player who won the NARCh championship in 1999 along with Itan Chavira.

Other than Lee Sweat, it seems to me that most pro ice players, and not just in the NHL, seem to be afraid to "come out of the closet" and admit the influence roller/inline hockey has had on their game.

It just kills me.

Steve Inge - ROXBURY 8

Jay:

Thanks for writing. I understand that we have some similarities but I respectfully submit that we have more differences. Witness the fact that you have a high school in-line program and every high school AD that I spoke with has-with a smile on his face as if it was the most ridiculous thing he ever heard-said not interested. I sumbit an article each week to the local newspaper and with the exception of the one article I mentioned have never been published. But I think we are brethren driving toward the same goal and I will use the parking lot idea, unless it snows next Saturday. Keep on pushing.

Rich

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Doug Jones

Seriously, there needs to be a list and or promotion done with the kids who have been drafted by NHL teams who started/played roller hockey and how it helped their game... The Ducks have Bobby Ryan who grew up playing roller hockey in Upland and was an original Gretzky travel player who won the NARCh championship in 1999 along with Itan Chavira.

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Doug,
Great Idea! I'm on part of that and will gladly contribute or collaborate with someone who writes better than me.

This next weekend at The 949 in Irvine, formerly known as the Wayne Gretzky Roller Hockey Center and later the California Roller Hockey Center, former Anaheim Duck Joe DiPenta will be joined by the Ducks' Brad May, Bobby Ryan, Todd Marchant, George Parros and several other players from the Anaheim Ducks in a roller hockey skills event for charity.

I plan to be there for interviews and lots of pictures. More on this to follow!

Meanwhile, you also have some great experience and ideas on roller hockey promotions that can help this community. Thanks for the shares and all you do!

Best! (Go Pirates)
Jay

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zipyaj

Doug,

This next weekend at The 949 in Irvine, formerly known as the Wayne Gretzky Roller Hockey Center and later the California Roller Hockey Center, former Anaheim Duck Joe DiPenta will be joined by the Ducks' Brad May, Bobby Ryan, Todd Marchant, George Parros and several other players from the Anaheim Ducks in a roller hockey skills event for charity.

Best! (Go Pirates)
Jay

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Bobby Ryan played out of LaVerne with the Gretzky team that won NARCH squirt platinum, in 2000. I was the GM of LaVerne when Bobby played there. It's kind of a homecoming for him, and Jay it would be great if you could get a picture of him with a quote of how he played at the center and also won NARCh!!!

http://www.narch.com/Results/NARCh_F...206013084.html

We need more players like him to support the sport and let people know what a great game it is!!!

Doug

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Doug Jones

Bobby Ryan played out of LaVerne with the Gretzky team that won NARCH squirt platinum, in 2000. I was the GM of LaVerne when Bobby played there. It's kind of a homecoming for him, and Jay it would be great if you could get a picture of him with a quote of how he played at the center and also won NARCh!!!

http://www.narch.com/Results/NARCh_F...206013084.html

We need more players like him to support the sport and let people know what a great game it is!!!

Doug

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that link also shows something else that some people who weren't around back then might find interesting.. ;)

NARCh Pro
1st: Team Hyper
2nd: TourMudcats
3rd: Tour West

High Scorer: #89 Daryn Goodwin – Rinkside Rockets – 2.6 ppg

an idea each day... Keep It Simple.

Try doing a keyword search "HELP Hockey" into any browser -- you may find some cool results with loads of free ideas from others.

What works for you?

Every so once in a while you get lucky with the press or local media... Avenues magazine just ran a one page article entitled Roll With It - Roller Hockey is the wave of the future.

Focused on the 949 Roller Hockey Center in Irvine, CA, the writer has done a nice job for giving their readership of approx. 56,000 a new sense of our sport.

More readers outside of the sport brings new players into the sport.

Keep on keepin' on!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rback

There is 1 major hockey retailer in the area and a few small, inadequate ones. Three times I have sat down with the manager of the major retailer attemting to get some type of ccoperative agreement. Each time I was told that our kids are coming to his store anyway so why did he need to partner with us.

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One modest recommendation. Instead of the major retailer who doesn't feel like he needs you, maybe you'd have more luck trying to build a relationship with one or more of the small, indadequate ones. After all, maybe they can help you, and you can help steer your kids toward them and away from the one that doesn't appreciate them anyway.

Gary Alpert