Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Time to catch up

The holidays are a good time to catch up. Catch up with old friends, with family...and with work. i'll be doing all three over the next couple weeks. My wife and i will celebrate Christmas with hers, mine and ours on Tuesday, Sunday and Monday respectively. Wednesday will be an annual get together of high school friends to play street hockey and pretend we're young again.

Before and after though, it's quite quiet and allows time to catch up on a number of work assignments that have been put to the side recently. We're working on establishing relationships with a number of soccer organizations and i will use some of the quiet time to work on those proposals.

We have also hired our general manager and will make that announcement after the holidays. In the meantime, the new GM has been facilitating a search for our first head coach. While the coach will likely not start working until the middle to end of next year, we believe it's important to have the head coach identified and signed early in 2008. The first domestic players could be allocated as soon as next month and we want the coach to have significant input into the acquisition of our first domestic and international players.

While outwardly things appear quiet, we're actually pretty busy. Earlier this week, i had good meetings with Toyota Park General Manager Dan Garnett, US Soccer Executive Director and Secretary General Dan Flynn, an international coaching candidate and our marketing firm. Later this week i'm meeting again with our marketing firm, our new GM, a candidate to lead our ticket sales efforts, FC Indiana's Anton Maksimov and we're giving a Toyota Park tour to several international soccer players as well.

Even in the quietest time of the year, we're busy laying the foundation for the future of professional women's soccer in Chicago.

Happy Holidays,

peter

Ps: while at Toyota Park i stopped in to say hi to Fire GM John Guppy. John was meeting with Chris Armas and preparing for a couple head coach interviewsof their own. John was kind enough to ask me my thoughts. After commisserating on having your coach taken by NY and blasting the Red Bulls for tampering i told John and Chris that i thought Denis Hamlett certainly had paid his dues and has the relationships, knowledge and ability to continue the progress that Juan Carlos Osorio made. i also told them that i liked John Spencer and Jesse Marsch and that i was sure they would make a good decision.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Back At It

Managed to sneak out of town for five days last week with my wife. It was Ann and i's first vacation in two years, aside from a few days in Door County earlier in the year. Picked the perfect week to go to Florida and escape the snow up here, though we did have to shovel a foot or so of the white stuff to get into our driveway last night. We have a snowthrower, but we didn't get home until midnight and i don't think the neighbors would've appreciated the motorized wake up call.

Managed also not to bring my lap top and pretty much limited my work to checking the CrackBerry a few times each day. The break has refreshed me and i feel energized heading into the holidays and what i'm anticipating will me an incredibly busy January for us. i'm off to meetings in the League office in San Francisco Monday and Tuesday. The main purpose of the meetings is to advance the League's strategic marketing plan, but we'll also be finalizing the League's operating agreement this week and discussing domestic and international player acquisition issues.

With the Bears off tomorrow (and done for the season), be sure to catch the NCAA Women's College Cup Championship. Florida State's upset of Notre Dame and USC's upset of UCLA yesterday set up an interesting final. The game will be televised live at 1:00 pm CT Sunday on ESPN2.

Also, please note that we've added an rss feature,so you can sign up to be notified of new posts.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

TGI(was)F

Yesterday was a really good and full day for CPWS and me. Started off with a breakfast meeting at the wonderful "View" restaurant in Bridgeview with Chicago Gaels Head Coach John Nikchevich and our lead candidate for the CPWS General Manager position. I had never met John before and really enjoyed hearing his thoughts on women's and girls soccer and coaching in general. He comes from a non-traditional soccer background and incorporates many ideas from more mainstream American sports into his coaching and soccer philosophies. i look forward to working with John and the Gaels to promote women's soccer together in Chicagoland.

Next i went to Toyota Park to give a tour to our GM candidate. We made the requisite visits to the lockerrooms, player tunnel with the Section 8 touchstone and "Tradition, Honor, Passion" sign donated by Section 8 (that's the favorite part of the tour for me), training facilities, Illinois Soccer Wall of Fame and history display, suites, club lounge and offices. i was also able to introduce her to Bridgeview Mayor Steve Landek, TP GM Dan Garnett, Fire GM John Guppy and many of the staff from the team's PR, ticket sales, community relations, operations, customer service and administrative departments.

After a quick bite at Beefy's for lunch, i made it downtown for a conference call with our legal counsel Jack Cummins and board member Gary Weaver to review final changes to the team's operating agreement. That was followed by a League Marketing Committee call to review and discuss PR, brand and marketing strategies for the next couple months. I chair that committee and it will keep me extra busy during the launch phase of the League. We have a really good committee, which includes the Boston Breakers' marketing whiz Karin Piscitelli. Karin is taking the lead on several of the League's marketing initiatives until the League office staffs up in the new year.

That call was followed by a quick signature of my CPWS employment agreement (Yay, i'm official!) and then i was out the door to Durty Nellie's Pub in Palatine for dinner with my old friend Bret Hall. Bret was a tenacious defender indoors and outdoors for the Chicago Sting and has coached successfully with the Chicago Sockers, Stingers, SMU and the USWNT. Bret played for me with the Chicago Power from 1990 to 1994 and coached the Chicago Fire Reserves when Mark Boyle started that team with some help from the Fire. i have always respected Bret, his work and his values. We talked about old times and new times. Our new GM will handle our head coach search and if Bret is interested (Bret says he really doesn't know at this point), i am sure he would receive serious consideration.

After dinner, i headed home to Wisconsin and got on a call with the designer of the League's logo. We moved the League's brand process along considerably in the last two weeks and expect to have decisions on name and logo made internally before the holidays, but will likely wait until after the holidays for any public announcements.

Another day in the wonderful world of women's pro soccer...