CommonWealth Magazine - Fall 2006
Sport Management Students Hone Event Management Skills through SoccerFest
SoccerFest Team
“Planning and managing SoccerFest has given us a competitive edge over students from sport management programs at other universities,” emphasizes junior-year Sport Management major Tiffany Sy. “And our recruitment of sponsorships for the event offered a responsibility that many employees in the sport industry don’t get until their thirties.”
Now in its fourth year, SoccerFest, held on the UMass Amherst campus on May 4-5, brings the UMass Amherst and local communities together for two varsity exhibition games and a day-long tournament of teams fielded from the local community and local colleges. “The big change in this year’s SoccerFest was our first-time partnership with Amherst Youth Soccer, which dramatically increased our competing teams to 124 from fifty in previous years,” observes sport management professor Mark McDonald, the faculty advisor for the event. For Tiffany Sy and her nineteen classmates, responsibility for SoccerFest was the centerpiece of Dr. McDonald’s six-credit course, Event Management. “Because 62 of the teams involved 3x3 competitions between children under eight years old, the students and I knew from day one of the course that we had to make the day engaging both for kids and their parents,” he recalls. To that end, McDonald and the students restricted games for ages eight and younger to the morning and created a centrally located “fan zone” that offered refreshments, games, crafts, and live entertainment from KidsAfrik, an accomplished local band that combines reggae and African musical influences.
A second challenge followed from the withdrawal of the event’s former principal sponsor, New Balance. “During the tournament’s first three years, under the direction of Professor Carol Barr, it was known as New Balance SoccerFest,” notes McDonald. “The firm’s absence represented a loss of $16,000, which we successfully recouped by increasing tournament participation and attendance and by our students’ aggressive pursuit of new partnerships. It was truly a make-or-break year and we came through in flying colors.”
The twenty students divided up the work into subgroups devoted to marketing, registration and hospitality, finance, and tournament operation. “There was plenty of communication among the groups and interesting group dynamics within and between them,” recalls sport management senior Gerry Rubinaccio. “If you had disagreements, you had to learn when to pick your battles,” added senior Cara Tamburello. “We devised back up plans and measured every meaningful variable that we could: tickets sold, flyers distributed, the age groups of participants, and how they found out about SoccerFest.”
In addition to attending McDonald’s class, the students met twice a week in the Flavin Family Experiential Learning Center to firm up strategies and tactics. The center offered the students a “command central” with computers, phones, fax machines, and meeting space. “We pretty much lived in that office during the week of the tournament,” recalled Rubinaccio. “There were so many factors to control. Some nights I didn’t sleep more than three hours.” “Most of us have had internships in the spectator sport industry,” notes Sy. “With internships and SoccerFest under our belts, we’ll be ahead of everyone else when we start jobs after graduation.
“The students believe that they have made SoccerFest a success; I believe that the event’s real end is to get other things done,” emphasizes McDonald. “That includes learning first-hand the process that accompanies activities like teamwork, community, planning, mutual respect, and self-discipline.”