By Kevin Klipstein
I have a mug on my desk from when I worked at the sports marketing company ProServ in the late 1990’s. On one side it states, “Something terrible happens if you don’t promote,” and on the other side it says “Nothing.” Below, it is branded with the ProServ wordmark, the implied solution to the problem of not promoting. I like the mug; it seems simple but confident, and it makes an obvious notion seem new every time you read it.
In this same space in June 2006, I wrote a piece called “EVENT MODE” and it started, “Every spring, the USSRA enters ‘event mode.’ For long-time executive committee member and outgoing board chair Ken Stillman, nothing was more frustrating. To Ken, all office work outside of events just seemed to grind to a halt with the small staff absorbed in planning and running the national championships. As a result, one of the goals we had this season was to run better nationals with less impact on the office.”
Looking back (all the “From U.S. SQUASH articles back to 2004 are available on our site), it almost seems quaint. I boasted of a dozen national championships, more than 2,500 players, hosting the largest Junior Open with 500 players, and adding feed-in consolation rounds to the Masters Championships among other things. At the time, we had a staff of only four people.
By comparison, we now begin promoting our events in August, with the actual “event season” beginning in October and running through late May, so the concept of a busy “spring” is laughable. Last season we ran 19 national championships with more than 5,000 players (the National League Finals added this year will be our 20th). In addition, we ran five Junior Championship Tour events, and run the largest squash tournament in the world, hosting more than 1,000 players in the U.S. High School Team Championships. We also run several Level 1 and 2 Coaching Certification Courses regularly throughout the season.
While National Teams activities are not events per se, in that we do not run them, they are event-like in the planning required. We field teams in regional and world competitions, and are fielding more teams, more successfully than ever before. This year, these include the World Junior Women’s Individual Championships, World Junior Men’s Individual and Team Championships, World University Games, Pan American Squash Federation Cup, Women’s World Team Championships, and WSF World Cup (new in March 2011). Each of these teams requires a selection process, planning, training, coordination, logistics support and supplies.
Since writing the piece in 2006, the staff has doubled in size, but so too has the reach and quantity of our programs. So while the Board still has some of the same concerns about the impact of events on our ability to support other programs, the growth is undeniable. The events are run more professionally with greater reach than ever before, with less “impact” on the office staff as we become more efficient in our planning. The next five years will bring interesting challenges for the organization as we attempt to accelerate our growth and promote awareness of squash outside of the squash world.
Our focus will be building up the marketability of our “Major”—the U.S. Open Championships—increasing coverage of squash via the internet, streaming initially, then more produced coverage later, followed by television air time. After all, if you don’t promote, nothing happens.
