Greyhound roundtrip

We had a prospective player ride the Greyhound from Georgia to Colorado. I wrote about it in a previous post admiring this player's hunger.

Well, unfortunately the player was not "as advertised". On his profile form he listed himself as 6 foot 5 1/2 inches. I'm 6-4 so I can measure most people ranging from about 6 foot to 6 -8 just by standing next to them. This candidate was a good 3 inches shorter than advertised.

The profile form also described this player's three show dunks. Unfortunately, he couldn't dunk. When it was clear that he couldn't make it as a player, we tried to keep him as an equipment manager, but he wasn't suited for that role either. So it was back on the bus, Gus. He returned the same way he arrived, via "the dog".

Here's a tip for any prospective performer coming to the Harlem Ambassadors. Avoid resume expansion, be honest about your size and your abilities.

Visiting the Tours - Part 1

In the past two weeks, I have made two trips out to join up with the Harlem Ambassadors on tour.

Our two touring units were re-combined for three games in Iowa September 30 and October 1-2. For the past few tours, we have been doing this exercise to permit Coach Majic to check the development of players on both units and also to make any "trades" if desired.

I joined up with both teams for games in Mason City, Iowa on October 1 and Sioux City, Iowa on October 2. I feel its really important to get out and bridge the distance between our office in Colorado and the performers on the road. It also gives me an opportunity to interact with our game organizers, in this case United Way in Mason City and Jackson Recovery Centers in Sioux City. The photo above is of the Ambassadors' Kiki Davis running the musical chair in Mason City. We joke about Kiki's height of 5 foot 2 inches. I say that she's 4 foot 14! You can measure her limited height, but there is no way to measure her big heart. This is a young lady that is focused and determined. We expect her to be a tremendous success with HA.

Our game organizers are always great to meet. These are community-minded, caring people, often underpaid or volunteer, who are working hard to make a positive impact on their communities. The organizers of both of these events I visited in Iowa were no exception and the Harlem Ambassadors were shown great hospitality. These are both locations that we should return to.

We did make a few trades. Kiki Davis, Sam Givens, and Bayete Gordon went east to Red, White, and Blue. Curtis McBride and Krys Jackson went west to Stars and Stripes.

A tour visit always reminds me that being on tour with the Ambassadors is a real grind, but has great personal satisfaction if the performer chooses to really get involved with the organizers. Seeing everyone that was out on both touring units in Iowa, I saw people that we are proud to have represent us out on the road.

We're a Winner!

Back in June, I learned of a contest that Office Depot was holding for small business. This contest recognized small businesses nationwide for their smart survival strategies. To enter, a small business uploaded an original two-minute video explaining the smart things their business is doing to survive these challenging times.

I talked it up in the office and found a willing associate in getting together an entry. Our client and media relations director Andria Simons is an avid "contester". Maybe not quite as extreme as the character played by actress Julianne Moore in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio," but I do know Andria has entered lots of different contests and has won quite a few prizes. She once won a stove.

Additionally, Andria is a talented video editor so she was excited about the project. And we had another willing participant to star in the video. Ambassadors Coach Lade Majic never met a camera that she didn't like.

Andria and I put together a story line where we showed Majic doing the different things that we as an organization do to save money when shopping at Office Depot. We are in that store all the time, as it is located about two blocks from our office.

We shot it in a couple of hours and Andria did a great job editing it to be under the contest maximum two minute length. My on-camera scene ended up on the cutting room floor, but the video came out great. As an experienced "contester", Andria even had suggestions for when to enter, not too early she advised so that we don't get forgotten following the expected last minute flurry of entries.

We won! Here's the finished result:

On the Road Again

Our two week training camp concluded with a pre-season game in Eaton, Colorado on September 15. Following the game, our team was divided into two touring units and early in the morning of the 16th heading out for the first two-month tours.

The Stars and Stripes unit is led by tour manager Jesse "Nephew" Whintly and show player Ashley Wilson (shown here). These two veterans are accustomed to life on the road with HA. The rest of the tour is filled with rookies who will have to learn to operate on little sleep and deal with all sorts of variables including all sorts of weather, changing lodging conditions, different gymnasiums, different floor surfaces, etc. We hope that everyone adjusts and some thrive in the "HA life", but we also know from experience that some won't make it. Homesickness is a real phenomenon, even for 27 year old males.

Stars and Stripes performed their first show of the 2009-10 season before an enthusiastic crowd in Alliance, Nebraska on September 16 and are off to a good start.

Our Red, White, and Blue unit is led by Coach Lade Majic. They departed about the same time as the other unit, but had a much further drive to get to the first show last night in Park Rapids, Minnesota. Greeted by a large, energetic crowd Red, White, and Blue also got started with a good show.

The Harlem Ambassadors not only perform basketball shows, but also visit schools presenting the message to elementary and middle school students of staying drug-free and getting a good education. Red, White, and Blue is presenting three of these programs today in Staples, Minnesota. Stars and Stripes presented three yesterday in Rapid City, South Dakota and the Rapid City Journal produced a video that you can see at this link

http://videos.rapidcityjournal.com/p/video?id=6214635

Go Greyhound ... And Leave the Driving to Us!

The start of camp is always exciting. We get rookie players, hungry for an opportunity, arriving in Colorado from all over the country. As rookies, they are responsible for their own flights. Or I should say their own transportation.

Every couple of years we get a prospective performer that may have limited funds and can't make an airline flight. Going back to our second season, the highly unique Reggie "Fly" Thompson, drove in from Southern California in his van. When his brakes gave out in the mountains of Colorado, the resourceful Bahamian-born "Fly" (also nicknamed "MacGyver") simply parked his van on the side of the road, hitched a ride to an auto parts store, bought the necessary brake parts, hitched back to his van, and proceeded to give his van a brake job on the side of Interstate 70 at 8,000 feet! He arrived for training camp badly in need of soap and water, but ready to play!

Other performers have taken "the Dog" to get to camp, the Greyhound bus. We've had players travel in from Midland, Texas and from Spearfish, South Dakota on the bus. Until this season, the distance record on Greyhound was held by longtime performer Ketrick "Jazz" Copeland who arrived for his initial camp from Memphis via "the Dog".

But we have a new record this season, with a player arriving from Brunswick, Georgia on "the Dog". I will withhold his name because he might consider this embarassing. We consider it a positive sign of someone hungry for an opportunity. I looked it up. To get from Brunswick to Denver, you first ride to Savannah, and change buses. Then it's on to Atlanta, and change buses. You ride to Nashville, and change again. Next stop St. Louis and another bus change. Finally from St. Louis to Denver concluding about 2 days of riding.

That's hungry! And we respect hungry.

High Altitude Training Camp

Our 12th Harlem Ambassadors pre-season training camp will open a week from today on Thursday, September 3. This is always the most exciting time of the year as we prepare for another season of Harlem Ambassadors basketball.

Our core group is solid with Coach Lade Majic returning to the court after spending nearly all of last season recovering from a torn achilles tendon injury. Majic will be performing on the Red, White, and Blue Tour and directing that tour as well. Veteran Jesse "Nephew" Whintly will manage the Stars and Stripes Tour and Ashley Wilson returns as the show player on that tour.

We are excited about the potential of the group that we have coming into camp. We are expecting two big men (over 6-8), two show speedy dribblers, two understudy female players, and a collection of high-flying dunkers. They all have great potential. What our training camp is all about is converting that potential into production.

The first step is conditioning. We hold our camp in Fort Collins, Colorado. The community is at nearly 5,000 feet along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Since nearly all of our performers arrive at Training Camp from low altitude locations, the first few days of camp finds them gasping in the thinner mountain air. But there are no oxygen masks dropping from the overhead compartment. Players who thought that they were in great shape discover that they aren't. Within a couple of days, most players adjust and by the end of camp our team is in excellent cardiovascular condition.

Much more on Training Camp in the coming days.

Hall of Fame Recognition / Chasing Balls

I watched a little of today's induction ceremonies for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I grew up in Ohio about 20 miles from the Hall and have been there a number of times. It was great to see them honor Ralph Wilson, the only owner the Buffalo Bills have had in their 50 year history.

Wilson was one of the original eight owners in the American Football League that began play in 1960. Against long odds, the AFL succeeded and ultimately forced a merger that laid the foundation for the NFL as we know it today. I've always related to the underdog AFL and have a couple of great books on the league's operations. Written all the way back in 1965 is Bob Curran's The $400,000 Quarterback subtitled The League That Came in From the Cold. More recent and probably easier to find is Going Long written by Jeff Miller in 2003. It also has a subtitle, The Wild 10-Year Saga of the Renegade American Football League in the Words of Those Who Lived It. Whew! I recommend Going Long to anyone interested in sports business.

The AFL succeeded against expectations (like our own Harlem Ambassadors as we enter our 12 season). The best thing about Wilson's induction was that they honored him while he was still alive and could both appreciate and participate. At 91 he appears to still be in good health and sharp mind.

In his speech, he mentioned that back in the 50's you were considered a success as an owner in pro football if you could "break-even". Money was tight and as an example, Wilson told the story of George Halas' Chicago Bears when they played home games at Wrigley Field. In those days, teams didn't have nets in the end zone to block PATs from going into the stands. According to Wilson, Halas used to position burly linemen in each end zone to go into the stands if necessary and retrieve the footballs after PATs if the fans didn't throw the ball back.

Listening to that story, I suddenly had a flashback to my Major Indoor Soccer League days in Chicago. Balls would occasionally go over the hockey glass and into seats and the great fans would readily toss the ball back. The flashback that I had was back to a time in the old Chicago Stadium when a fan tried to keep the ball. Players and officials were standing on the turf waiting for the ball to be returned.

I did a Chicago Tribune archive search and there it was, in an account of the Chicago Sting - Cleveland Force game of March 8, 1986 written by Tribune sports writer John Leptich. The Sting won the game 5-4 in overtime and the crowd was a decent 8,271. Believe it or not, but that was more than than the attendance at a typical Bulls game in the same building during those very early days of Michael Jordan.

There it was in writing: "At 2:52 of the second quarter, a fan refused to give up a ball kicked into the stands. Dale Moss, the Sting's director of marketing sales, wrestled the ball away from the unidentified spectator."

I remembered it because we all had a good laugh that Leptich put that incident in the story. With so few media outlets back in those days, and soccer's second-class status, the likelihood of a front office person like myself ending up in a game story in a paper like the Tribune was remote.

I just remember that everyone was waiting and the fan obviously didn't know the protocol. I was close by and I just went to retrieve it. The delay was long enough that by the time I got to the guy, all eyes were on both of us. He stubbornly refused to release the ball and now I have 8,271 people watching me. No way am I the size and strength of a Bears' linemen, but fortunately I was able to leverage the ball out of his arms. If I had lost the wrestling match, I would have heard boos from the notoriously tough Chicago fans.

Instead I got a smattering of applause as I tossed the ball over the glass and play resumed. And I got 15 seconds of fame in the newspaper that amazingly I can look up from my home computer 23 years later. Is this a great country or what?