 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Savvy Entrepreneur. Today, we're here at St. Florian FC Headquarters and Longmont Indoor Soccer to speak with two of the directors of St. Florian FC. I've known these two gentlemen for a number of years because I coach with St. Florian FC. So without further ado, we've got Tim and Josh. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves? Thanks, Tels. I'm Timothy Laxen. I'm currently the director of U9 through U14 Boys here at St. Florian FC. And thanks again for having us. We're really excited to be here. Josh Voida, the recreational director of coaching here with St. Florian FC. Now you guys have been coaching and have played soccer for decades, right? So let's talk about your guys' background in the beautiful game. Tim, let's talk about your background. Yeah, I grew up in Colorado Springs, actually, and in their club system had the opportunity to play against Longmont Express, which we'll get into in a little bit, St. Florian Express. And played high school in Colorado Springs. Went on to play a little college division to it, University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. And from there dabbled in a little, in a couple of tryouts down in Mexico. Nothing really materialized. So I came back up to the university to finish out the degree and then got into coaching. And have been coaching ever since. I actually started with a pride soccer club down in Colorado Springs. Gosh, right around 2004. Well, you've been doing this for a while now. A little bit, yeah. Josh, what about you? Yeah, in the game my whole life. Obviously as a player to start, played, you know, club, high school, all that. When I was, you know, a teenager. Was lucky enough to play college ball. Played at Central Iowa for four years. Got to captain that squad. All the while though, I had already started coaching. My parents were good, big on us volunteering in our community. So in 1993, I was a junior in high school and I started volunteering coaching in my local rec program. And during all my playing days from then on, I was always coaching on the side. Like Tim, you know, professional soccer didn't work out as a career path. But I had to be in the game and I started coaching. Just made coaching a full-time career once I got out of college. Was lucky enough to coach at the college level for about a decade. And I was at Northern Illinois University when this job was posted back in 2011. Tim was already with the club and I wanted to move to Colorado with my wife. Started family and I applied for this role. And Tim interviewed me back then. And it's been here ever since. It's so great that both of you guys had the opportunity to give back to the community and to the game. Most people don't think of soccer or soccer clubs as a start-up. But you guys are a unique story. You guys started this from nothing. Tim, do you want to tell us about that story? Sure. The organization itself, San Bernard Express actually goes back to 1981. When they started, when they got it off the ground. And they were able to provide both recreational and competitive soccer at that time. Like I mentioned, I was able to play against them from some teams in Colorado Springs. When the clubs were named something different at that time. They got into a little bit of financial difficulty in the early 2000s. And that's when we were able to come in and rebrand and reboot at the same frame of C in 2008. So I joined the club in the fall of 2008. Just after we had gone through that transition. At that time, we were able to create one competitive team. Because the recreational base had stayed in place with St. Raynexpress. And that's all that was there. So after we started the one team in 2008, we were able to continue to build a competitive program. Hire more staff members. We were able to bring Josh in to continue running the recreational program. And then build the competitive side to roughly 40 teams. Which has been a great experience for us to be a part of. To see the growth and to see the involvement that we've had in the community over the years. Well, 40 teams, that must require a lot of operational infrastructure. How do you guys handle that many kids? You know what, I think a lot of it has to do with the tremendous staff that we have in place. Currently, you know, we're very organized from the ground up. So from the recreational soccer up through competitive, there's a lot of synergy. The transition is pretty seamless. And at the same time, because we are able to provide so much for the community, we have a lot of support coming back to the volunteer base. And the Rec Soccer program is massive. You know, there are a lot of families that want to get involved. A lot of parents that want to help coach their children. And as they continue getting older, we transition a lot of those parents into coaches. And they continue helping us in the competitive side and beyond. We have some coaches that we were just talking to today that have been coaching with us since 2007. Starting as volunteers and now they're actually lead coaches in some of our competitive age groups. Yeah, I had to piggyback on the infrastructure bit. When I was hired, I was the fourth full-time employee. Tim, I believe, was the third full-time employee. And now we're up to seven full-time employees. So we've pretty much doubled our full-time staff, which allows us to do a lot of things. Most of us have a lifetime soccer background, but some people were definitely brought in with some different skills. Because it's a business we're running, you know, there's a lot of day-to-day there. But the big piece, and Tim touched on, is the volunteers. We have an army of volunteers. In any given season, we'll have 40 competitive teams. We'll have 140 Rec teams. And of those 140 Rec teams, we have roughly 200 volunteer coaches, head and assistant coaches. So it's a massive group of leaders in the community of adults that are giving their time, freely, for the most part, to help the kids play. In any given season, it's 2,000 kids wearing the same brand of C uniform, which is pretty awesome to be a part of. Back when I came from in Illinois, I was coaching at Northern Illinois University, but I was also working with the local club, and that club was 250 kids, so that this is such a larger entity in a huge reach we have in our community, which is pretty special to be a part of. That's great that you can actually foster and grow that coaching base. You guys are doing a great job for that. Yeah, thank you for sure. And so let's discuss the difference between a Rec and a competitive team. Well, I think Rec is typically your beginning stages. It's often called referred to now as grassroots, but I think that's just a fancier name for recreational soccer. There's usually no travel involved. It's usually a volunteer who leads it. As Tim mentioned, we have an army of volunteers at St. Grant FC. Pre-COVID, we had roughly 200 volunteer coaches every season, which is awesome. So you'll have a mom or a dad usually, or like yourself, tell someone in the community who wants to give back to a Rec team and coach those squads, and obviously we provide a lot of resources so they're not just a warm body, they have an education, they have professional staff behind them, they can lean on for resources, and that kind of, it's a fun environment where they can start to learn the game, develop some of the basic skills, and if they really catch fire and love playing in that environment and want to take on a little more, we offer a competitive program, which Tim is one of our leads. So what's the difference? Is it just the level of play, or is there a commitment from parents that are different? Yeah, I think you could look at it a few different ways. To piggyback on what Josh was saying, most of the recreational games are going to be local here in Longmont on Saturdays, and they're going to stay local, versus the competitive program will have teams that travel throughout the region and the state, so some of our competitive teams can go as far north as Wyoming, who's part of this Collar Soccer Association, they can go to Fort Collins, they can go as far west as Grand Junction, we've had games down in Pueblo, so they'll move all over the state. But again, those age groups kind of transition, so the recreational, the in-house recreational program will stay here, and then once we build into the Collar Soccer Association, and their programs, we have a little bit of blend, right? For example, the team you're coaching is going to stay regionalized, and then at the very elite level, there are teams that will travel all over the state. So for today, FC has been doing some great things in terms of championships and some performance metrics. Let's talk about that. Yeah, we've been able to celebrate some recent successes on both sides, girls and boys. We've had some older girls' teams that have made it to the finals of the President's Cup. We've had some older boys' teams that just recently were three-peat champions in the President's Cup, so it's a great accomplishment for both. And we've had some younger age groups on both sides make it to the semifinals of the President's Cup. Finals of the President's Cup, we've had other teams that have made it to the semifinals and finals of the State Cup, and we've had quite a few college signings as well, which we're really proud of, and we're able to celebrate both girls and boys, some players that have been able to stay local and attend schools here in Colorado, and other players that have been able to go out of state for school and continue to play soccer. So we've been really happy. Back to when I started, we weren't even quite fielding high school teams yet, let alone sending kids off on scholarships. Our O1 girls, for example, almost every girl went on to play college soccer, which is just the meteoric rise this program has had is pretty sweet. You guys are literally making people's dreams come true. How many kids grow up thinking that they want to go play college soccer, and you guys are doing it, so that's off. It's easy to get behind for sure. Absolutely. You guys touched a lot of lives with your program, so that's off to you guys for doing a great thing for our community. Thank you. So as a community, what can we offer you guys? What do you guys look for? Coaches, refs, what can the community do to offer support to the same frame as you? I think we're always looking for, you know, talented individuals who want to give back to their community. Going back to our volunteer army, people from all walks of life and talented in their own right who just want to help provide an awesome experience for kids, especially now. Kids need to be doing this more than ever. So yeah, we're always looking for people who want to help out the community. Every season we have people who have no kids playing, but just want to be a part of that and be able to be a soccer superhero for a group of young kids. You can register for any of our programs pretty much year-round. In fact, our spring registration is open already, which will be our next big rec program. If you're ever interested in getting into our competitive program, that can happen at any point. You just contact us and we can get you out to train with the team. So if you want to play, if you want to help, if you want to coach, whatever it is, we provide all the resources to make that happen. Yeah, and I can speak from personal experience. You guys have offered great resources to me as a coach, and I've had the best coaching experience I've had in my career with St. Fray NFC, so kudos to you guys on that. I think I would add to your question, are we looking for referees? Yes, whether you played soccer in the past, whether you played a different sport in the past, whatever level of experience you have, we can always use the referees. We can't do what we do without our volunteer base, which is massive. And so they provide such a huge support network for everything that we do moving forward. And I think we're really excited that we're able to be so involved in the community. And the relationships that we build actually lead to opportunities like this, where we can collaborate with you, where we can interact with you on a coaching level, but also on a professional level as well. And so the more relationships we build, the more that we're out in the community, I think. And I hope that the community wants to help give back like you're asking. Absolutely. So this has been a really weird soccer season, right? I mean, I've never seen anything like this. So instead of asking you what's different this year, I'm going to ask you what is actually the same this year. So let's talk about COVID and soccer. I think one of the biggest things that we've seen right out of the gates has been the experience. A lot of people are really grateful to have the kids playing again. I know the players are excited to be on the field again. As coaches, we're excited to be on the field again. You get that normal buzz at the beginning of every season. And this, I think, was heightened a little bit because we were indoors for so long. You know, we were doing the Zoom sessions. Everybody was in the front yard. Everybody was in the living room. They were in the garage on the video chat. And for us to actually get back outdoors again, brought that heightened sense of excitement. You know, that, hey, we're grateful to be on the field. Not just excited, we're thankful. And we've seen that spread into the families. You know, the families have been very thankful and appreciative of what we did throughout the COVID months. And I think we were able to put something on the field again during the week and on the weekends. I think, yeah, this is your joy. My two children play. And they were, you know, like most children right now, most kids right now, you know, a little bummed by so many things that have been taken away. And those first practices, I couldn't get my daughter to stop talking that evening. She was just beaming like I hadn't seen since early March. She was back just because of getting able to play again and see that her friends that she hadn't seen since early March. And that's been everywhere. You know, the amount of parents who've been like, thank you. This is what my son, this is what my daughter really needed, this is what they missed. Or they've never played soccer and they got them into soccer because so many other things have been ripped away. It's just provided this positive, you know, physical exercise, it's social, everything that the kids needed so badly. Absolutely. Where do you guys see this going next season? I think more of the same. I think it was looking in the summer when it was looking like we were going to be able to have soccer. There was definitely a lot of hesitation in families and that has slowly melted away. Hopefully that continues. I think a lot of the precautions, safety precautions that are in place, regardless of what happens with COVID, are going to be in place for the spring season. Our hope and what we're seeing is that we're going to have more kids come back because numbers are down. People are cautious and rightfully so. Again, hopefully those numbers will continue to increase and more kids will be able to come out and play in a safe manner. Yeah, we've seen a lot of good things from Colorado at the state and local levels. Boulder County has been really diligent about the guidelines they've put in place for us because safety is their top concern and we've done everything we can to stay in line with everything they're asking. So we remain cautiously optimistic that there will be a spring season and it will be able to continue providing soccer next season. Yeah, we can only cross our fingers, right? We can't look into the future through the crystal wall. But I do want to commend you guys on the hard work and the... It must have been so taxing coming up with all of these things to get around having a meeting person, like the Zoom sessions that we had during the beginning parts of COVID. That was so helpful to those kids. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I think it was a new... a new normal, people were calling it. You know, we got into this routine. I know I got into a pretty fun schedule at the beginning just because it was new, just because it was uncharted territory. And we did a lot of collaborations, you know, on our own behind the scenes to make sure we could provide as much as possible given the resources that we had. So, you know, hats off to our staff for the hard work that they put in during those months to prepare. You know, as soon as we figured out we were shut down, it wasn't like, okay, let's take a break, it was more, all right, let's figure out what we're going to do to be able to provide the experience, the soccer experience without being able to be there in person. It kind of goes back to that personal touch now that we are on the field. I think it's savored by so many players and so many families to be out there again. But, you know, to your point, we had to be creative. You know, we had to come up with moves. You know, the staff was helping. We had club coaches that were helping, giving us YouTube videos, giving us things that they picked up. I mean, we went back into our repertoire and I remember doing things that I hadn't done since I was 12 years old, you know, so it was fun for me again as a player to start juggling the ball and to be getting different touches with my feet and reconnecting, I guess, to that young player inside of me again. And to be able to share that with the kids I thought was fun, I think after a couple months that we did get a little bit... old? I got a little bit... It was tough to continue to reinvent ideas, right? Or to continue to come up with new ideas to say, okay, what can we do next? I've done this so many times, so to keep it fresh for the kids I think was a bit of a task. But again, because our team does such a great job of collaborating, it was really helpful to have other people giving us input, you know, from both the rec side, the competitive side, the staff coaches, it was a great effort all around. A ton to learn that we've never done before. And you guys were quite agile on your feet, so good job on that. Thanks. No choice. So, let's do a fun question. We've all played soccer our whole lives. What fundamental changes to the game would you guys want to see happen? If you guys could wave a magic wand and change something about the game? This season's a ball for me. I coach my kids. We're on the younger side. Five and seven. As rec director, I have a lot of control over that. So I kind of tweak those rules to make sure I think it's what's best for the kids. So there's minimal parental control. It's the kids game. They get to do it just a lot of play. So I wouldn't change anything from the actual match itself. I think one of the things that I've noticed about this season and the guidelines that have been thrust upon us is we've had to limit the number of people at every facility just to make sure that we're adhering to COVID guidelines. And that's changed the environment tremendously. And I think for the better, though it's always a social event to come together and watch soccer, there can also be an ugly underbelly in youth sports, specifically driven by overzealous parents. And I think that's been minimized a ton because at our old age, for example, there's only one spectator per player, so smaller crowds. There's not a lot of negative energy out there, which is sweet. I was actually talking to our referee coordinator earlier in this week in there. She was mentioning another facility that had zero ejections for the entire weekend, which is awesome. I mean, it's just people are on their best behavior. I think what this has done, not necessarily us changing the game, but what COVID has forced soccer to be is give everyone a new perspective of what's really important and it's about the kids really playing. I think a lot of parents can make it about themselves as it becomes their form of entertainment. They're going to watch their kids. They're going to pour all their money into it to hopefully push their son or daughter onto this pathway. This is awesome just to see my kid play and to see my kid really enjoy the game. COVID did that. That's a huge positive that's come out of this. I love it. Amen. I've had kids' parents ejected from games that I've coached. I know. If I've had emails sent regarding those types of things. It gets intact. Hopefully not too much. Tim, what about you? From the youth side, Colorado has done a great job. When we moved to small-sided, 77 and 99 a couple of years ago, I know as a staff we were delighted. It's better for the game to have the kids touching the ball more in a smaller space with more opportunity for repetition, for mistakes, for learning. From the adult side, if we were to put it, I guess, if we were to put something out there, it would probably be promotion relegation in MLS. We'd like to see that change and maybe look a little more similar to how the European system is set up so there's consequences here. I love it. Maybe one day there'll be same-frain FC in the MLS. It would be great. The Rapids would be in a lower tier. Yeah. Just kidding. So, I appreciate you both of you guys taking the time today. What asks do you have for our audience? How can we, as an audience, help same-frain FC? I think when we go back to the idea of community and what we've mentioned in terms of collaboration, one of the things that we're really excited that the club can provide is soccer and sport. During this time, I think has been in a time right now that provides so many negatives. The climate right now, there's so much opportunity to find something negative going on out there and soccer is a reminder that we can all come together. Soccer can bring together fellowship and bring people together regardless of your culture, your ethnicity, your religious beliefs, your political ideas. We can put all of that aside and say, hey, we all want to share and be a part of the beautiful game and celebrate it together. So we've been excited we can continue to provide that for the community and we'd ask the same thing from the community. Let's come together and share something beautiful. Tim, Josh, thank you guys so much for this today. It's such an important topic about kids and COVID and getting back onto the field. So it's great to have this conversation with you guys. Thanks for having us. Until next time, stay savvy.