2012 Fast Break Clinic

The department knew the clinic was important, but no one had the time nor passion to do it.  This is where I came into play… THE BRINGER OF HAPPINESS!  That's right, I was going to make the clinic a reality.

To date, I have been present at three Fast Break Clinics with the first in 2010, where I just assisted because I had only been working in the athletic department for about three weeks.  That clinic drew about 200 children and 120 student-athletes.  Then in 2011, I took the clinic reigns.  I was a frazzled mess.  I constantly was asking what I needed to do and who I needed to talk with.  I vowed to take detailed notes and do it basically by myself for the next clinic.  At the 2011 clinic, we had 235 children and 170 student-athletes.

Now I am proudly going to say that the 2012 Fast Break Clinic is in the books!  I hardly had to ask any advice, and it was the biggest one to date with 442 children and 135 student-athletes!!

Here is the break down of what I did :) Enjoy!

Advertising
We have two sections for advertising: Jr. Jacks with early bird registration and the general public.  I created two different flyers.  The first one was sent via email and snail mail to the Jr. Jacks.  This gave them a chance to pre-register with a password on the GoJacks.com website.

The next flyer was distributed to all the locate schools after the priority deadline had passed.  I needed to copy over 2,200 flyers, sorted them into piles, and then delivered them to the schools. Trust me, this was not an easy process, especially after the department discovered that I had violated a NCAA code.  What an adventure!  I had to talk to the compliance person on campus and file a report!  Note: Never put a company and a current student-athlete on the same thing.  You can use a prior one, but not a current one.  Lived and learned!

 Early on I had set a goal to shatter the last years' attendances, so I pushed the advertising even more.  Therefore, I electronically sent the flyer to Volga, Arlington, Watertown, Elkton, Flandreau, Boys and Girls Club, and Madison.  I also asked the players to send it to their hometown contacts if they lived close enough.
Fast Break General Public Flyer

T-Shirts 

Since the order was going to be so large I had to get bids from several companies.  I needed up going with a Sioux Falls one that could do three colors for $2.73/shirt.  I placed my order of 500 t-shirts, uffda!  

Fun Fact: If the total bill is more than $1,000, than you need to get a purchase order.  Live and learned! I learned this when I heard my name yelled across the office when the SDSU accountant opened the bill.  I did figure a way around it, but let's just say I never want to get on the wrong side of her again.

Food 

The student-athletes get fed breakfast and lunch.  Figuring out the order is simply mind-bloggling!  I ordered 8 dozens muffins and 8 dozen bagels, as well as 8 gallons of orange juice and 8 gallons of chocolate milk.  Here is the catch: I had to transport all of this food at 6:15am to the clinic.

The lunch was a little simpler.  I ordered 50 pizzas from Papa Johns to be delivered.  If only everything could be delivered in life :)

As for the children, I needed to order 500 cartons of milk and 500 cookies.  Cookie monsters!!  We had to pick those up at 

Equipment

Since the clinic is so large we use both athletic facilities: Frost Arena and the Barn.  The older children travel to the Barn on the Bata Buses.  The younger ones stayed at Frost Arena.  Between the two facilities I needed to line up 170 basketballs and about 50 cones.  Mass chaos?  Yes.  

Student-athletes

Depending on athletic practice/game schedules each team is asked to have student-athletes attend the clinic.  Most are extremely willing to help, yet some I had to twist their arms.  The coaches provide me a list of names along with if the athlete has basketball experience.  If no experience, than they usually are put at registration, transition, or organization.  If they do have experience than the student-athletes will be placed in a basketball role assisting with the skills stations.  I would place the forms for this, but I decided not to because of privacy issues.  

Packets
Each child also received a packet at the clinic, which contained information about summer clinics, a general admission ticket to that night's game, and some Midwest Dairy promotional items.  Just think of stapling all of these things together 450 times.  Yikes!


Hand-outs

I had to create a layout and rotation map of the Barn and Frost Arena.  It gets a little confusing, but honestly, if you study if for a minute you will be able to tell how the rotation goes!  

Barn Layout

Now in the next post I'll give a little insight on how the actual morning went :D