I look at this every day I am at work. Every day!

It sets the tone for decisions and guides conversations.

Core Values are important because if you live them they can guide how you think about yourself, how you show up when things get hard and ultimately they can help you make decisions in all situations.

We spent tons of time coming up with our values. If you read all the way to the bottom you can see them specifically with detail.  I share them because I am proud of the work we continue to put into them.

If we cared just about winning, would that be what’s best for the kids? Maybe that would be best for the top 3% but why? Because they would feel good about themselves? I would make an argument that even that top 3% would benefit by placing good values above winning.

The Vale culture is driven by helping our athletes be better people. We love sports! Sports have taught us soooo much in life and there are great lessons that come out of playing sports. Let’s quickly take a look at a player timeline. If a player that comes through our system starts at 3 years old and plays professionally like Zlatan Ibrahimavic (look him up, playing for his country at 42 years old) That is 39 years of the sport being the main part of his life. If he lives to 79 that is 40 years without that sport at the same level. That means roughly 50% of his life he has been playing that sport. While that sport may have been the primary target during that time, do you know what he has been while playing, a person! Being a good human matters 100% of the time. Every time he is entered into a new situation, has to make new friends, and has to deal with hard moments. Every time he shows up, who is as a person is going to be the thing people remember and the thing that gets him to where he wants to go.

I have seen a lot of top end athletes. I have worked with them on some level and enjoyed the conversations immensely. My biggest takeaway is that they are BOTH/AND people.

They are both good at sport and good people.

They are both talented and work hard.

They are both selfless and assertive.

At Vale our culture drives us to create BOTH/AND players.

They are both improving at soccer and as humans! 

… if you want to keep reading here is a similar post that still resonates with me from 2020.

Vales 3C player.

Do your core values even matter? How do you use them during the decision making process? Why should that help us want to play for you?

Integrity, Selflessness, Humility, Joy, & The Pursuit of Excellence!

What type of player do other clubs build? Do they no or think about it? At Vale we talk constantly about what is important in a player and how we go about helping them become that person and athlete.

3C stands for Cognition, Character and Competence.

Let’s focus on the second C today. Character! Character! Character!

We want players, staff and everyone involved in our club to resonate with 5 specific things. Integrity and doing what is right, even when know one is watching. Selflessness which for us is putting others first, we play team sports and being someone who has the best interest of the team at heart is the type of teammate everyone wants. Humilty and the understanding of how that matters in a team setting, personal setting and in competition. Joy and passion for everything that we GET to do. Then lastly, the pursuit of excellence because we never fully arrive and are always on that journey of improvement.

These things are extremely important to establish because in the tough moments, how do we respond? Do we have the lines that show us what out of bounds and inbounds look like? If we don’t take the time to build these traits into how we train and teach every day when you need to call on them it will be hard.

Core values look good on a wall, but they look way better when our athletes use them in a moment of adversity showing us that they have taken on board the information we have been teaching them.

At Vale, our core values are a lifestyle that we look towards every day! If you want to join us, follow the link to register for tryouts.

 

… did you read this far? Here are the specific values we reflect on at our yearly meeting and are trying to hold ourselves to and build into our players.

What are our CORE VALUES at Vale Sports Club?

 Always Try Your Best

• Pursuit of Excellence
• Vulnerability as a strength
• We keep our EGO in check, learn from all
• Development of oneself & team
• Competitive in the INFINITE game
• Growth Minded
• Creative & Innovative

Do What is Right!

• Incredibly Credible
• Disciplined, we say what we do, do what we say
• Trustworthy - Dependable & Reliable
• Committed, loyal to the cause
• We show empathy in all areas

Love for Life & Sport

• We love what we do!
• Infectious Enthusiasm
• Passionate - love for life & sport
• Gratitude changes lives.

WE over ME

• Team first - whatever it takes
• Athlete focused - holistic development
• Servanthood, putting others needs ahead of our own
• We over Me - The some of the parts is more important than the parts
• We look out for others

What is our CORE VISION at Vale Sports Club?

Vale is a growth-minded high character community full of passionate individuals and athletes striving to be better!

Our Mission: Maximize potential in life & sport.

Our Core Focus is to transform lives using youth soccer.

 

 

What would you pay to help your child succeed in life? Can you put a number on that?

I’d say that you would be hard pressed to find a number that you wouldn’t go past to help your children have a fulfilled life.  At Vale, that is what we focus on. The kids, the players. Yes in that order, they are people first and players second. You may ask, what does that mean. Well, let’s talk about it.

Learning to take feedback is important. Learning what hard work looks like is important. Learning accountability, how to be a teammate, how to prepare, how to practice, all important. So is learning how to make decisions, how to evaluate if those decisions worked or how I want to change them for the future. Learning about confidence and how we can build it, how confidence comes from following through with what you told yourself you were going to do. How seeing progress from working on your craft helps you succeed.

We talk about these things at Vale. We tell stories about how a soccer experience translates to real life or how a real life experience can translate to soccer.

Parents come to me all the time and share how much confidence their player has grown from playing soccer at Vale, I love that.  I think that is a huge success and an important one. When we focus on the players and what it takes for them to succeed and they begin to win the little battles the light bulb begins to come on. That translates to so many other areas.

The other really important things is we aren’t their parent, parents will come up to me and say, “you can tell them the same thing as I do and when you say it they really listen.” Coaches have the power to shape lives that is extremely important.

Come to Vale and see why people are making these comments, see how our coaches care about your player and want to support them in their success. Are you currently playing for a coach that is a good role model for your child?  Do they care in a way that provides a safe learning environment where they can flourish?  If yes, great. Stay where you are. If no, check us out, learn and ask questions to our membership and our coaches, learn what they do to support the team and why we are so proud of our culture.

Tryouts are soon! Come check us out.

Vale Coaches Care - Full Stop!

One of the core principles and an item that a Real Estate agent needs to fulfill is the "Duty of Care".

By Definition - duty of care is a requirement that a person act toward others and the public with the standard of care (watchfulness, attention, caution) that a prudent person in similar circumstances would use.  

The reality in soccer, however, isn’t such. There are coaches and programs out there that will take your money and not care for your child, they will not give them attention or watch them with an eye to help them improve. How do we show care as a coach if we aren’t working on our craft. Again, RE agents have to do continuing education. Is your coach working to get better? Are they learning about improvements that they can make, are they reflecting?

At Vale our coaches go above and beyond to care about our players. We provide individual feedback for everyone. We set targets for them to reach. We identify with them what success looks like and the steps it takes to get there. We talk about them and what they need with the other coaches. We ask our peers how we are doing and we look for feedback. Did you know that Vale has a Coach Education Director? All he does is work with our coaches. He works to help them improve, he has office hours for them to ask questions and get feedback. They are pushed to continue their education.

You see we recognize our getting better, helps your player to get better. We recognize that on our journey to improve that there is much we don’t know. How a player was coached 20 years ago is not the same as today. The things they need, the support from their coaches, it’s different. People change, coaching should too. Our environment at Vale is one where our coaches are asked to check their egos and be willing to work on their craft actively. We know we aren’t perfect, we aren’t asking them to be. We are asking them to improve to better serve their team. To take feedback and see if it helps.

What separates our staff at Vale from others is the decision that if we truly want what’s best for our players we owe them our personal best. We owe them the improvement we can make and the time preparing. We have created a game model across the entire club where we spend time zone by zone working through how we want them to play and what we want them to be able to do when they move into the next portion of their career, this document provides a road maps and a litmus test to see how we are doing. If we don’t get them to where they need to be we reflect, we adapt and we try again. It’s not a science, it is just a desire to improve in all areas.

CARE! Our coaches CARE about their players.

In order to share with you how Vale Sports Club was built I want to start at the very beginning. I will use these posts to teach you about what I’ve built, that so many local children have wanted to participate in.

As a young boy I grew up on a farm, youngest of 5 kids all boys. My father was a wood shop teacher in Tolland, CT and my mother was a stay at home mom. We lived on a farm and learned to work from a young age.

I fell in love with soccer from the day I could walk. My mother said I always had a ball on my foot and would be outside playing continuously. I also started Basketball as soon as I could. Sports were my differentiator between my brothers. I was the “athlete” in the family.

My family taught us how to work. My dad would come home from school each day and head to odd jobs to make more money for the family and when my oldest brother was in high school he started a greenhouse company. I was 8 years old and my brothers would pay me to water the flowers in their greenhouses.I guess it was ingrained in us from the very start.

Fast forward a bunch of years and my playing career is in its final stages of college and I fall in love with coaching.  It is a way to stay attached with the game of soccer that has always been my life.

I coached for 3 out of my 4 years of college and really enjoyed how I could impact these young children’s lives with a game I love so much.  I always wanted to share my passion for the game with everyone around me. The transition was perfect and coaching was something I knew would be a part of my life moving forward.

Greater…

Now let's go back 3 years – I own a property management company and we are in Florida for a growth and marketing conference. I sit down on the opening day and they hand us a book. “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod – Dave Dee who is teaching the course tells us how this book is “transformative” and that if we read the book and do what it says it will change our lives. I tell myself I can do anything for 30 days and I start down the path. Here is what my morning looks like.

5:30 – wake up, coffee & social media

5:45 – reading and personal education and growth

6:15 – Spiritual time

6:30 – Fitness, Yoga etc

7:15 – shower and 10-15 minutes of meditation

7:40 – smoothie

I followed this routine every day for 30 days and I fell in love with what it did for me. I was starting the day as if I had already accomplished so much. I had spent time on myself so that I could be a better husband, father, business owner, coach, colleague and friend. I began learning more and more and taking time to reflect on what I wanted to do with my life. This caused me to ask questions about who I was and who I wanted to be. My friend Jermaine Keller gave me the book “Greater” by Steve Furtick, which forced me to keep thinking and reflecting back to my greater purpose for life.

I think life is a journey and we need to enjoy it every day. I also feel that we have a purpose for being here. The journey my life has taken me on has always had a sport in it. At the end of the day when I needed to decompress from life I found myself at the field. I just wanted to be around soccer every day. I had been working on building Sporting for 3 years at this time and found my brain always going back to how I could make the club better. I loved the challenge of getting better every day as a person and someone building something to help our youth.