People.
Yep that’s the answer to my clickbait-of-a-title.
Last week, we announced that the Shootout for Soldiers would expand to 8 locations – adding Georgia, Texas, and Colorado to our Summer Tour. This builds on our expansion from last summer, in which we added Ohio, California and Massachusetts, and our jump to a second location in Long Island the year before that.
I reflected on this expansion this weekend (while snowed in at the US Lacrosse Convention) since I’m often asked how we choose our new cities for events. We received over 120 applications this year to host the event, and dozens of them were more than qualified to host the event. But it hit me on Friday night what the real distinguishing factor of our growth is – great people.
Why Friday night? Well our very own SFS Long Island Organizer, Harry Jacobs, was awarded the prestigious US Lacrosse Homer R. Schwartz Chapter Leadership Award! (Harry receiving the award below from US Lacrosse CEO Steve Stenersen).
Harry celebrated the award with the rest of the Long Island Metro Lacrosse Foundation (LIMLF) a tremendous group of volunteers dedicated to growing the game of lacrosse in Long Island.
So why do I mention this? What made our Shootout for Soldiers event in Long Island so amazing is not our fancy videos or social media strategy, but rather the great team from the LIMLF. Our event in Ohio? The dedicated work of a dozen local volunteers led by Merry Troper and Anita Schonhiutt. Boston? The herculean efforts of Michael Sullivan.
I could go on all day about the tremendous people who have gone above and beyond to help grow the Shootout for Soldiers. From Baltimore to California, we’ve been beyond blessed to be supported by such amazing patriots. Perhaps it sounds crazy, but when I think about has grown the event, it’s undoubtedly the great people…..oh and lots of coffee.
