5 Point Thoughts

Growing Your Program

By Brett Poirier

Program Director KWK

I was able to give a presentation on “Growing Your Program” to USA Wrestling Massachusetts this year. I used examples from my team and others to develop a strategy to grow and promote your program. This is the presentation’s slides and my notes for each slide.

Growing Your Program

The goal of the presentation is to help programs identify their program type and promote their team to an audience effectively. I believe in order to do that you must identify what your program is trying to accomplish first. So I came up with the terminology of two different types of programs to help teams find their identity and grow.

When my team got the opportunity to move into its own building the reality set in that we needed to promote our team better, because we had adopted higher overhead. Working out of the Middle School our program operated on a budget of roughly $15,000 year over year. We needed $5,000 to start the program every year, $5,000 to operate the program and another $5,000 to finish the year. That budget would purchase insurance, rent from the schools, purchase medals for our fundraising tournament, and help host an award banquet to finish the season. Today the program operates with rent being $3,500 per month and combined with other costs we operate now around $50,000 to $60,000 per year. We needed to be able to promote our sport and build our program up while also hosting events that could bring in more income for the program to just operate.

Presenting a Theory

As a coach you have probably asked yourself two questions, ‘how do I grow my team?’ and ‘how do I improve my team?’. Our programs are in a constant need for new athletes to join while simultaneously trying to improve the current roster of athletes. A difficult task to accomplish both all going on at once.

Program Directors need to understand the goal of their program. This will then help set goals for their team. We can break down programs into two types:

Growth Based Programs (GBP) focused on bringing new athletes on your roster while keeping retention through the years.

Talent Based Programs (TBP) focused on improving the athletes already in our sport.

Although the idea of growth and talent are not completely mutually exclusive, I believe they are accomplished separately and programs that can master one can see success in both. One will eventually feed the other but I feel it is important to understand that our sport has an important place for both types of programs.

No one wants to be on a team of 5 kids regardless of how good they are and no one wants to be on a team of 100 kids who aren’t good at all. Focusing on one can help define your team, set its goals, and improve growth, retention and talent without feeling lost. But you will need a combination of both in order to fully succeed.

Growth Based Program

When we talk about Growth Based Programs imagine talking to a parent who has no idea what wrestling is. You’re going to talk about the intangibles. The benefits to their student athletes by participating in your sport and in your program specifically. We can all write a book on this, the hard work, the discipline etc.

You’ll talk about your program structure. I love USA Wrestling for this. Being able to explain to parents that we have a strong organization that we are a part of. That their student athlete is directly connected to olympic athletes through our program. That every coach has a background check and safesport tested. It is a great way to pitch the legitimacy of your program.

You’ll talk about our community as a whole. The other teams you work with, the officials, the tournament directors, the administrators and your team dynamics. The community is tight knit and by entering it you realize we all know each other, all work together, and all help each other. Parent’s can take relief in the fact that although this sport is difficult there are many people working to help your child through it. Our program has such a strong bond with our teams around us that it helps develop young talent on both sides.

And of course it is fun. I however define fun as “improving constantly to the ability to execute the techniques you are taught.” That is fun. Not goofing around and playing with your friends, but learning, developing and improving every day. Fun is hard work. To truly reach a level where you are having fun it takes effort. And I think parents coming from other sports don’t truly get that. Other sports in themselves are fun to play. Wrestling is not fun. Its difficult to drill, learn, and its difficult to compete. But the fun part isn’t putting a ball in a hoop, or scoring a touchdown, it is that moment you get when you win a match and know exactly what you did because you, your partner and your coach have been working on it for a few weeks.

Talent Based Program

When promoting a Talent Based Program imagine talking to an athlete already in the sport. Not that you won’t receive new athletes year over year but your goal may be to gain established athletes, talented wrestlers or the highest talent in your room. If this is the case you’ll promote things like your team’s success, the level of your coaches, the difficulty of your practices.

These are things people with a great understanding of the sport will want in their programs. Mentions of the accomplishments of your other athletes and how you helped develop them. The goal is to showcase your ability to foster talent. How do you grow talent in your room? How do you attract talent in your room.

You’ll see programs do this with graphics of accomplishments, promoting tournaments and events they plan on attending, the coaching staff accomplishments when they competed, the structure of practices and by showing technique videos of what they show in the room. These things promote the team, and promote the level your team is looking to get to.

Of course there is crossover! No team can survive without ever having success and no team can continue to grow without new wrestlers joining. What you’ll find is that having an identity helps you promote your team. It sets up goals for you as a coach. After my presentation many coaches came up to me and said “thank you for putting a word to my team.” Growth Based Programs are so important to our sport but often times feel insignificant towards a Talent Based Program because we feel our teams need to achieve the same success.

But, if we look at our programs more like an ecosystem than a competition then we are all working on growing our sport. GBPs become the foundation that TBPs build from. Understanding your strengths as a coach is important. And understanding the realities of what you can provide. If you’re not going to huge tournaments around the country, providing top level coaching but you care about the sport and about your athletes, you have the ability to build a strong program and have clear talking points to help grow our sport.

And TBPs need to understand that they need GBPs to grow. They should be providing assistance when possible. Holding camps and clinics for kids. Helping both elevate other programs but also promoting your program to the athletes in the room. When you understand that helping these programs is the best way to help promote your team and promote growth. Kids are more likely to register for your program in the offseasons if they are familiar with you as a coach. Giving back when possible is a huge step in growing our sport in every direction. I don’t see this enough and it might be because of an ego issue or lack of trust. Coaches not wanting to admit that they need help in the room or coaches not trusting that they will get “poached”. A term programs use when kids are “stolen” from one program to another. This is a whole topic I’ll write about someday and how this ideology is holding back our programs.

Crossover

Some great examples of teams I feel are TBPs that do great work as GBPs are New England Gold and Iron Faith. First is NEG’s head coach Carmine Colace. He is a fun character that kids, parents and other coaches love. His personality on its own is a reason to join New England Gold! He gives every kid in the room a nickname. It helps build a community in his room. Kids will introduce themselves to me as their nickname. They are proud of it, love the story of how they got it an it binds them to their coach who gave it to them. And New England Gold has an incredible “Unified Program” with a combined special needs practice. It’s an incredible practice that other clubs should do too! Someday we will see wrestling in the special olympics!

Iron Faith, I am less familiar with but, from everyone I hear from, they do a fabulous job with their new wrestlers in the room. Maybe it’s their foundations in the martial arts but this program cares a lot about developing new wrestlers. That will help them growth both in talent and in numbers.

A team I believe represents a GBP that has strong Talent is Milford. From its youth program to its high school program Milford has shown success both growing its numbers and talent. Their youth program boasts over 90 kids year over year and its high school is back to back State Champions.

The number one thing Milford has built is its strong relationship with the school system. Their schools support their program by helping build times for tournaments and practices while their head coach helps assist with practices and events. The connection between High School and Middle School is so strong and it helps feed a community.

The Importance of Your Domain and SEO

Let’s talk about the internet. Whether you have social media, apps, or physical flyers your domain remains the most important aspect of promotion. It is the only place you own on the web. It has to be searchable, easy to remember, and easy to use. I utilize some awesome tools which I will highlight below, but my website is a powerful tool to help promote the program.

Consistent branding is important. Essentially your brand is built off of many different aspects but for our purposes you can break it down into these three; your logo, your colors, and your terminology.

When people visit your social media page it should drive you to the website, when at your website it should drive you to get specific information or purchase a registration. People should feel confident that this is the same company from one page to the other. It should feel confident going from a social media page to your website. Use similar images, color schemes, have your logo prominently displayed, and keep your terminology consistent. This will make your program feel complete, give confidence to the parents and will help promote your program.

You can hire someone to help build your website, or use specific tools to build it yourself. Just make sure you’re able to keep up with it and update it as needed.

All Programs Lead to Your Domain

For Kryptonite we use a few different sources to help drive traffic to our page. The goal is to grow the program. We use Instagram to help promote what is going on with our team, Facebook for information and Emails to directly communicate with our members. Instagram is usually more eye catching and fun, Facebook is more informational, and our emails are very specific. All have the goals of getting people to go to our website. Driving “traffic” and helping promote our team.

There is a very real connecting on people going to our page and it being promoted on platforms like Google. If you haven’t heard of SEO before it is “Search Engine Optimization” and it is how “Googleable” your website is. Do you show up in the search engines? If a parent searches for a “local wrestling team” do you come up? How about “youth sports”, or “kids activities” or “youth development?”

To promote your team you need to be searchable. You need your webpage to have terms on it that when put into a database come up in the search. THIS BLOG IS ONLY HERE TO PROMOTE MY SEO!!!!

I want as many search terms to be there so when people start googling my webpage continues to come up. If a parent searches youth activities, youth wrestling, or youth sports I want my page to be present. I do that by including those terms in the page. Including them in hashtags on my social media page. And building content that drives parents to my webpage.

It is a massive web, but once you begin to understand it you can start to grow and promote your program, and more importantly our sport!

This is my website traffic over a year with specific spikes that I find important. The first is our massive event each year, the KWK Tournament (you should send your kids!). The Thursday before the KWK Tournament is always the highest day of traffic because we have a page on our site that informs people of our tournament and leads them to our registration page. The registration is on FloWrestling but people search through my website first for information. When people look for tournaments in our area it is easier to find my website talking about the KWK Tournament than it is to search on Arena FloWrestling. Old Man Wrestling and Matches Not Medals was a combination of promoting an event for kids and trying something new in Old Man Wrestling.

The last peak is my most popular post on Instagram. It has over 500k views. However, this post does not drive traffic to my site. It helped promote my Instagram page. Ultimately not a bad thing as I use Instagram to promote my team however, no one watched that video and thought, “I should sign up for wrestling”. People felt it was entertaining or informative, but not something that drove traffic. Ultimately the goal is to get more people involved in the sport, so although massively successful I know that a post like that is something that wont drive more kids to my team.

How Do People Visit Your Site?

This was another huge realization about my website. Most people visit is through their mobile device. This is important because the structure of the page should match the traffic. Understanding how people get to your site can help you promote the team and website as well. I now better understand how to help people get around my website based on how they view it. This is an important metric for whoever is building your site.

How are people finding our site. Most people are either typing it into the search bar or searching for it on Google. This showcases the massive importance of having an easy domain name that is memorable and simple, while also building your SEO. Most people will see my social media posts and still use the search bar to find my site rather than going through the social media links. This does not mean social media links like link tree aren;t important but it emphasizes the high need for a good domain name you own and solid SEO standards.

What Tools Should I Use To Promote My Program?

I utilize a few tools to help grow my promotion. There are many types of website builders, I LOVE SquareSpace but there are many out there. Canva is something I will absolutely tell you to utilize. You need the pro-version and it will enhance your game online! Linktree is great for promoting multiple links in one page. It sends people to a landing page that has all of your promotions going on. You’ll see it used in pages “bios”. And finally Mailchimp is the Canva for emails. Helps you make beautiful well designed emails for your members.

Three things to remember. I use Facebook for information, Instagram for promotion and your website needs to be easy to get around. Too many links, and too many words on a page can be distracting. Using Headings, and navigation tools to help people get to where YOU want them to go.

Ultimately, you got this! It has taken me 10 years to build my program and it has a long way to go! But, this is where I am now. This year we have over 70 youth athletes involved, we have Old Man Wrestling which hosts anyone after High School, we not only afford our rent but are starting to make a profit though our registration and events that allows us to pay for added benefits like coaching, nutrition building and we signed a college athlete to an NIL deal to help coach our athletes.

It is a fun ride. And by fun, I mean when you work at it and can start to plan and use these tools to your advantage, you really start to have FUN!