If you received this link you likely responded to one of our SMS or e-mails. If your concern is about the legitimacy of our business that we started in 2009, please head over to this post (“So, Like, Is SAWUSA Legit?”).
For the rest of your concerns, let me start with this. I love what we do. International travel, and more specifically International Sports tours literally changed my life. I would not be who I am today if not for my past experiences with International travel. I detail those in a video on our About page of our website. I think almost all kids should have an experience like this. I think SAWUSA puts a unique twist on these tours – but even if you travel with one of our competitors – you should do it! It’s simply one of those things where the benefits and potential life-altering outcomes are worth any cost, or missed tournament, or whatever other reason you’d come up with to not do it.
So, lets get to marketing. I know we offer this thing that I think a lot of kids would benefit from. In order to be a business offering this thing we have to make a profit. I support my family with this job and I have one full-time employee who does the same. So, we need to spread the word to fill our trips. We have used lots of different marketing avenues since we opened the business in 2009. They include but aren’t limited to: E-mail, Phone Calls, Texting, Social Media, Google Ads, Sponsorships, USPS Mailings, etc. You name it, we’ve tried it. The purpose is spreading the word and connecting with potential travelers.
Is this REAL or SPAM?
All of the sudden in 2024, because artificial intelligence is starting to become a hot topic, any and all advertising is considered “Spam”.
Let me go back in time. In my freshman year of college in 1997 I first used e-mail. On those dinosaur desktops I could log into my hotmail account and send an e-mail to 10 different people and blind copy them. In my first college coaching job in 2004 I would send an email to a list of 100 recruits hitting ‘select all’. This was not artificial intelligence :). These things you are calling ‘AI’ have existed for like 30 years.
Yes, the message we sent you is ‘real’. Did another person get the same message. Yeah, most likely. We punched it into our little computer machines and sent it to you… just like I did in 1997 and 2004.
We got two people working here. We can’t afford a robot here. We are saving up for a Tesla someday.
The fact of the matter is we have to use written and spoken word to tell you about our offerings. We can’t afford TV commercials during sports events or professional athletes to be spokesman. We have to reach out and tell you about what we have to offer. We try to be thorough (using the character limits of the mediums we use), concise, and honest in our communication.
Why not just think critically? Look for red flags. Keep an open mind.
Spam is an email from the Prince of Nigeria giving away his fortune if you wire him $50 with a malicious link to steal your credit card info.
A text saying that “we are an International Sports tour company and we got your name from a coach and he nominated you to apply for a tour” could mean… wait for it… that “we are an International Sports tour company and we got your name from a coach and he nominated you to apply for a tour“.
Coach Nominations
We use coaches to nominate athletes for our programs. We ask them to send us lists of kids that might be a good fit. This doesn’t mean those athletes automatically make our teams. It means we invite them to apply.
Some coaches send us names of 10 kids that they all know personally. Some coaches send us a list of 100 kids that they have in their schools recruiting list. Some coaches send us 1,000 kids from a showcase or club event. We don’t really care to be honest. We are simply asking coaches to get us some names and contact info of kids that might be good candidates. Our application process then narrows those down to find good potential travelers. If you really need to know if you were one of 10 or 100 or 1,000 you are welcome to contact the coach and ask them. Their e-mail, and likely office phone number, is typically in the public domain.
There isn’t a need to fight with us and say, “How does Coach Jones know my daughter? Is he recruiting her? What event did he see her at? Did he get it from a list or does he really know her?” These things don’t matter to us. Most of the time, we have no idea. We don’t know you or your athlete yet. If you choose to apply, then we will get to know you and if you are a good fit, we might offer you a spot on one of our teams.
Why does Youth Sports bring out so much ‘Passion’
This one has been a hard question to answer for me. While I’m 45 already and have spent my entire working life dealing with parents of athletes – my kids are only 10, 8, and 4. So, I’m only now beginning to see your side of it. I get it, youth sports has some weak spots.
Just this weekend I went to my 8 year olds first Basketball game in a new city. We live right on the border of a smaller city and a larger suburb. We switched leagues because of traffic (I hear parents all day talk about how they ‘play up’ or choose these coaches or whatever… I choose my kids leagues based on the number of stoplights I have to wait in to get to the games). Anyway, the newer city league is a little more affluent. What’s the difference? Way more parent involvement. More free time, more expendable income = more time to obsess over youth sports.
To be honest, parents, coaches, refs, and administrators all leave a little left to be desired when it comes to youth sports. So, by the time your kid is 18 I get it… you are exhausted and maybe feel like everyone is out to get you.
Then comes a SAWUSA mailer in the mailbox. Your kid has been recommended by a coach to apply for a tour. Cool, right? Nope – you use this as an example to call us up and just start screaming. Honestly, this happens. Granted, it’s rare… but even the fact it has happened more than once just astonishes me.
I’m thinking… when Bed, Bath, and Beyond used to send the 20% coupons in the mail… did they get hate calls? I think most people either said,
1. Hmm, I need a new toaster. Maybe I’ll hold onto this and shop there. Or…
2. Nothing I need, throw in trash.
Likewise, I’d hope people read our mailer and say,
1. Dang, and International tour to play my sport? How do I find out more. Or…
2. I’m not interested in International travel, throw in trash.
Now, I hope you don’t do #2 because I pay a lot of money to send these mailers. I hope you at least look into it. But if you did throw it in the trash, I’d understand. Not everything is for everyone and timing isn’t always right.
However, it’s crazy when people call us and grunt or are just really rude on the phone.
So, why does youth sports elicit such passion? I don’t know? I do know that our travelers love us AFTER they travel with us. I’d encourage you to visit our testimonials page and you will be shocked how much passion our past travelers have for their experiences with us.
To summarize this section, I’d just politely ask you to understand that for whatever reason… youth sports brings out a lot of passion. So, take a breath and at least get to know us before you decide to hate us? I feel like that’s a fair request. You might actually find you rather like us.
Is this ELITE or sent to everyone?
Silliness. This is what youth sports is. Why do all the club teams have ELITE in their names now? Why are their ‘tryouts’ for teams that cost money? Simple, it’s what the market wants.
STUDENTathleteWorld started as a college recruiting company. We helped 3,000 athletes move on to play in college from 2009 to 2014. As a former college coach I would help athletes and families with what I knew to be the very best thing they needed to do to get on coaches radars. They could e-mail coaches with links to their videos and personal info. But that took work – and it was boring. The clients that did that work ended up with lots of college options. But college options wasn’t what most parents and athletes wanted. They wanted attention and to virtue signal (I’d argue this is the same reason most people use social media). By 2014 people were taking pictures of themselves signing with STUDENTathleteWorld and posting it like it was a signing day. The whole point was to sign with a college, not with us :). This is exactly why club tournaments have grown so much in the last 15 years, and the college recruiting industry is nothing like it used to be.
Everything you do is going to be as ELITE as you want it to be. Every weekend in the summer there are 15 different ‘State Tournaments’ in each state. Each one claims the winner is the ‘State Champion’. Rich 8 year olds from Dallas hop on a plane and go to Chicago to play in the ‘National Championship’ against Chicago’s richest 8 year old for the title of “best team that could afford to fly to tournaments”. Ironically, they probably passed a city while driving to the Dallas airport that had a team just as good as the Chicago team. They could’ve played them, went for ice cream, and saw a movie before the plane landed.
Is SAWUSA Elite? I don’t know and don’t care about that word. I do know it’s an amazing and life changing experience. Do we have great coaches and great players on our teams? Yes, that is always our goal.
We often hear parents say something like, “Oh, this is just like a Rec thing where anyone can be on the team”. Here is a story I love telling about that…
A few year back we had one of ‘those dads’. He was so concerned about using the tour as a resume builder for his son. He’d send new videos to us each week before the tour. Every time we’d enroll a new kid he’d look up the kids name and be concerned that kid wasn’t as good as his kid. He was so concerned that his kid would be too good and the team wouldn’t be good enough because the stats and honors of the enrolled athletes was lacking or something. I spent months just trying to get this dude to settle down and try to enjoy the trip. On day 2 of the trip I get a phone call at 3 am my time and he’s in Europe at the first practice. He’s in a panic because now he wants to know the playing time protocol because all the other kids are so much older than his kid and his kid deserves to play even though he’s a weaker athlete. So, I Iook up the birthdays and the kid is the exact middle of the 9 on the team. 4 are younger and 4 are older. I’m laughing explaining to him that he’s the exact median age and the fact that this dad spent months concerned the other kids wouldn’t be as good and now his kid is the worst.
How good are our players? That’s a subjective answer. But I do know this. The parents that are initially concerned about the level of play on our teams are almost always the parents of the weakest kids on our teams.
Just last year I got a phone call after our U19 Boys won a Gold Medal at a big tournament in Europe. It was a dad upset about playing time. Apparently the title game got tight and his kid sat more than he wanted him to. In his words, it was a meaningless trophy because all the athletes paid to go on the trip. I told him it wasn’t meaningless to the athletes who just won the Gold Medal.
My point is that parents move the goalposts on ELITE vs Rec. If the kid here in this example made the game winning shot then I promise you the dad wouldn’t think that trophy was meaningless. Rec and Elite change to suit the parents narrative.
Every sports event you do will be what you want it to be.
I want you to picture this. A bunch of kids from all across the USA apply to be on a team representing the USA. They have some team Zooms and prepare to travel. They all meet at a large USA airport and fly 10 hours to some foreign country. They travel on private busses and practice for 10 days. They do some sightseeing and bonding. Then they wear USA jerseys and compete in events with teams from all over the World that want nothing more than to beat the Americans. Does that seem “elite” to you? I’ve seen it first had for 20+ years. It’s really cool…. almost even ELITE!
Thanks for reading. I’m sorry we aren’t going to fight with you. If you do decide to apply – and eventually travel – you might just love it!
-Tim Ryerson (SAWUSA President)