Lacrosse Manifest Destiny Realized by CityLax, Inc.

By Nick

On a gorgeous, sun-filled day in mid-August, I headed out to Southampton, NY to attend the Inaugural CityLax Summer Lacrosse Shootout. Although I wasn't suiting up to play on one of the participating squads, I was given the opportunity to catch some high-level lacrosse and a great organization in action.

CityLax is a non-profit organization located in New York City. Their focus is to introduce and expand the game of lacrosse into New York City schools across the 5 boroughs. Many of the schools and areas have little, if any, experience with lacrosse and are essentially made up of lower income families. Through a public-private partnership with the Public School system, and partnerships with other community organizations, CityLax has created more than 15 new boys and girls lacrosse programs since it's inception in 2005. And they don't plan on slowing down...

This was the first year that CityLax decided to host a fundraiser known as the Summer Lacrosse Shootout. Held at Southampton High School on Eastern Long Island, more than a few teams geared up and came out to compete. The day featured some characteristically fun and uptempo lacrosse action, as well as raffle prizes and official tournament t-shirt sales, with all proceeds going to CityLax.

Some of the teams that made it out were alumni from such Universities as Princeton, Harvard and Brown (which made for some hard-fought Ivy League games). UVA, Columbia and Southampton teams also competed, with two mixed CityLax teams rounding out the field. The clear-cut winners were the boys and girls in NYC who will get to play lacrosse because of inspiring days like this.

Check out some highlights of the day below...

One of the coordinator's of the day, as well as a founder and CEO/President of CityLax, Mat Levine had a few thoughts about the day:

"I have been involved with lacrosse as a player, coach, and organizer since 1963. As one of CityLax’s founders and CEO/President, to see 8 teams out here today playing on the Southampton HS fields in the spirit of serious, yet friendly competition supporting CityLax’s mission is truly heartfelt and appreciated. Yet, I am not surprised by this effort. With programs like ours, lacrosse continues to be the fastest growing team sport on a national basis. Yet the sport still retains its special sense of community and sheer fun to play. Today’s CityLax Summer Shootout tournament/fundraiser is a shining example of how the “lacrosse community membership” can help a cause like CityLax to advance and diversify the game beyond its traditional boundaries."

Well said. Being a student of the game of lacrosse and former player myself, I have to agree with Mat; it's no surprise to see the turnout for a day like the Summer Shootout, especially when the cause is in the name of expanding the sport. As lacrosse fans alike would certainly agree, though the sport continues to spread like wildfire nationwide, there's always more work to be done. CityLax is just doing it's part, and as Mat says, the hope is to "change some lives here through academics and athletics, maybe help some of these kids get college scholarships and other opportunities through lacrosse."

And they already have. Featured on the CityLax teams playing at the Shootout were 3 young men who are products of the organization. All 3 players hail from the Frederick Douglass Academy (FDA) in Harlem, NY -- a lacrosse program that was started in 2006-7 by CityLax and co-founder Armando Taddei. Khalif Yisrael, a midfielder, will be taking a post-graduate year at Trinity Pawling School in Pawling, NY. Ahmed Ajao, an attackman/midfielder, will be attending the College of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx. And Phillip Nesbitt, also a midfielder, will be attending St. John's University, a Division 1 Lacrosse program. The 3 talented players will continue to play lacrosse in college, after leading Frederick Douglass Academy to the semi-finals of the PSAL in just their 3rd year of varsity competition last season.

It's a testament to the whole staff of CityLax and their selfless efforts that we have seen real progress after only 4-5 years of work. They continue to press on and help further the bright futures of these young kids.

But to keep this mission going strong, the word needs to keep spreading. So head over to http://CityLax.org and see what they're all about. If you find yourself intrigued by the cause, don't be afraid to donate, you can be certain that every little bit means you're keeping the dream alive. And be sure to tell a friend. Who knows, maybe we'll even run into each other at the 2nd Annual CityLax Summer Shootout in 2010...

I know that HomeField was grateful to be able to help out and do our part with coverage on the day, and we're looking forward to the future of what CityLax has set out to accomplish.

Be sure to check out the rest of the photos from the day's events below...

How @OvertimeMedia relates to Paul Graham's "Startups in 13 Sentences."

By Reece

Note: I just noticed some of the formatting is messed up. I’ll fix it in a minute...

I love Paul Graham’s essays. He consistently posts excellent thoughts on start-ups. I was reading his recent post about Determination, when I started across some of his older posts.

A favorite is Startups in 13 Sentences. Here’s how @OvertimeMedia fits into his picture:

1. Pick good cofounders.

I couldn’t be happier with my co-founders - @Spinosa and @JoeYevoli, and our first key employees @patrickohearn and @nromeo. Passionate, determined, intelligent. I love my team.

2. Launch fast.

In the last year, we’ve launched launched multiple versions of HomeFieldwith a complete re-writing of the application this summer. We’ve also built two other beta products. Paul’s right. You don’t really start working until you’ve launched.

3. Let your idea evolve.

HomeField has drastically changed since our initial concepts. We don’t say yes to every feature request, but we listen to our user feedback and use it to evolve HomeField accordingly.

4. Understand your users.

We love user feedback, but sometimes it’s not exactly clear. Users don’t know what’s possible technically, but they know how they work and we look at that and see how we can simplify and streamline the entire process. We’re proud of the changes we’ve made in HomeField 2.0, like scrapping scouting reports for discussions and allowing document and image uploading.

5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.

Totally agree here. We’re big fans of Seth Godin here as well, and the idea is to make a core group of people really love your product first, then allow them to spread the product for you. So far, it’s working. And to those early users, thank you!

6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.

I grew up in my family’s restaurant. It’s a fine dining establishment, and great customer service is one of our best qualities. We try to mimic that here at Overtime Media and we try to make ourselves perosnally available to all of our users. It’s easier at the beginning, but we are committed to maintaining the highest level of service as we scale.

7. You make what you measure.

We figured this one out recently, and we’ve started acquiring customers without any effort on our part. The viral

nature of HomeField is taking effect and we are working ahrd to continue this trend.

8. Spend little.

My mom is an immigrant and my dad is a chef. My mom only spends money when she gets a deal; my dad refuses to pay retail for food. By nature, I’ve been raised to be cheap, and I only spend money when it’s absolutely necessary. Funny thing is, my dad recently called me ”cheap!” I know this goes for my co-founders, too. It’s what has helped us survive this long on seed money.

9. Get ramen profitable.

We’re still working towards this. We’ve got some early revenues, and a LOT of potential in our business model. I can’t wait to get Ramen profitable… then move on to pizza profitable.

10. Avoid distractions.

This one has been tough, and I am personally guilty of it - by keeping a bartending job throughout our start - but it’s afforded me the cash to avoid taking a salary from our precious seed money. It is a distraction, and it’s tough to get up early after a long night behind the bar, but when you love what you do, it’s all worth it. Plus, I’m confident that I won’t be behind the bar too much longer.

11. Don’t get demoralized.

Luckily, long careers in competitive sports have taught us how to cope with this. I’ve had some demoralizing losses in my life as a lacrosse player, but that never stopped me from playing.

12. Don’t give up.

I love this. Giving up is the easy way out. Not for us. We realized that our business is going to change dramatically. That we are going to have a lot of ups and downs, but if we persist and evolve, we will be successful.

13. Deals fall through.

Yeah. We’ve had some deals fall through. It happens. Just like in sports, your opponents are going to score some goals - but if you stay focused and keep working, you’re going to win in the end.

Re: Will the future of TV start with sports? [@bijan]

By Reece

So, I’ve fully bit into DISQUS and really love it. Consequently I’ve been participating in some great discussions online.

Here’s another comment I made on @Bijan’s blog asking “Will the future of TV start with sports?”

Great point about sports advertising, but like Bijan said, the DVR has done a lot of damage here. Last spring, I watched the Celtics in the NBA playoffs solely on DVR. Avoiding tons of ads, but I also had to turn off my phone/Internet to avoid spoilers.

Now, I don’t even own a TV, I’ve just got an iMac (on which the US Open experience is awesome). If the NBA could duplicate (and improve) such a robust viewing experience as this, then I’d be glued to the screen. And of course, same for the NHL and NFL.

I think it’s really about customization. Allow consumers to make choices about their content. Let me watch exactly what I want to watch. If you build a channel for consumers to do this, they will.

Bijan made a point above about piracy/P2P. It’s just like the music industry. People ‘stole’ lots of music, until there was the iTunes store, Amazon, Amie Street etc. Now that there’s a channel to consume legally, there’s a business there. (Just noticed Kirklove’s comment like this above. Total agreement here.)

The SEC almost made a serious mistake in banning social media at games. They have since fixed their mistake and clarified their terms, however, I think they need to go a step further and figure out a way to embrace a group of people (customers) who are so in love with their games (products) that they want to tell everyone about them.

I suppose my overall point is, there is a ton of sports media out there. All of it has value to someone, somewhere. The people in control of this media need to figure out the ways in which they can create value for their fans/customers, and in turn make a tremendous profit as well.

And where is ESPN during all of this? I think ESPN has the potential to become more of a portal or a switcher for the online content. They will act as the great curators of the sports world and people will use ESPN as a gateway… unlesssomeone beats them to it.

Finally, the one thing that sucks about sports video online? The quality is still catching up. This US Open video is great, but from a technical standpoint tennis (and baseball for that matter) are low movement sports making streaming video quality much easier. The good news? This will only continue improving. But for this reason, the NHL will continue to lag behind the other major sports, so I’ll be waiting for the Bruins via iMac a bit longer…

And to actually answer Bijan’s original question. Yes. The future of TV will most definitely start with sports. It is the most engaging content over time, attracting fans year in and year out (I know, I’m a Red Sox fan who rememberswhat it was like before 2004).

Sports on your Calendar

By Reece

Sports and tech for the win! Google Calendar now allows you to add any of your favorite teams' schedules to your calendar. Prior to this, I'd hacked together some schedules on here, but this is a great feature. Thanks Google! (Now get college lacrosse schedules supported, too)!

"Now, when you look under "Other Calendars," click "Add," then "Browse Interesting Calendars" (or use this link to the Calendar directory), you'll find calendars for hundreds of teams in dozens of sports leagues — everything from the National Football League to the Korean FA Cup.

"When you subscribe to your favorite team's calendar, you'll see every game listed, updated in real time with the score as the game progresses."

Original post at the Official Gmail Blog.