What going on at Everereen

[Double barrel]

Rumors are flying Evergreen having problems and coaches leaving. Anyone have insight?

[FanInRed]

Rumors are flying Evergreen having problems and coaches leaving. Anyone have insight?

Ya, they're all leaving to coach in Mexico...  as long as we're doing rumors, let's have some fun with it!

[Brat Jr]

Rumors are flying Evergreen having problems and coaches leaving. Anyone have insight?

Ya, they're all leaving to coach in Mexico...  as long as we're doing rumors, let's have some fun with it!

Hey! Wait til I get back.
Off to soccer.........

[Double barrel]

I didn't know crossfire was that far south

[neverasleep]

Rumors are flying Evergreen having problems and coaches leaving. Anyone have insight?

Depending on who or what you are listening to they are either going bankrupt...(NOT) merging with Tynecastle..(NOT) about to fold as a club...(NOT) the board of directors have been abducted by aliens and being held hostage...okay I made that one up. They like everyone else it seems today are stretched a tad thin in the financial department and are making some adjustments to correct the issue. No worries from this parent side, we are paid up and just trying to make it through the season, without serious injury or too many enemies. Evergreen is not going away. Mistakes are only final if we fail to learn from them.

[bootball]

I've heard from a very reliable source, that they are 130k in the hole.  Coach Shannon Murray resigned today, along with their technical director on Monday.  Coaches have been asked to take a pay cut.  Anyone want to add to this list?

[Brat Jr]

income from player fees fell far short of budgeted expenses so the board has let the office administrator, two technical directors, and Shannon go.
Coaches are still getting paid, Board members will pick up the registration and scheduling duties.

The board is working hard to deal with the problems and is trying to put a system in place where something like this can't happen in the future.

[Double barrel]

Who is DOC now and is Shannon still coaching his team?

[Brat Jr]

Who is DOC now and is Shannon still coaching his team?

Not sure if anyone is DOC.
This is an email that I received:


Evergreen Soccer Club Coaches and Members,

The recent challenges in the reduction in our membership and many unpaid players' fees, causing a reduction in the operating income for the club, have a lot of us asking what it all means---for our club, our coaches, and our players. The club has always tried to keep player fees as low as possible.  In previous years, parents paid:     A club fee of $575 In 2006/2007.  In 2007/2008, the club fee was $400 (the change because of the increase in the number of players joining the club).  This covered practice fields, game fields, referee, and a small amount of miscellaneous expenses).    Teams collected fees for the tournaments their players attended.  Each team set their own budget for their expenses and charged themselves accordingly, with every player sharing in that cost.    Coaching fees were paid directly to the coach as independent contractors at the rate that the coach charged the team or each player.

This past year, the club tried to make it a "one payment covers it all":     In order to best serve our club members in a professional manner and take our club into the exciting future of soccer for our kid s, the club budgeted for 7 staff members.  1 Director of Coaching, 2 Technical Directors, 1 Director of Academy, 1 Office Administrator, 1 Coaching Educator and 1 Goal Keeper Program Director.  This staffing was based on a total of 35 teams at 16 players per team.    The club is paying for your team's tournaments that were previously covered by team fees and all tournament fees have increased substantially this year.   
The club has hired coaches as employees instead of paying coaches directly by their teams.  On top of the coaches pay, the club pays  payroll taxes, etc. that all employers pay for employees, as well as the expense of a payroll company to make sure everything is done properly.
Unfortunately, the club is experiencing a major budget deficit due to two major problems:     
1.  The number of players in the club are lower than anticipated and used in setting up the budget.   
2.  The amount of player fees which have not yet been paid according to payment schedules, the large number of financial aid needs by our members, and a substantial amount of promised sponsor donation that was not paid.   
In order to address our current budget deficit, Evergreen Soccer Club Board Members launched a lean, aggressive and solid plan to address our present circumstance.  Also, we created the volunteer-based SWAT team to pull us out of the current difficult circumstance.
On November 3rd, an "All Coaches Meeting" was held to discuss our current challenges.  A big part of that meeting was Q&A session and solicited help from our Evergreen coaches and staff members.  Thanks to a big sacrifice from our staff members and coaches, we were able to reduce the monthly coaching expense and we are still working other creative ways to save more money during this difficult time.  Cost savings will come from the elimination of several staff positions and the reduction in coaches' salaries. Until we resolve our budget deficit problem, we will rely on the pool of Evergreen Soccer Club volunteers to run most of our club operations.  The Evergreen Board Members sincerely apologize to our coaches, staff members, parents and players for this major inconvenience and reduced services. 
However, we have learned from this experience and we promise to do a better job next season. 
Both your Evergreen Board of Directors and your Coaches believe that the most important  reason why Evergreen exists is to provide the opportunity to train and develop at the highest levels for our players. Sincerely yours,  Evergreen Soccer Club Board of Directors

[Double barrel]

I thought one of the stipulations to be in the PDL you had to have a paid DOC?

[Brat Jr]

I thought one of the stipulations to be in the PDL you had to have a paid DOC?

It is. But so is having both a boys and girls side. Dos doesn't, yet they are still in right? 

Give Evergreen time to catch their breath and get back on their feet. I'm sure they will be off and running at max speed in no time.

[Double barrel]

I hope so, for all the families involved.

[kevchenko]

I hope that things can be straightened out as well, It is a terrible position to be in as far as the PDL DOC thing goes, however, It isn't a surprise in a lot of ways, if you look back to my posts in the past re the formation of Tynecastle it was easy to see the amounts of money lost by large amounts of players leaving.  It will be interesting that since the club (Evergreen) then made it so difficult for Tynecastle to enter tournaments etc, whether in the cut throat world of fee based clubs whether other clubs in the area will call for their dismissal from the PDL league to benefit from player movement.  I hope not but if you live by the sword you kinda die by it.  It should be about the kids after all.   

[skagitcoach]

Kevchcnko...why would Evergreen leave the PDL? Just because the DOC has left doesn't mean the club won't have one! Clubs have vacancies all the time! I also believe having a PAID DOC isn't the requirement. I believe having a DOC with a USSF B or better license is the requirement. As far as I can tell, the DOC doesn't have to be paid, per se, to meet the PDL requirement.

[Rock27]

Evergreen's Technical Director has just been hired by Crossfire to handle 2 of Megson's teams, BU-11 '97 Dev and GU-14 Black

[kevchenko]

Kevchcnko...why would Evergreen leave the PDL? Just because the DOC has left doesn't mean the club won't have one! Clubs have vacancies all the time! I also believe having a PAID DOC isn't the requirement. I believe having a DOC with a USSF B or better license is the requirement. As far as I can tell, the DOC doesn't have to be paid, per se, to meet the PDL requirement.

If they don't need to that's great, I was just going off someone's prior post and have no knowledge of the PDL bylaws.  Sounds like its swings and roundabouts then,  I am sure the situation will stablize, but as with general state of flux in life these days it won't be totally painless. 

[Lurker-Man]

How about some math, just for some kind of framework? The dollar figures might be off the mark -- maybe by a lot -- but I'd like to just take a stab at it.

I've been a team treasurer before (teams that had volunteer coaches, weren't in clubs with big overhead and kept their own books) and everyone does their books a little differently, so it's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison. The one year my DS played in the state leagues, the total fees for the year were $550, of which $250 was the uniform kit and it also included fees for three summer tournaments and the state cup. Obviously, we were in a small club and didn't have a DoC and the team coaches were volunteers. This was a few years ago. Certainly costs have gone up since then. But I think $600 or so including uniforms is a reasonable baseline for an all-volunteer, low-overhead select/premier team effort. I don't bring this up for any reason other than to validate some of what follows.
 
Nor do I bring this up to single out Evergreen. I think it's great that their club drafted a letter to parents with a goodly amount of disclosure for folks to sharpen their pencils on, for the good of all.

Their club fees were $400 - $575 per player. Sounds like that covers league fields, league referees. Not summer tournaments, from the letter. Uniforms? State cup including leagues and fields? DoC salary? All hard to say if those were in the club fee under the former structure before they "turned pro". But in general, the fees don't seem out of whack.

I'm going to guess coaching fees for each team at $1000 per DK for the season. Seems in line with what I've seen.

Here's the interesting part. I've seen DoC positions advertised for $40-$45K (I know for a fact that some of these guys make a lot more, but whatever ....) Let's assume the academy coach, technical directors and administrator get $30K. Coach educator and GK coach, let's say those are parttime positions so let's say $15K each. My numbers might be waaaay off here but again, just for illustration. This is close to $200K in overhead salary. Amortized across 35 teams x 16 players = 560 players, that's roughly $350 a player for salaried club positions. More if you figure in L&I, social security and all the other little goodies that come with running payroll. (And if you're now paying your individual team coaches as employees, you've got to add in the percentages for them, too.)

That's $1700 - $1800 a DK. I don't know what other PDL clubs charge, but I do happen to know of one that quotes $1500 and one $2200, so that's right in the middle. This is a just a little cross-check, to make sure I'm not orders of magnitude off in the great many assumptions I'm making here.

Bottom line is, if teams fold, players leave, or there's just not the critical mass of CPs who are willing to pony up, a full-blown "Professional Youth Soccer Club" with so many coaching positions coming out of overhead can get themselves in trouble really fast. With all the belt-tightening going on, it's something that bears watching.

[Son of Spam]

Is this an example of what happens when our economy tightens up? These quotes from the letter drafted to the members sure sounds like people feeling the stress of a poor economy ...
1.  The number of players in the club are lower than anticipated and used in setting up the budget.   
2.  The amount of player fees which have not yet been paid according to payment schedules, the large number of financial aid needs by our members, and a substantial amount of promised sponsor donation that was not paid.
Unfortunate for sure...

[EWSoccer64]

There are some really good people involved with Evergreen, I hope that they can get things fixed.

But this is part of what the PDL is all about.   Forcing smaller clubs into untenable situations and forcing mergers into bigger and bigger clubs - or losing their "best and brightest" to the crossfires of the Washington Soccer World.   This is the not so hidden raison d'etat for the PDL.

[dogedog]

This past year, the club tried to make it a "one payment covers it all":     In order to best serve our club members in a professional manner and take our club into the exciting future of soccer for our kid s, the club budgeted for 7 staff members.  1 Director of Coaching, 2 Technical Directors, 1 Director of Academy, 1 Office Administrator, 1 Coaching Educator and 1 Goal Keeper Program Director.  This staffing was based on a total of 35 teams at 16 players per team.    The club is paying for your team's tournaments that were previously covered by team fees and all tournament fees have increased substantially this year.   
The club has hired coaches as employees instead of paying coaches directly by their teams.  On top of the coaches pay, the club pays  payroll taxes, etc. that all employers pay for employees, as well as the expense of a payroll company to make sure everything is done properly.
[/quote]

So can anyone tell me what other "CLUBS" out there have hired their coaches as employees?  Are they trying to run the CLUB as a Company?

What other "CLUBS" have all of the Dues paid to the "CLUB" and then the club pays for tournaments, coaching fees and all other expenses?

Hopefully the can bounce back from this. 

[hope4best]

Now the issue becomes who do the CP's go to with coaching issues? Issues of yelling and critical of DK's play without offering the specifics of what and how they can improve...time to move on perhaps.

[extremesoccer]

I am sure there are some good coaches in that area that are willing to lower their fees to help out, but with Tynecastle in that area I think it is best for those 2 clubs to work together for the sake of the kids. A merger might help, although maybe Tynecastle will be able to thrive in this economy. Small clubs should be around for a while, for the sake of kids soccer.

You know a while ago there was discussion about a BU11 kid that played for Evergreen who went with Megson's team to Germany as a guest player. The player happened to be the Evergreen Technical Director kid, so at that point Duffer smelled trouble and well there you have it.

[Rock27]

They're all joined at the hip!!!! When will it end, when will it end?

[Dragon]

This is a lot to read. D will spend some time later and catch up

[CrazyLadyBlue]

So if Murray is gone who's taking over the Evergreen GU14 A team? That was his team right?

[hope4best]

Shannon is still coaching the GU14 team. He is no longer the DOC. Stuart Saunders who had several teams and was one of the paid staff that was let go was has been hired by Crossfire and is coaching the GU14 girls black team. He was the technical director at Evergreen for GU16 and GU14. It should be interesting to see who is still coaching after the December break..

[Brat Jr]

I have heard some rumblings that Shannon may have already been picked up by a Club

[Double barrel]

I have heard some rumblings that Shannon may have already been picked up by a Club

I have heard crossfire. Maybe someone from crossfire can confirm.

[Double barrel]

Most people choose a coach first then the club when picking who to play for. What do you do when your coach is leaving because he has not been paid by the club? For some of the coaches this is thier job and how they make money.

[Son of Spam]

I suspect there are probably plenty of club members that have not paid their scheduled payment leaving no money to write a check to the coachs, probably not all blame should be put on the club. Reminds me of the story of students in the Edmonds school district being sent to school with the expectation of buying a school lunch but no money in their lunch account. I guess the cafeteria would pull back the lunch and put it in the garbage. Wow what a difficult situation for a kid to endure, also hard on the cafeteria worker being told to take it back and dump it. The school did provide a cheese sandwich to the students that could not afford. The lack of collected funds owed to the school district was aproaching $200k if I am not mistaken...both sad situations