GAME BODY MIND OFF THE PITCH NEWS

Using The Power Of Soccer To Fight AIDS

It is not very often that you meet someone that is so humble and cares more about the well-being of others than his own. When you do meet people like Ethan Zohn, they make you want to model their actions and follow their lead to greatness. And leading is exactly what Ethan is doing by creating a grassroots youth soccer movement to help fight AIDS in Africa called Grassroot Soccer United.

After playing professional soccer in Zimbabwe and experiencing the AIDS epidemic first hand by losing one of his best friends to the disease, Ethan founded Grassroot Soccer along with Tommy Clark, Kirk Friedrich, and Methembe Ndlovu in 2002. After winning the reality television show Survivor in Africa, Ethan decided to put his prize money to work by saving lives and fighting AIDS.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of meeting Ethan and learned about his plan to raise awareness and money to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa with his Dribble Campaign. Ethan started his mission on August 20th at Gillete Stadium during the New England Revs game and will be dribbling 500 miles across the East coast making various stops for clinics then ending the dribble in Washington D.C.

Help Ethan Fight HIV/AIDS

While Ethan is dribbling to raise awareness for Grassroot Soccer United, you can get involved in several ways. Here is a short list of what you can to personally to help Ethan:

1. Join the Grassroot Soccer Dribble Team << REGISTER HERE >>
2. DONATE $10 TO GET STARTED and ask 10 friends to do the same. (That would be $110).
3. Share this blog post by clicking on the Share This Icon below and choosing your favorite places to share the Dribble Campaign OR email this link to your friends.
4. Follow Ethan and encourage him on his YouTube page and his Facebook group.
5. Buy A GRSU T-Shirt or Ball
6. Nominate GRSU for the American Express Members Project.
7. Do something in your local community ( I’m holding a soccer clinic for the kids at my church ).

How Badly Do You Want To Be A Great Footballer?

Ever wonder what it’s like to live in Pele’s shoes? What about Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff, George Best, Cristiano Rinaldo or Ronaldinho? Being a footballer is an honor and a privilege that you have in life. As an individual you have been blessed with physical health and skill to play and compete in such a mentally and physically challenging sport. In football there are many life lessons to be learned and in life that are many lessons that can be applied from what football teaches us. So, what are some of these lessons you may be asking yourself?

What Football Teaches Us

Football teaches us about faith, family, dedication, commitment, teamwork, struggle, success, failure, accountability and so much more. But, it’s just a game you say! Well, it all depends on how you approach the game, what you put into it, what you intend to get out of it, and what you plan to give back to it.

Football has not become known as “the beautiful game” just because of its poetic nature and skilled, artistic-like movement of its players or strategic mastermind coaches. It has become “the beautiful game” for the wholeness of what we get out of and bring to the game – passion!

Passion is the essence of the game. Do you have the passion? Do you have the drive?

Channel Your Passion Into 3 Core Areas

There are so many things to work on and only so much time. What should you be doing as a player to become great? You should be focus your energy on three core things:

1. Your Game
2. Your Body
3. Your Mind

Sounds simple, huh? It can be if you have the right focus, passion and the people to guide you through your personal development process. But, how can you channel your passion and energy to become a great footballer?

For one thing you need to understand what some of the key elements are to strengthening your core. This is why we have developed a simple guideline to help you understand the key elements that make up your game, body and mind.

Focus on 24 Key Elements

With in each core you have 8 key elements that make up the core. These 8 key elements are critical to strengthen your total performance as a footballer. Ok, so what are they:

Your Game

1. Marking – your ability to track and apply pressure on your opponent.
2. Positional Play – your ability to consistently be a step ahead of your competitor.
3. Ball Control – your technical ability to hold, secure, distribute and attack with the ball.
4. Intercepting – your ability to dispossess the opponent and transition play.
5. Tackling – your ability in taking the ball directly from your opponent.
6. Heading – defensively or offensively, your ability to play with your head.
7. Attacking – your ability to penetrate and threaten your opponents goal.
8. Shooting – your ability to hit the target and score!

Your Body

1. Food Intake – eating healthy and wisely.
2. Fluid Intake – consumption of correct type and quantities.
3. Speed – explosive and consistently outpacing your competitor.
4. Strength – the capacity to overpower your competition.
5. Stamina – capability to sustain performance.
6. Power – combination of speed & strength of movement.
7. Agility – your ability to change direction of force with minimal loss of speed.
8. Flexibility – limit risk of injury & increase range of movement.

Your Mind

1. Communication – how well you listen to, instruct, guide and help teammates verbally.
2. Confidence – your personal belief in your abilities.
3. Aggression – your attitude and competitive nature.
4. Understanding – how well you know and study the game.
5. Reading the Game – your thought process and ability to impact the game tactically.
6. Awareness – your vision and foresight to capitalize or reduce pressure in the game.
7. Preparation – your ability to concentrate and perform consistently at high levels.
8. Composure – your capability to recover mentally from performance lapses or manage high stress situations.

How Do You Measure Up?

How do you measure up in these key areas? Depending on how badly you want to be a great footballer your next task should be to paint a clear picture of exactly where you shape up. Once you have that picture clear how will you build an improvement plan for success? Well, that’s where Footballers FC can help. We are starting a series on the 24 Key Elements mentioned above in the Game, Body and Mind sections of the blog.

Get Started Today

1. We recommend completing a Footballers Personal Assessment Kit - CLICK HERE TO GET THE KIT.
2. Subscribe to this blog by email or RSS (top right corner).
3. If not a member already, CLICK HERE TO JOIN FOOTBALLERS FC.
4. Share your thoughts on the, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” series right here on FFC.

What ideas, input, experiences or resources can you share? Feel free to make a comment below.

As part of FFC’s series on, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” we are discussing each key element in 24 successive blog posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday over an 8 week period inside the respective Game, Body and Mind sections. For more information about the 24 Key Elements get our Players Assessment Kit here.

Featured Footballers Of The Week

Well, we’re gonna restart our Featured Footballers segment for our club members. Below is an example of a previous Featured Footballer and I’m looking to feature a few players over the next few weeks.  If you would like to be featured please write to me at jcronkhite at footballersfc dot com and tell me why you should be featured.  If you want to recommend a player for us to feature please drop me a note.  I’d really like to see a video of the player to be featured as it will help expose the player at the same time if I have a video to share with all the readers of FFC.

Example Of A Featured Footballer

This week I’m featuring Tommy Drake, a freshman midfielder at Clemson University. Tommy’s scored some amazing clutch goals this season and for a freshman he’s holding his own pretty well. This kid has a knack for finding the back of the net when it really counts and I wanna see more of ‘em. Looks like we should being a Freshman All ACC player.

Heck, I wanna see more amazing young players gettin stuck in! So, if you know of a few players that want a weeks worth of fame on FFC tell ‘em to get their skills, a camera and whatever creativity they can muster up to post their video. I’m thinking I’ll turn this into a contest at some point but, first I’d like to see what happens and what the footballers out there have in their bag of tricks.

Let’s see what you got! Check out Tommy’s video.

Off The Pitch Is Coming

Since we just launched our new blog we needed to post some test post here to test out some things. But, what you can expect to see in this section will be everything from Footballer Profiles both professionals, amatuers, and member players of FFC. We’ll also cover other aspects of things going on in the game around the world, do some product/equipment reviews, and some other cools things. So, we’d certainly love to hear from you about topics you’d like us to look into and cover here in Off The Pitch.

Hey! Do you want to contribute to FFC? If so, we’re looking for a few good writers, coaches, and subject matter experts to help make FFC one of the best soccer resources on the web for players.

What do you think?

Odiogo Text to Audio Feature

We have been looking at some new things to do in order to bring better content to our readers and community at Ziga-Zoga.  So, we are trying out the new Odiogo Text to Audio feature to see what people think.

Personally, it is kinda cool and a bit weird at the same time.  If we all had more time I’d podcast the text posts myself but, until we get to that point we will just have to see how this works.  What I think would be really cool is if we could change the voice or do voice recognition.  Meaning, I could record my voice or Chris, or Steve or Ed could and then based on who writes the post select their voice.  Better yet, if you as a reader could select the language to listen and read in that would be interesting.

If you have an opinion let me know.

Cheers,

Jason

ZigaZoga.com is Alive

Well, it is official - ZigaZoga.com is alive!  With the birth of a new company geared to help strengthen and bring together soccer enthusiasts from all walks of life, we hope you will logon and begin the journey with us.

 

NSCAA & MLS Draft Opening

The 60th Annual NSCAA Convention opened up last night.  You would not believe the massive amount of products and specialized services specifically designed for the coaching and youth soccer community.  There is certainly an ocean of knowledge to be shared.  Some is certainly great and some not so great.  Over the next couple of days and weeks we will highlight some of the information we think could be useful for you.

Right now, we are awaiting the opening of the MLS Draft.  What a great spectacle especially with the recent announcement of Beckham and the anticipation of the new upcoming stars about to selected.  The MLS Fans are here in their kits, faces painted and all.  Stay tuned ….

Sakiewicz joins Ziga Zoga

We are pleased to announce that Ed Sakiewicz has officially joined the Ziga Zoga team.  Sakiewicz is a dynamic soccer professional who adds depth to the ZZ executive team much like the central midfielder does for its starting 11.  Ed brings over 17 years of entrepreneurial experience with specialized skills in developing, organizing and managing strategic teams.  Ed’s expertise lies in the areas of start ups, nonprofit leadership, real estate development, sports marketing, online higher education, E-learning and strategic planning to name a few.

The Sakiewicz name is synonymous with professional soccer in the US, particularly MLS.  Ed’s brother Nick, one of the founding executives of the league, is the past President of the MetroStars (now known as the Red Bulls) and now serves as President of AEG NY, spearheading the new soccer-specific stadium in Harrison, NJ.  Nick serves on MLS’ Business Development Committee. 

The Sakiewicz family is all about soccer, serving both the amateur and professional communities.  Ed has also developed an advanced and comprehensive understanding of the soccer-specific stadium development dynamic by conducting a unique one-of-a-kind study for his doctoral thesis, entitled, “A Comparative Study of Enterprise Risk Management and Decision Making Criteria Used in Developing Soccer-Specific Stadiums for Major League Soccer”.

Ed is a former professional developmental player from Europe who participated with 1st and 2nd Division teams in Poland and Denmark and played his DI ball at Loyola College in Maryland.  Dr. Sakiewicz holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Management with a Certificate in Entrepreneurship, a Master’s degree in Organizational Development, and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.  Ed resides in San Antonio in the Alamo Heights area with his wife, Jennyfer, and three soccer players Eddie, Brenton and Alek.

Meeting with Jon Lebkowsky

Today we met with Jon Lebkowksy and Jeff Kramer — Polycot’s CEO & Technical Director — to discuss Ziga Zoga’s strategic direction and vision.  Since Matt went off and got hitched, WELL, we just have not seen too much of him lately - just joking, CONGRATULATIONS MATT!

So, we are looking ahead and trying to establish the framework for what Ziga Zoga can become.  Moreover, we will be conducting some user research here very soon for development and implemenation purposes. 

We also toured Frank Robles‘ San Antonio NAP Center (Network Access Point) in order to understand the potential benefits that Ziga Zoga might realize from such a tremendous facility.  More importantly, fostering relationships with thought leaders and technologist like Jon and Frank provide tremenouds opportunities for Ziga Zoga.

Interestingly, Jon, Matt and Frank all share the passion for the game and are very excited about what may be ahead for Ziga Zoga.  For those in the soccer community unfamiliar with Jon and Frank, Jon is a leading authority on computer-mediated communications, virtual communities, community technology, and online social networks.  Frank developed the original idea for metropolitan gigabit Ethernet (GigE) based Carriers, and founded the industry leader Yipes Communications.  Ziga Zoga is looking to draw upon their knowledge and savvy technology minds for the advancement and growth of the soccer community.

So, stay tunned!

Ciao bella,

Jason

Steve Arters joins the Ziga Zoga Team

Ziga Zoga is proud to announce the appointment of Steve Arters as its Chief Marketing Officer.  Steve will be responsible for Ziga Zoga’s strategic marketing and communications.

Steve’s expertise stretches from the board room to the newsroom with 12 years of Agency experience before spending more than 10 years in the media.  His specialization is utilizing marketing and media to produce a dynamic synergy to brand products, companies and individuals. 

He has been an integral part of advertising/marketing agencies in Dallas and San Antonio after being a news/sports writer and editor for eight years with United Press International and two years with The Associated Press. 

He has worked on national, regional and local accounts and his background includes automotive, educational, financial, food service, healthcare, medical and sports marketing, including working with professional teams and organizations, collegiate athletic conferences and various companies.

Steve, who graduated from West Virginia University, and his wife, Suzanne, who graduated from the University of Texas, have three sons, Steve, Sean and Scott – all top soccer players in their age groups.  Steve is on the board of the San Antonio Metropolitan Youth Soccer Institute (SAMYS) and a longtime supporter of growing the game in the San Antonio community.

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