Wednesday, November 20th - 7 hours

Today is the day that everyone has been working to prepare and stressing over! The Portland Timbers coaching staff members will be here! (That's how I woke up this morning.)

The director's spent all day preparing the indoor center for the community and guest speakers tonight. I wish I could have taken the day off to help them. To begin the exciting afternoon and evening, the 04 boys and 05 girls trained from 4:00 to 5:30. Mike Smith, the Portland Timbers Youth Director, coached the session for the 05 girls and Kyle Steinbaugh, the Timbers Academy Director, worked with the 04 boys. My job tonight was to document as much as possible in order to communicate to the club community and social media followers how great of an opportunity this was and how much knowledge would be shared at the Thorn-Timbers Town Hall later. I did my best with this, even bringing my camera that my husband and I take on trips with us, however my phone and mother nature had other plans. When I arrived my phone was well over 70 percent charged, which is usually plenty of power to get through an hour and a half, but after 15 minutes in the frigid weather, my phone was already dead. The social media director and a dead phone, perfect. Luckily we live in a very nice community and I was able to plug my phone in in my car for a while so I could get a few posts in later on. One of my favorite parts of the trainings tonight was watching how excited the players were to work with these coaches. Even if they didn't fully grasp how awesome this was, I also don't think they took it for granted.

The directors had approximately 60 chairs set up with a stage, projector, and audio hookup. We all waited, holding our breath, hoping that people from the community would show up and at least fill most of the chairs. We were beyond elated when the chairs filled and people continued to come in! Parents to our youngest players to grandparents and donors showed up to hear about what opportunities are presented by being an alliance club and our club's culture. In an hour and a half, Kyle and Mike went over what they look for in an alliance club, successes that they are currently celebrating, and goals they have set for the future. It was great information for all that attended regardless of where they are and where they want to go in the soccer world. There was even a short Q&A session at the end. I was so thrilled to be a part of this and felt some pride as well feeling like I contributed to the success since I promoted like crazy on social media.