2015 Flames Football & Cheer Registration is Open

On line registration is open on our website registration page CLICK HERE to take advantage of our early registration prices now through May 31st. As you can see our new executive board member Lisa Quiroz who is responsible for all our communications now including registration is on the ball and blasting this out via all our media channels including Facebook, Twitter, and new this year Instagram. I don’t Instagram and don’t plan on it but it’s big with the kids so we are hoping that picks up momentum. Feel free to get active on any and all of those social media programs and spread the word. We know that most folks once they are a part of the Flames value and understand the benefits of football and cheer for there kids. It’s the parents on the outside that are hesitant to let there kids try these great sports we are really trying to reach out to and invite them in to come try us out.

At a league level there are a lot of exciting things happening as we look forward to the 2015 season. As many of you know we have moved back into the TCYFL for the 2015 season. Many of the towns from our former league have joined us including Schaumburg, Mount Prospect, and Streamwood. We are excited for a fresh start and have been very active in the various committees at a league level. We are currently assigned to the Ethics and the Health and Safety committees where Chuck Burkley our new league rep is active and contributing all he can to ensure our voice is heard loud and clear. I personally am taking a leading role in working with the eligibility task force to help drive compliance and better process around the tracking of players information. This includes birth certificates verification to ensure kids are playing at the correct levels and help the towns reduce the changes of clerical errors.

We took the parent survey results and have made a few changes based on that feedback. 75% of the response was that you all don’t like to sell things to raise money. I could not agree more and the comments were pretty clear and strong in some cases. I’m happy to say we have taken the lead on this and are no longer asking you to sell pasta music download cards, or mulch. To do this we spent many hours the past few months to adjust our budget and with our numbers where they are the past 2 years we had to raise the prices slightly to ensure we can stay fluid for the coming years. All in all for what you get and the time your kids spend with us it’s still by far the best value in town compared to other competitive travel sports.

With that change we are still moving forward with our equipment refresh process. We had a goal of $25,000 with charity mania last year to buy all new helmets and we came up short at only $7,000 net. However we have enough from other fundraising methods and prior cash reserves so we have purchased a large quantity of new helmets for this season including a color change on any existing ones we are keeping from previous years. This is going to really look sharp and we hope to share this with you soon. We also have tweaked the jersey ever so slightly to ensure we stay current with the designs the kids love today as well as better aligning ourselves with the HS football program. We will continue to replace broken shoulder pads and rib guards where we made a big investment last year. All in all our goal is to annually refresh a small percentage of the equipment along with the other reconditioning and certification process we hold ourselves accountable for year after year.

The volunteer tracking and fee was new for us last year. We learned from that and are making some changes again this year. Now we are requiring you to up front $100 that will be credited back at the end of the season if you fulfill your duties. To be clear we don’t want your money, we want you involved. The biggest feedback we hear is that you have a full time job so you can’t help. Well everyone on this board has full time jobs, actually 2 but one does not pay. We are happy to do what we do and love seeing the success of the kids as they get more confident each and every day out there but we do need your help. There is a ton of ways to help but honestly the biggest areas are in fields and concessions. It’s not easy getting Knox up and down each game day but it can be with the right help. Look for more on that in the coming months. We have asked our board member Tim Whiting to come up with a great plan to manage this through our Team Managers. We would also like to thank Sharon Lennon who has volunteered as a committee member to run our Team Managers this fall. She will be communicating out on that as we approach the season but we really appreciate her stepping up even without being on our board to help out and make our program great.

Check out our calendar on the website for dates and such for these upcoming off-season events.

LZACC Expo - March 14th

LZQB Club Spring Fling April 11th

Equipment Handout - Late May

Alpine Parade - July

Tackle Conditioning Starts July 20th this year so plan your vacations accordingly.

As you can see we have a lot of exciting and fun changes and some tweaks and adjustments to things but overall we continue to drive towards the goal of fun, exciting, consistent football and cheer for the youth of Lake Zurich and surrounding communities.

Look forward to seeing everyone at the Expo on March 14th stop by our booth and say hello!

Keith Mescha

Lake Zurich Flames President

email me at keithmescha@lzflames.org