Middle school participants in the free combine talk with Carl Thomas about continuing training opportunities. As a marketing strategy offering a free combine is great, but the timing was a little poor. AWP hosted its second free all sports combine yesterday which ran all day starting early around 8:00 AM and finishing at 5:00 PM. Numbers for the youth combine were really good with 15, but the middle school and high school aged combine numbers were very small with 12 and 8 respectively. Part of the reason for that was there was a big tournament that weekend in AAU basketball and also volleyball which pulled a lot of athletes as well as high school football camp and two-a-days starting up around the state. The good thing is of all the participants in the combine, nearly half agreed to come back to discuss further training and I was able to bring one player from Elkhart (one hour and a half away) who looks to be very promising as a client.
Combine participant bench pressing 225lbs for his test while strength coach Kevin Bush (former IU football player and U.S. Army vet) spots him and provides motivation
Testing provides the basis for all athletes when they first come to AWP and that data is collected and analyzed over time as the person continues to work with AWP. Fortunately some of the combine participants were already AWP members and having them perform well at this event showed the non-members some of the benefits of being a part of the program which is literally having the product sell itself.
The next all sports combine should be scheduled at a time where high school sports are on a dead time, perhaps during the moratorium week mandated by the IHSAA. Although it is very difficult to schedule an all sports combine where no sports are participating I think that could be a good time. The other option would be to schedule two separate free combines for major target markets AWP is trying to enhance: females and youth sports.
The next all sports combine should be scheduled at a time where high school sports are on a dead time, perhaps during the moratorium week mandated by the IHSAA. Although it is very difficult to schedule an all sports combine where no sports are participating I think that could be a good time. The other option would be to schedule two separate free combines for major target markets AWP is trying to enhance: females and youth sports.
