Chicago Machine and GLUE Ultimate partnered this past weekend to provide a Guest Coaching program for teams attending Meltdown. GLUE is a recently formed midwest tournament management organization, with Meltdown being their inaugural spring tournament for College and High School mens/women's teams. The Guest Coaching program involved pairing a Machine player with a specific team for the weekend, providing an outside set of eyes to answer questions, give customized advice to captains, and share feedback with individual players.
Andy Neilsen celebrates with the Edwardsville Elite HS Boys team after winning finals (initially seeded 10th of 10 teams).
Machine approached GLUE to trial-run the Guest Coaching program, in hopes of creating more opportunities for team members to give back to the local ultimate community. The program itself was largely inspired by Without Limits, a tournament management organization who has historically offered a similar program at Women's Centex in Austin, TX.
The program drew greater interest than anticipated, receiving more applications than there were available Guest Coaches. With this knowledge, it is Machine's hope to offer more coaches in future years, in order to accommodate every team that applies.
The weekend itself was wet, windy, and cold (typical Rockford, IL weather), but that did not prevent teams from battling it out on the newly installed turf fields at Rockford's Sportscore 2 athletic complex. Nor did the dense fog that rolled through on Sunday morning.
Overall, all of Machine's guest coaches were welcomingly embraced by their teams, and the feedback from both players and coaches was tremendously positive. We were humbled to share the experience with these bright up-and-coming players. We look forward to building upon this initial trial-run in future years and future events.
Cullen Geppert enjoying his time with the wonderful Wheaton College Mastodonnas
Kevin Kelly capping off a fun filled weekend with the awesome women on Knox College's Mary Todd.