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Post by stoner35 on Oct 11, 2011 13:14:39 GMT -5
The idea is to host a tournament for high school fishing clubs in hopes to raise money for the club, publicize our club, look good for our sponsors, and have a really cool event for possible up and coming anglers. This has the opportunity to be really cool guys and I need your help to get the ball rolling, any ideas are greatly appreciated.
Illini Bass Fishing Club Fundraiser Tournament Where: Shelbyville? (Big lake thats not Carlyle, central location) When: First two weeks of April? (Good fishing and before conference, sectional, state, ect.)Sectionals is April 20. So April 14th? Entree Fees: $20 per boat? Who: All Illinois schools with Bass Fishing Clubs Two boats per school Cut off for number of boats 100?150?200? Cut off for sign up date How: My Dad is in contact with IHSA. Have them send out emails to schools with clubs with rules, regulations, dates, location, etc. Thats it, the IHSA does not want to get too involved. Boaters: All schools bring their own boats, supply their own boaters. Prizes: High School team cannot have a prize worth more than $25. So a trophy, and some other little prize? lures etc.? Weigh in: Bass Federation or Matt’s guy? Concessions? Raffles? Sell apparel? Shirts, hats, hoodies, etc.
For our team: Sponsors: How can we get our sponsors involved? Lots of pictures, hang banners supporting our sponsors. Wear jerseys. Raffles? Giveaways? Promotion: Who to get involved and HOW. Newspapers, media coverage, be visible for our sponsors, two birds with one stone. As much promotion and attention as possible. Heartland Outdoors-Jeff Lampe Southern Outdoor Magazine Prairie State Outdoors Pro: Should we try to get a Pro to come to the weigh in? Hype up the event as much as possible. Hype: Other ideas to hype up this tournament at all, as much excitement as possible to generate attention.
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 11, 2011 15:44:18 GMT -5
The cap is a tricky slope we do not want to exclude any teams from competing but I would say the cap should be at 100, but maybe if it gets popular enough add a second day for a separate tournament for other schools? A 2 day tournament I do not think is going to work because high schools have limited resources and probably would not be as likely to do a 2 day tournament but we could split this up if we get a lot of attention to two smaller tournaments where we can do more with the smaller crowd.
We could definitely get some prize packages together from our sponsors for these kids which I think we could probably slide under the high school prize restrictions.
As for promotion I think you have a good head start, maybe like Matt said get Terry Brown involved and I think a lot of us with contact with out high school clubs and get some help that way getting some word out.
I also think that we should have a couple of our boats driving around the lake much like Boat US does at their tournaments taking pictures of the anglers on the water as well as the weigh in of course.
As far as Shelbyville goes its definitely a big enough lake to hold this if it gets big and is of course a good fishery and we have some experience running our fundraising tournaments there. The trick in setting the date I can tell you is one that I went through last year is trying to find that day without a IBF or ITT tournament on so we can get their support. As far as a ramp goes, I think eagle creek or dam west are the only two options, from speaking to the Army corps last year most big tournaments of 50 boats plus are ran out of Dam west, and personally from what i remember from Eagle Creek Dam west might be the better option.
This has a lot of potential and something that could be real good for us in a number of ways good idea Luke!
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Post by stoner35 on Oct 11, 2011 16:11:51 GMT -5
One thing we need to look into a.s.a.p. is talking to Shelbyville as far in advance as possible. If we call the Chamber of Commerce and tell them our ideas, and simply ask them what they can do for us. They could help us have a relatively "empty" lake on the day we choose. Which I think is going to have to be April 14th, as it dodges the Sectionals (20th), State (4th&5th), and high school spring break. Thats a Saturday and should be perfect.
Also we could check into any hotel deals the Chamber could give us so more schools could come and stay overnight, I worry not many schools would travel too far on the morning of. We could see where they want us to launch out of and where we should hold the weigh in. Basically the more we get Shelbyville involved the better.
It is a pretty cool idea and many people seem excited to help get it going, I have already emailed the DNR about some preliminary questions so I should hear from them soon. Then we just have to make final decisions and get the tournament on the board!
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 11, 2011 17:17:00 GMT -5
I set up the fundraising tournament last year and what I can tell you on the lake is that they do not reserve weekends for tournaments until January and I doubt that we would be able to get an "empty lake" for our tournament, there are too many clubs that try to host tournaments in the spring. The one thing that might work to our advantage though is if we get it on the schedule early other big tournaments might look to move dates.
I'm not sure how much the DNR will be able to help you Luke because the lake is ran by the Army Corps of engineers and they make all decisions on who uses the lakes and tournaments, we have to get permission from them get approved etc.
And as far as lodging goes there are some relatively inexpensive motels around Shelbyville but lodging around the lake is somewhat limited, so if we want to work with a big hotel we would have to look at one of the bigger cities such as mattoon
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Post by salzberry840 on Oct 11, 2011 22:42:42 GMT -5
You best bet is to set your tournament the week before the BFL on Shelbyville. A lot of people will fish smaller tournaments as prefishing for their big tournament. I would suggest putting out of Eagle Creek or Wolf Creek State Park this year. It eliminates the boat launch fee and also centralizes you on the lake, a big plus for any fisherman. I have the proposed schedule for the BFL's but I wont be home for a couple days yet to look at it. I might also be able to send a message out to the tournament director before hand and let him know there is a fundraiser tournament on the same lake. I will be fishing it again this upcoming year and I think you should stick with $50, or do $40 and an optional $10 big bass pot, or something like that. Keep me posted and I will help in anyway I can. Oh, and just to let you know, I'm gonna win it. I've got the lake figured out! haha
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Post by Jake on Oct 11, 2011 22:42:55 GMT -5
luke let me know if you need any help contacting people and what not i have some free time on my hands and i know it is always better to work in numbers as more things can get accomplished heading a task like this by yourself would be pretty hard so just hit me up
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 11, 2011 22:59:17 GMT -5
Cody the point of this tournament is for the high school teams to fish and give them more opportunities so we aren't going after a general field like we did last year.
And Luke same for me let me know what you want help with, i still have the rules and flyers from last year that we can modify for this.
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Post by Jake on Oct 12, 2011 9:21:45 GMT -5
I thought this was a separate tourney and not getting rid of the open one. If that's the case why not combine them and have it be open but we can target hs and then have a hs winner and a overall winner.... I dont think we shld get rid of the other one and Cody u need a co angler?? Lol cuz if so dibs
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 12, 2011 9:51:41 GMT -5
we hadn't talked about doing another general fundraiser but I don't think we should combine them and honestly I think this can go better than our fundraiser but we could also conceivably set a hs tournament up for saturday and a general fundraiser tourney for sunday open to anybody and give some hs kids the option of fishing another one
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Post by Kyle on Oct 12, 2011 16:37:55 GMT -5
I think we need to keep that open tournament going. As you saw this was the second year we did it and had a much better turn out than the first time we held one. If we stop holding this annually we will lose peoples interests...we need to keep getting people to come back and fish our tournament from year to year and this will also allow word to get out and more people to fish it which means more money for the club. I think combining the two tournaments would be great! We also could try and implement placing a high school kid with someone in the non high school section. This will be hard but could possibly be done. Then we could have a co-angler weigh in(high school) and boater weigh in. This will also allow the high school kids to learn as well
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Post by Kyle on Oct 12, 2011 16:39:37 GMT -5
Or if not holding them together make two separate dates for the tournaments in order to keep the original tournament going from last year
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Post by stoner35 on Oct 12, 2011 16:47:33 GMT -5
I think holding two separate tournaments would be best. I have a feeling this hs tournament alone is going to generate enough interest and publicity that its gonna be all we want to handle at that time. I do kind of like the Saturday(hs) Sunday(other) idea though, that could be very cool.
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 12, 2011 16:59:18 GMT -5
I think if we're going to do both the same weekend is the best way to do it for us because we will have all the resources together to do it and can make a club trip out of it something like what we did last year
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Post by brock on Oct 12, 2011 19:15:41 GMT -5
idk guys i think its going to be a lot of work to carry out 2 separate tournaments. Id rather focus all of our efforts on one tournament and make sure it runs smoothly. Not only is it an excellent funraising opportunity but it really puts on the map and shows we have a passion for fishing. If you guys really wanted to i would make it a seperate weekend after school is out like we did last year and make it a club event (that is if we even felt the need to host another one.) This high school tournament can easily take its place if we start now
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Post by Kyle on Oct 12, 2011 20:02:04 GMT -5
We could also instead of collecting money for the high school tournament make that our 8 hours towards B.A.S.S. instead of cleaning up Bone Yard creek if I read that correctly this could fit maybe into doing that. And for the money collecting one we could host the other tournament if we did decide to do that just an idea let me know what you guys think!
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 12, 2011 20:42:15 GMT -5
don't think this will count as community service lol make a little bit of money and plug our sponsors plus doing an event like cleaning up boneyard creek wouldn't be bad either
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Post by Kyle on Oct 12, 2011 21:44:07 GMT -5
I think it is we are giving back to a specific group of the community and giving up our time and effort voluntarily haha but yes boneyard creek is an idea that is more of the traditional way to give back to the community
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Post by brock on Oct 12, 2011 22:53:30 GMT -5
yea i think that is a good idea but we have to get it approved by like the university and have them sign off on our hours. I say we do that for like 4-5 hrs cuz that wont take all day and then in the mean time ill get that special ed thing set up for the other 3 hrs.
We need to figure out some basic stuff for this tournament. Registration? online website? cut off date/ boat limit? allow non high school teams? Lake/ Date is pretty important as well. entrance fee?
we need to get the basic stuff figured out and agreed upon before we get too detailed with sponosors and promotions and stuff
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Post by jkaszuba on Oct 12, 2011 23:52:45 GMT -5
Registration through the website is the easiest but it depends if it can handle it like Matt said. Best way might be to go old school and do email registrations through two of us and have checks mailed or just take money the morning of. Boat limit I say 100 tops and 75 would be better if we're going to only do 1 day.
This should only be high school teams for this one tournament the goal should be to showcase the high school kids
I like Shelbyville given the size and location is pretty central to the rest of the state.
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Post by stoner35 on Oct 13, 2011 15:35:06 GMT -5
Yes there is absolutely a nuts ton we as a club have to work out and set in stone. I am getting a list of possible options, and things we have to figure out or create a better solution to. I hopefully will have this by Tuesday's Executive meeting. So if anyone has any input please come to Geo's next exec meeting and be prepared for some brain storming. I can use all the help I can get haha, but I am very sure when all is set in stone this is going to be a very profitable event for our club. In terms of money and exposure, so everyone keep mulling things over in your mind and I am sure we will get it all figured out.
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Post by stoner35 on Oct 13, 2011 15:35:46 GMT -5
Haha I didn't realize you couldn't swear on this post:p
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Post by ckeefe17 on Oct 13, 2011 21:44:57 GMT -5
I agree with having two separate tournaments. I feel like if you were to combine into one then the high school teams would feel less important. Having a high school only tournament will be better for the high school teams. And for the club it will get us a ton of publicity and it will make s look good for our sponsors. At the weigh in we could do something where we have tables for each one of our sponsors and have some of their products to show them off. Im sure we could get the sponsors to donate a bunch of good stuff. As for having the other tournament too i think we should defiantly keep that going like you guys were saying.
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