What's in a Name?

By Chris Beerman

The excitement of making the jump to the club world was quickly met with the task of figuring out my first moves and getting organized.  The most interesting, and in some ways difficult aspect to this career change, was working out of a home office for the first time in my adult life.  No longer was I waking up, driving into the office at a university, working all day, then heading into the gym around 3pm to train my team. That had been my life for 20 years and for the first couple weeks that sudden change was a huge and scary adjustment.  In addition, I also needed to convert one of the rooms in my house into working office space and buy new office equipment.  Once the office a.k.a my dining room (who really uses that room anyway?!) was set-up and I settled into a new daily working routine,  I felt much more prepared to go to work and tackle the initial tasks of the start-up. 

One of the most interesting aspects of this venture was that I was in the middle of club season coaching for a different club!  I was very upfront and respectful with the club director and with the other club directors in town and made sure they knew this was not some kind of hostile takeover.  I wanted to offer an Elite level club and hoped we could all respect each other’s situation.  I did however want to begin the process of developing the club as soon as possible, so I made a very long to-do list and with the help and wisdom of the Munciana guys, set out to begin laying the foundation for the club. 

At the top of the list and seemingly a simple thing, but yet very important, was naming the club.  The name of your club is something you cannot change once it’s announced, so getting it right the first time is paramount.  Being a subsidiary branch of Munciana, some form of the name Munciana was considered, but in the end I wanted the club name to represent what I believe our mission and philosophy represented.  I believed that Lexington had tons of potential, but needed to be united in our club cause.  Uniting became a recurring theme for me and hence, "Lexington United Volleyball" became the name.  The letters "LUV" also ironically had great personal meaning for me because one of my main philosophies and teaching points as a coach is love for the game, teaching kids to respect the soul and history of the sport and appreciate how it’s played.  It takes a tremendous amount of technical skill, cooperation, discipline and mental toughness to play this game at a high level, and the players need to embrace that fact and “LUV the Game”! 

Once the name and philosophy was in place, I set out to lay the foundation.  Some questions I asked were: What kind of programs will we offer? Where will we practice? Who will our coaches be? What kind of pricing will be established? How will I begin the process of spreading the word about the club?  Munciana is famous for being an all-encompassing club model, offering a variety of volleyball programs and we wanted to share those same ideals with the Central Kentucky region.  I decided we would have an Elite team program as the foundation, with a Regional 10 and 11 year old program, and a grassroots program for 6-9 year olds.  In addition we would offer in-house camps, satellite camps, clinics, tournaments, private lessons and recruiting education. 

Before the next step however, I needed to have a way to disseminate information to the masses.  The great thing about our modern culture in regards to a start-up like LUV is the inexpensive social media and website opportunities.  I created a Facebook page and used free online software to create a website, and with those outlets, as well as mass email blasts to coaches, I was able to post immediate club information to everyone and on a massive scale.  I was off and running, but now I needed to get to work on answering the where, who, what, and how of my long to-do list to make sure we would be a successful and viable club in year one.