Hello Friend,
Greetings from the West Michigan Speedskating Club and the Muskegon Sports Council! I am writing to inquire if your organization is interested in participating in a new sports festival that we have put together for this winter. We are calling it the "West Michigan Youth Wintersportsfest." This is a multiple sport festival over the course of one winter weekend at numerous venues throughout several communities. It is a sort of mini-Olympics. We have already made great early progress with these sports firmly locked in: luge, cross country skiing, snow shoe racing, gymnastics, hockey, speedskating, bowling, sled dog racing, figure skating, karate, rifle/shotgun target shooting, biathlon, disc golf, table tennis, orienteering, swimming, indoor tennis, competitive cheer, inline racing, Alpine skiing and snowboarding. The host communities will be Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Grand Haven, Holland, White Lake, Spring Lake, Twin Lake and Cannonsburg Township. We have seen tremendous initial enthusiasm and pledges of support from three chambers of commerce and the Convention and Visitor's Bureau of Muskegon County. They think this has great potential. We have a fine committee already in place and working hard to make this festival something our community can be proud to host. We hope you see the potential to make this a spectacular winter celebration!
The emphasis on the competitions is youth sports. The cutoff age is 18. The goal of the competitions is to create one special weekend of winter fun with an Olympic flavor. A single event standing by itself makes for a casual notice by the rest of the community, but a large grouping of many different sports events on the same weekend is going to create a buzz that will get the couch potato crowd out of the house and motivate the kids to turn off the video games and see what other youngsters are doing to entertain and challenge themselves. A whole package of winter sports events is going to attract media and sponsor attention. It is going to be good for the kids, good for area business and great for the community! Properly done, we expect to attract lots of out of town competitors and visitors. We envision this event and our West Michigan community as turning into the permanent site of a "State Winter Games."
The key to a successful multiple event weekend is to allow the experts in each sport to conduct their own tournaments/competitions. The luge people will stage their own event, the gymnastics folks are setting up their own tournament, the snowboarders will run their own competition with their own rules; etc. The revenue made from each event will go to each sport's own organization. We want them to use those "profits" to grow their sport and bring in even more new youngsters from our community. We still have way too many area kids that think there is nothing to do in our town. We intend to show them otherwise and motivate them to get involved in local winter sports. Our committee feels there is a great need in our community to motivate our youngsters, challenge them physically and mentally and lift up their spirits. We have too many fat kids, uninspired kids, bored kids in our community. Those things lead to all sorts of problems. Most of them know about the major winter sports they see on television like basketball, figure skating and hockey. This will be a showcase to inspire other children and their parents to get involved in local winter sports that may be totally foreign to them like luge, speedskating, disc golf, karate, gymnastics, orienteering, biathlon, etc.
We are planning a welcoming ceremony and chili/pizza party with a live youth band at the Walker Arena annex. Of course, many events will overlap as they do in the Olympics. That is perfect. The public needs to have many choices to build excitement. We want them to go to Pigeon Creek Friday night for cross country ski races, drive to Muskegon for a hockey game later that night; go to Cannonsburg for slalom ski races Saturday morning, drive back to Muskegon for karate, gymnastics or bowling in the afternoon, then to the Walker Arena that night for ice speedskating; get up Sunday morning for luge or snow shoe races at the Sports Complex, or kids skeet shooting in Twin Lake and then watch swimming and diving at Grand Haven in the afternoon. You get the picture.
What we hope to do is to find at least one sponsor that will provide a single, common designed award medal that can be given out for the sports. So, the karate winners get the same medal as the luge or speedskaters. The awards will be the only financial assistance the sport will receive. The individual sports directors are on their own making sure the event makes money or breaks even after renting the facilities. We work together to promote each other. One community...one group of athletes...for the good of each other. We need to also be on the lookout for potential sponsors to host specific events or a single major underwriter that will want to sponsor the entire festival.
We are still looking for additional sports to be held in your community. We of course welcome sponsors, volunteers, and those that will help get the message out to youngsters in your community that we want them to be a part of the competitions. If you are interested in helping out, please contact me and I will set up a formal meeting where we can discuss this festival and your organization's possible involvement that will produce a really great festival.
For more information please feel free to contact us at the below address.
Best regards,
Mark Jastrzembski
