Author: blogger

Fundraisers For Pre-teen Sports Teams

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Pre-teen sports teams give young people a great opportunity to participate in a team sport, make new friends, and learn about teamwork. Besides being great fun and keeping them out of trouble, participation in pre-teen sports also gives young people a solid foundation for the future.

While fundraising on the part of parents, coaches and teachers is good and effective, the young people enjoying team sports can also enjoy participating in the fundraising themselves.

Encouraging participation

Everybody loves pre-teen sports, and sometimes the parents get even more excited about it than the kids. At the very beginning of the season, send out a fundraising letter or hold a meeting with all the parents to discuss fundraising, if for no other reason, to get them prepared to spend some time and get into a fundraising mode. Leverage the parents that were involved the year before. Encourage them to help out again in sharing their ideas and wisdom with the rest of the group. Get the kids interested too. Discuss the need for fundraising with them, and tell them about a few fundraising ideas. Kids are natural salespeople, and will be able to help out a lot towards their own cause–don’t make the mistake of just leaving all the fundraising to the parents.

Set the stage for participation in the next fundraiser too, by making sure to recognize the hard work done by all the volunteers, including both students and parents, making sure everyone knows the results of the fundraising, and sending a “thank you” to donors.

Have specific goals

Pre-teen sports teams can always use money for something, whether it’s new uniforms, awards, field trips, or equipment. But each fundraising initiative should have a specific and realistic goal that everybody is working for. When a child says “will you buy a box of candy to help us buy uniforms,” they’re a lot more likely to get a positive response than if they simply say, “will you buy a box of candy.” Also, you’ll get your parent and student volunteers more excited about fundraising if they know what they are working towards. Raising money for the “general fund” isn’t nearly as glamorous as raising money for something tangible that everybody can see and is within reach.

Specific goals are easy to come by. Pre-teen sports teams aren’t known for having large amounts of wealth, and there’s almost always something they need. Even if the team is school-sponsored, schools all over the country are suffering from cutbacks and often don’t have the funds to support the teams like they should. Keep in mind too, there are a lot of corporate sponsors and local businesses that would love to help, and would love to have some positive publicity. If they know exactly what is needed, you may have a chance of getting just a handful of companies together to foot the bill for the equipment, trips, or uniforms you need.

Getting support from community businesses

A common method of getting support from local businesses is to publish a yearbook, or sell ads on your team sports programs. It’s not hard to get the support of local merchants, but you do need to follow a few simple guidelines:

In addition to describing the benefit a donation will give to the team, describe the benefit to the individual merchant. You will be much more likely to get a donation if you are offering something to the merchant of value. This may come in the form of ad space in a program, having their company name displayed in the clubhouse, or a mention over the loudspeaker at halftime.

Follow up after the fundraiser is over. Send a “thank you” letter or a small token of appreciation to every donor. This shows them that you appreciate their support–and it also sets the stage for their participation in future events.

Give them a range of options. Don’t ask for the same amount from every merchant, give them a range of options from small to large dollar amounts.

Successful Business Brand Through Private Label Sports Nutrition

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Whether someone is a competitive athlete or just enjoys working out, the way they eat has an effect on their performance. Most athletes adhere to a nutritional eating program to improve their performance and overall health, which most often will include supplements. Sports nutrition has become a fast growing part of the health industry. In actuality, it is no longer just for the professional athlete; it often includes the average athlete, those wanting to be healthy, and those wanting to lose weight, the everyday people. Although, there are a wide variety of sports supplements available to meet most needs and the customer base continually grows larger, starting your own Sports Nutrition Company can be very expensive and adding Private Label Sports Nutrition products seems to be an additionally impossible business venture.

Any new business starting out in the nutrition field or a company looking to expand in this prosperous market could benefit from using a specialty private label sports supplements company. Vox Nutrition specializes in helping companies start up their own name brand products without the immense startup costs associated with it. We are not a company that asks you to sell product with our name on it, but we help you design and create personalized labels to help your business become successful. Vox Nutrition buys in bulk from the best laboratories so that you don’t have to and we have over 100 sports nutrition supplements from vitamins, protein, diet aids, and other healthy products to choose from. With our minimum of 12 quantity requirement, your company can sell a variety of quality private label sports supplements at a reasonable cost.

Whether your goal is to have a home-based business that sells to local gyms and health institutions or your focus is an online company, or selling on e-bay and amazon, it is easier to be successful then you imagined. Begin by picking three to five products, select the quantity you want (12 or more), design your customized label, set your prices, and market your own product.

The Case Against Sports Drinks In Schools

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The beverage industry produces enough soda for every American to consume 52-gallons each year. Although its a mind-boggling amount, the fact of the matter is their industry is stagnating. With soda sales flat, theyre turning to newer products. One of their most popular markets is the educational system. Marketed under the guise of being healthier than plain water, and an implication they are more efficient at meeting hydration needs, sports drinks have become a prominent fixture in many schools. But do they meet those claims, or are they just contributing to the obesity epidemic among U.S. children?

Research by the American College of Sports Medicine has shown that for exercise lasting less than one hour, water is the preferred method of meeting hydration needs. Their research suggests that the loss of electrolytes and carbohydrates from exercise meeting this requirement does not require the burst supplied by sports drinks that one typically gets from a modern sports drink. Their research also has shown that for activities lasting more than one hour, or occurring under intense heat, there are benefits to using sports drinks for hydration. The rapid and continuous loss of minerals under these conditions presents a risk to participants, and replenishing them rapidly improves hydration and athletic performance.

Interestingly enough, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the consumption of water, or a salt-containing flavored beverage to maintain hydration. Not only do they suggest such drinks, but the recommend children consume them regularly, regardless of whether they are thirsty.

Nutritional experts are beginning to question the need for having sports drinks available to kids during regular school hours. The logic of such an argument is that the activities occurring during regular school hours can not justify the extra calories kids consume when drinking these drinks. It has also been suggested that the extra electrolytes, which are just salt compounds, may even contribute to rising blood pressure among kids, when consumed in the absence of physical exertion. While the suggestions are controversial, most regulators are recommending limiting access during school hours, but making these beverages available during after school events and practices.

It seems inevitable that eventually, these drinks will be deemed of little nutritional or functional value for regular school day activities. After all, it doesnt seem reasonable to assume that kids or teens are at risk of becoming deficient in electrolytes while walking between classes. While they certainly offer benefits when consumed during intense exercise, theres little evidence to support the idea that they offer any positive benefits for normal day-to-day activity.

True Professional Sports Arbitrage Trading Software – The Most Powerful and Efficient Sports Arbitrage Software

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For a true professional sports arbitrage trader it is virtually impossible to conceive of working in this business without using the most powerful and efficient software they can find. Instead of wasting time scouring the web searching for trades, professionals rely upon their software to do the hard work.

The arbitrage information arrives to their desktop, with all the parameters and calculations already in place. All that the sports arbitrage trader needs to do is to place the wagers, and wait till the event finishes and the profit to roll in.

Nowadays there are many companies offering software to handle sports arbitrage trading online. Some of them are fairly simple and inexpensive, and might appeal to the beginner. Yet if there ever was cause for the argument “cheap is dear” then it certainly applies to sports arbitrage trading software. Starting off with the best is a prerequisite for success.

Any reputable company marketing sports arbitrage trading software will be more than willing to provide short term trial periods to enable you to get the feel of the software. They should also provide learning tools that will allow the new trader plenty of opportunity to approach his or her trading project fully prepared. You may even find yourself able to earn profits during your trial, although you should not be disappointed if this does not happen: the experience you gain at the early stages will be far more valuable in terms of long-term profits.

There is a school of thought that says if you are just learning the ins and outs of being a sports arbitrage trader, you should set aside a little time after registering your accounts at the various bookmakers you will be working with, doing dry run wagers. That means picking out arbitrages located by the software and simply going through the process of finding the bets on the bookmaker sites until you feel comfortable with the software. You might even take this a stage further by putting together some low value arbs to get more of a feel of actual trading.

At this stage, you probably wont recover your subscription overheads and any bank charges, but the real-time experience will enable you to hit the ground running when you eventually start trading with higher stakes.

The fact is that professional-level sports arbitrage software will do almost all of the donkey work for you. It will scan the bookmaker sites frequently and consistently. It will calculate the arbitrage trades and display them for you in an orderly manner on your desktop. It will calculate your stake for you and provide you with a 1-click system to open and log you into the relevant bookmaker sites when you have decided on a particular trade. At after you have placed your bets it will record the information for you so that you have a record of all of your activity.

This leaves you free to focus on the knowledge work aspect of your trading. This will include things such as:

* managing your cashflow to ensure that your accounts are always tradeable when necessary
* looking for new bookmakers to trade with (the best software vendors will add new bookmakers to the software if you request it)
* doing background research on prices once you have been alerted to an opportunity (this is an excellent ay to leverage the information you receive from your software)

As you conduct your research into sports arbitrage trading software, youll discover that there are many different offerings available. Its worth trying them all out (those which offer free trials) to find out which suits you best.

However, there are some features which you should look out for in the sports arbitrage trading software you choose:

Sports Arbitrage Filters

An Arbitrage Filter enables you to restrict the types of arbitrage trades you receive. This will help make your trading more efficient as you will only ever be alerted of opportunities which are of real interest to you. The filters should operate on at least the following parameters:

1. Minimum Profit: This filter will block arbs which yield profits below the threshold you have set.

2. Bookmakers: This filter will block arbs which involve bookmakers you dont want to use.

3. Restrict By Sport: This filter will block arbs which occur in sports you dont want to trade.

4. Rules Coherence: In MLB and NHL, and in tennis, prices may differ solely because of unique rules revolving around things like pitcher-changes, injured players, overtime and so on. This might not bother you, but if it does, your sports arbitrage software should be able to block them

Bookmaker Bonus Trading
As an active sports arbitrage trader, you will almost always have some bookmaker bonuses waiting to be turned over on your accounts. Some sports arbitrage programs will allow you to list those bookmakers and it will then go on to alert you, in a separate window from the main arbs, whenever one of these bookmakers can be traded with either in an arbitrage or break-even trade. This type of feature allows you to become very systematic about extracting multiple risk-free bonuses on a regular basis.

Social Networking
If your sports arbitrage software allows it, the ability to chat and share trades and other information with other traders can be very helpful. As well as providing an instant community of like-minded individuals who are actively engaged sports arbitrage at the same time, if the Chat is built into the software then it should allow much faster sharing of sports arbitrage trades than would be possible using a normal instant messenger service such as MSN or ICQ.

Real-time Updates
With many arb alarm programs, websites and other services, youll receive emails or messages into your private account at a site. The problem with this is that you wont actually know about the arb unless you check for it. Some opportunities come and go in a flash, and if youre only refreshing your email browser once an hour, you may miss some golden opportunities.

Other programs which actually provide up to the minute updates onscreen, by simply keeping a little window open as you browse the internet, work, watch TV, etc. Take a glance at it now and then, and it will only show you the opportunities available at that precise moment. No outdated messages, just currently available opportunities.

Speed
The best arbitrage trading programs should let you complete a trade within 1-2 minutes by pre-calculating your stakes and opening and logging you into your bookmaker accounts automatically.

Comprehensive Arbitrage Calculator
As touched upon above, your software should automatically calculate your stakes for any type of trade, including those with betting exchanges. It should be able to take into account, automatically, issues such as exchange-commissions and up-to-date currency exchange rates.

Free Trials
If you cannot get a free trial of the software, the chances are that the seller has something to hide. You should be allowed to play around with a trial version of any arb program before investing in it. Beyond how effective the software is, you want something user friendly, easy to understand, and easy to use. Remember, youll be using this software extensively as you trade so you must feel comfortable with it.

Some things to consider while using your free trials

1 – Is it fast?
Sometimes a program acting slowly isnt your computers fault, it might just be clumsy or careless programming by the software developer.

2 – Does the user interface make sense?
If you cant get to grips with all of the features of the program in less than a day, its probably going to be too unwieldy to use quickly and efficiently in a trading environment.

3 – Does it get you good results?
This is the most important thing. A good sports arbitrage alerts system is meant to do one thing: help you to make more money. If youre not being presented with plenty of great, genuine & tradeable arbitrage bets, move onto the next software.

Fantasy Sports Online

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Fantasy sports online continue to gain popularity in the United States and some other countries. There is an increase of fantasy sports fanatics participating in leagues and team management. The internet has helped more people get hooked up with their friends playing fantasy sports online. There is no site better for this than www.fantasyfactor.com where you can gather with your friends and decide who is champion in ONE day, with Fantasy Factors incredible one day Fantasy Sports leagues.

Fantasy sports players spend a lot of time researching for as much as information they can get online. Mock drafts, projections, rankings and more contribute to the players in drafting and choosing players to start their fantasy leagues. Fantasy sports online has made fantasy players lives easier than ever.

Some people use this game to connect with the professional games and experience personal involvement with their favorite players. Some people take their fantasy sports leagues seriously where they brag about rights and financial gain if people put money into their leagues.

Fantasy sports online has changed the way people view contests because it individual fantasy players they can pick and draft players from different teams, it then becomes their dream teams.

The first thing players need to do when playing fantasy sports online is to find a fantasy sports website like FantasyFactor.com where they can start leagues with just a few mouse clicks. You can join leagues for free or for a few bucks.

The next thing you should be aware of is your level of involvement in fantasy sports online. Some people sign up for a fantasy league but they dont check back regularly throughout the season. Other people check their fantasy league rosters on a daily basis even if the pro sports occur only once a week like the NFL. There people check injury reports and try to get a feel for matchups and see how their player might play for the next game. And for some people, it can reach a level of obsession as they deal with factors that require a lot of guessing.

Fantasy players tend to develop strategies as they play fantasy sports online more often. They load up their fantasy teams with their favorite players. This may not be the best strategy for actually winning but it is a way for people to root for their favorite players without being disloyal. Again, this brings up the involvement issue because some people can literally spend weeks preparing for their fantasy draft. Ultimately, fantasy sports online is supposed to be fun, so if it is causing an individual a great deal of stress, it may be time to pursue some other interest.

Head over to www.fantasyfactor.com and check out their state of the art software and amazing one day fantasy leagues for Fantasy football, Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Basketball and Fantasy Hockey leagues today!