Chad Collett Discusses Managing (And Lighting) the Fond du Lac Soccer Complex

Introduction

Adam: This WiLL Cast was with Chad
Collett with the Fond du Lac Soccer Association.

Becca: Yep, Chad is the president of
the Fondy Soccer Association. He's also a WiLL customer, essentially.

Adam: It was really cool to talk to a
customer like Chad on the WiLL Cast, because about 98% of our business is
actually out of the state. So when we can connect with local customers and
local partners and hear their stories and understand some of their pain points
and some of the parts of the system that were really a success and some of the
areas that we can enhance, it just makes our products and our service and our
support better. It was great to hear that Chad is the president and the club
and the community are just making such great use of the system and how happy
they are with it.

Becca: And the club in general, too —
the way they're using the system to enhance the Fond du Lac community and
create this resource for kids, and really create more excitement around the
sport of soccer in the area.

Adam: I think I mentioned it during
the WiLL Cast, but it's such an underutilized and probably underappreciated
facility. Having met Chad and talked to him about the facility and working to
create the project spotlight, it is one of the premier facilities — I mean,
think about Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay included — it's one of the premier
facilities in the state. And as he was saying, it's such a great location in
Fond du Lac because the Green Bay leagues and the Madison leagues, they use the
fields, they use the lights, and Fond du Lac's a great midpoint for so many
other clubs and facilities.

Adam: One of the things we did in this
system is we threw in our latest control system, and that has really unlocked a
lot of value for them. Kids are using it — essentially the schedule runs all
the time. The schedule moves with the year as there's time changes, as sunrise
and sundown changes, the schedule automatically moves. That's such a valuable
component of the WiLL Sport system — it is designed to be as low-maintenance,
hands-off as possible, especially with these clubs that are volunteer-run.

Becca: You don't always have the same
coach. There's no facilities engineers. It's all volunteers. And then you just
have parents out there who are essentially chaperoning. And the lights are
already there. He's talking about how the lights, regardless of if they have a
practice, the lights are on, so that kids can feel like they can go out there
and practice and play. It creates a safer space. It allows them to stay
outdoors later once it gets into fall and sun sets earlier. Really, really
cool.

Adam: We're going to upgrade them here
over the next few months with our latest application — being able to
remote-control the lights, adjust basic settings, see if the poles are on and
the lights are on. You'll be able to run light shows from a phone. It's really
going to be a nice enhancement for them. It's just so cool to see such great
use and success with it locally.

Becca: It's a showcase. It's a
showcase piece. And we can't wait to see it get even better. Overall, it's a
huge thank you to Chad and all the time that he puts in. It was funny, he
mentioned he was not a soccer player, but he had kids that got into it. Cool to
see what dads and parents are willing to do, not only to enhance their kids'
interests, but the community at the same time. He's got a dozen years, and now
what started as his daughter wanting to play is over a decade of support of
this facility.

Adam: This one, by nature, is brought
to you by the WiLL Sport lighting system. If you want to partner with us on
your sports project, please go to WiLLBrands.com. Contact us via chat or via
our quote request form. We've got sales partners across the U.S. that can also
help you out. Regardless of how the job gets purchased, we're going to support
you as the factory. We try and use all the latest and greatest technology
without overdoing it for clubs and associations, because we know they're
putting so much time in and they need a reliable system. Reliable, easy to use,
and fun. Color-changing lighting, entertainment scenes — it's everything you
need. Enjoy this WiLL Cast with Chad Collett.

How Chad Got Involved

Adam: So Chad, we're talking about how
the teams within the Fondy Soccer Association are the Phoenix, and you kind of
got into how you got involved. You're now president, but what does that history
look like?

Chad: I moved to Fond du Lac about 16
years ago, and my daughter took up this wonderful sport of soccer. Full
transparency — I've never played soccer my entire life.

Adam: Same here.

Chad: I was the other football guy
growing up. They played soccer, and it's just one of those things — as parents
you need to plan and do all this stuff. I just felt the communications were a
bit lackluster. So I was complaining to my wife, and she said, be part of the
solution, not part of the problem. I'm a marketing guy by nature, that's my day
job. So I reached out and said, I'll run for the board. I've been on a lot of
other boards professionally before. You go to a monthly meeting, vote on some
stuff, kind of move on. They had told me, hey, this is a lot of work, we're
hands-on. And I'm like, yeah, sure you are.

Chad: I joined the board and was
really just going to take a back seat. That first year, as things moved along,
it happened to be a big turnover year of the board. So the following year, Greg
Winkler came back to take on president, and I suddenly got vaulted from “I
don't want to do anything” to vice president. I spent about three years as vice
president. Then Greg Winkler — the former president, also the former coach at
Fond du Lac High School — him and his wife Vicki moved to Florida. So just like
that, I became president of the club. I try to get rid of it every year, but
nobody seems to want it.

Activity at the Complex

Adam: I've driven to that part of
town, and there are a lot of kids and a lot of cars at those facilities.
Saturdays typically? What days of the week?

Chad: At night as well. It really
depends on the program. Just of our youth players, U4 through U18, we've got
over 1,500 kids that play soccer. We've got our recreation league, which just
finished up about a week or so ago. That runs for about 10 weeks, and they play
Monday through Thursdays out of the complex. Every night there's a couple games
a night. Then we've got two weekend things we put together. We've got Spring
Games, which kind of evolved from the kids doing their picture days — they'd
get all dressed up in their uniforms and come take their picture, then they'd
go home. It's like, well, you're here with the uniform on, let's play some
games. So we built Spring Games out of that. Then we do a nice little
end-of-the-year tournament as well, get everybody together — a great cap of the
season.

Chad: Then our academy and our select
teams, our travel league teams — they play on the weekends, Saturdays and
Sundays, but train during the week as well. They're training two to three times
a week. So there's always activity. There was actually one night this early
summer I went down there, and coaches were asking where they can practice. I'm
like, well, just find a field. I drove around in the golf cart and there was
not a single open field on all 53 acres. Gotta find some more space.

A Community Asset for All

Adam: I like you — I did not play
soccer growing up, but I was growing up about the time soccer became very
popular in Fond du Lac. I was a baseball player. But I remember when some of my
friends started to play soccer. To see it go from that point to what you guys
have developed and what's now being supported — it's just such a tremendous
asset for the community.

Chad: We love how it's come together.
We love all the families, we love the diversity of it all. Our soccer complex —
we're not associated with the school district. A lot of people may think we
are, but we don't get any funding from them, or the city, or the county. The
great thing is that it's a soccer complex for all.

Adam: Because we talk to clubs and
coaches and associations really every day — soccer clubs, softball clubs. Is
there a common way that these organizations are structured? What's the
difference between an association or a club? Are they sometimes part of the parks
and rec department?

Chad: A lot of the clubs — it's really
grown over the years. It used to be that a lot of the clubs out there, the SCs,
the FCs, a lot of the Uniteds, they really focused on those travel leagues,
those highly competitive ones. In a lot of communities, the recreation leagues
were kind of run by the rec department. Some still do. We have seen a lot of
communities now start to add those rec programs, the Little Kicker programs,
the Mini Kickers. Because if it's soccer, for us it always made sense to do
that. And the great thing here in Fond du Lac is — it's amazing that we can
support all that activity and do it in-house. For the recreation leagues, in a
lot of other cities, they play other cities. People are absolutely amazed. They
call us and say, how do you do it? You do this all on your own. A lot of people
will run their rec league through the city, through the school district,
through something else. We do everything in-house.

Adam: It takes a lot of dedicated
parents and families and community involvement.

Chad: Absolutely. There's a lot of
volunteer hours. When I first started, it was two or three of us kind of doing
everything. But the last couple years, I've really seen a huge turn. It's been
awesome that people are stepping up, saying, what do you need me to do? Here's
my skill set. Where can I fit in? That's awesome because it's taken a lot of
pressure off some of us that have been doing it for a long time, wearing many
hats.

The 53-Acre Facility

Adam: Tell us about the facility.
You're nice enough — we're now part of the facility, which is awesome. You guys
got a nice lighting package for the practice fields. But what does the facility
look like? How many acres? How many fields?

Chad: We are extremely lucky here in
Fond du Lac to have a soccer complex, and you really don't appreciate it until
you're in the travel league and you go to other cities to play. A lot of people
just think we've got all these fields and every city does that, but suddenly
you're playing at a school, you're playing at a city park. About 30 years ago,
this dream was had, and they built a 53-acre complex by Fond du Lac High
School, MPTC, and UW Oshkosh–Fond du Lac campus. Half the land we lease through
the county technically, but we work with UW Oshkosh–Fond du Lac on that. The
other half we lease from MPTC. It's one of those great deals — a dollar a year,
kind of thing. They really give back to us on that.

Chad: That gives us the ability to
have a lot of fields. We've got 30-plus fields in a variety of sizes. It allows
us to ebb and flow as the seasons go and rotate fields. During our travel
season, our competitive season, we need more bigger-size fields. When the rec
league starts and we've got all of our little kids going, we take one of our
full-size fields and turn it into six little mini fields out there.

Chad: We do have a premier field with
fencing around it. We put in a new scoreboard about five years ago.

Adam: That's where my high school used
to play. I went to WLA, and I remember they played in the stadium.

Chad: They still do. And Fond du Lac
High School has played their home games there as well. They're going to be
shifting because they're getting their own turf. But the JVs also play at our
complex. We've got a new scoreboard up, we put a new ticket booth up, and then
we've got our concession stand that we just expanded. Of course, right before
COVID happened, we started construction in 2019 and didn't get to open it in
2020. But we expanded that, and I think it's one of the nicest concession
stands around. It's been amazing how much easier it is to serve the people —
shorter lines, the amount of food that we can get out. We have some apparel
down there, obviously our garage and restrooms and everything like that.

The WiLL Sport Lighting System in Action

Chad: Then the lighted facilities. Our
premier field has lights — the old 70-foot-tall, old-style lights. You've got
to flip the breaker on and off manually. In the fall, we always added portable
lights, which are great, but then they've got to crank them up and get them
going. One of the things we ran into is, depending on the position of them — we
try to be very nice to our neighbors, we want to keep a good-looking complex —
but sometimes those portable lights just at the right angle would shine into
their rooms. Having the lights from WiLL has just been amazing, because one, I
can set a timer on it — turn on at sunset and go off about 10 o'clock. The
coaches can put them on longer if they need to. But they're so directional, the
neighbors just absolutely love it.

Adam: We were talking about that at
the Envision golf event recently. One of the things we've pledged to do as a
company is every single year give away at least a partial field. A few years
ago we did two fields at Lakeside Park. Right now we're working with Mount
Calvary, and we included our control system at no cost. We did the same thing
for you guys on the control side. And we were talking at the Envision event —
that was one of the first things you said: how great the scheduling and the
control system has been, where you can leave it on at night, kids after school,
kids after dinner, they can come and use the fields. And the system is going to
shut down. You mentioned how a lot of the community, even if it is on each
night, there doesn't really seem to be any issues with glare or spill.

Chad: We've received a lot of
compliments from people throughout the community that just think it is great
that, even if we don't have events out there, we've got the lights scheduled to
come on. If kids want to ride their bikes or walk over there with their soccer
ball and just kick it around, the lights are on for them to do that. They see
kids out there all the time. That's what the soccer fields are there for, and
that's what the lights are there for — for people to use them.

Adam: That makes me feel great. We
spent a lot of time and actually delayed getting into the control space for a
while, because we wanted to make sure that when it happened it was going to be
as hands-off as possible. You guys are already super busy. It's all donated
time. In most cases there's not facilities engineers on staff running these
lights. So we're like, how can we create a system where there's some install
time, but we try and commission it as much as possible at the factory, and then
have it be kind of set it and forget it? You don't have to learn a new software
package to run it — it's on a tablet. As we're developing it and we're working
with our engineering team, I'm like, I want my grandpa and grandma to be able
to walk up to the system and intuitively know how to use it. We're always doing
updates, always looking to improve it. It's just great to hear that you can
unlock so much value in the system through that control system. Our engineers
are going to love hearing that.

Fond du Lac as a Central Location

Chad: Another great thing — we get
requests to play games in Fond du Lac from other cities all the time, because
Fond du Lac is kind of a central location. A classic one that happens all the
time is Green Bay plays Madison, and neither of them wants to drive all the way
to the other. They call me up and say, hey, do you have a field? Can we play in
Fond du Lac? Absolutely. And if they want a night game, I can put them on the
premier field, or Field 13 is easy because the parking lot's right across the
street from MPTC. I tell them, the lights are going to come on at sunset and
they're going to go off automatically. I don't have to do anything. I don't
have to drive down to the soccer complex to make sure everything's going okay.
I just know it's going to work.

Mobile App & Future Enhancements

Adam: We're working on some additional
controls and some software and some application enhancements. If you had a list
of things you guys would want — think of it as an iPhone application you can
download and enhance the whole system — what are some things that come to mind?

Chad: The mobile component would be
great. Especially with the cool light shows that it's programmed to do — or
close to being able to do.

Adam: We're getting very close to
releasing that. We've got prototypes. It's another one of those things where we
wanted it to be ready to go when it goes. With technology, the more complicated
something gets, the more maintenance events get created. That's next on the
list. Great to hear that's going to be a nice upgrade.

LED: Lower Cost, More Usage

Chad: One more thing about the lights
I just thought about. When I kind of first got started, they would very
sparingly turn on the lights. One, somebody had to be out there to flip the
breaker, turn it on, turn it off. But then there was this whole notion that
they're so expensive, and we're a nonprofit organization. The low cost of the
new lighting is just amazing. So the fact that we can have them on every single
day is just great.

Adam: That's a really interesting
point. A lot of people delayed getting into LED lights for their facilities
because it's relatively low run time. But it's probably not considered that
LEDs are a lot more cost-effective to run — it's instant on, instant off, the
system's easier to use — that'll actually increase the amount that they're
used. So the runtime calculation against LED versus HID is different. You're
just going to use them more.

The Future: More Lights, More Fields, New Turf

Adam: What does the future look like
for the association?

Chad: The future is bright.

Adam: Was that a lighting pun? More
lights, right?

Chad: Yes, we want more lights. When
we put the lights in, we built the infrastructure to add two more full-size
fields' worth of lights. We did the one side — we future-proofed half of
another field. So we want to add those two more poles to fully light Field 12.
Add lights to Fields 14 and 15 for our U11 and U12s. I do want to convert the
old-school lights to LEDs in the future in our stadium.

Chad: My long-term vision for lighting
— as we're fundraising for all of our things at the soccer complex, I tell
everybody that no check is too big, because we've got plenty of things we want
to do. Once we get those lights done by MPTC, my vision is to have all four
full-size fields along Scott Street fully lit as well.

Adam: Four fields along Scott Street?
Four full-size 11v11 fields?

Chad: That all of our travel teams use
for practices. And there's some games being played on theirs as well. There are
neighbors over there as well, so I'd love to have that full infrastructure and
have that whole east or west side lit up.

Capital Campaign & Turf Field

Adam: On the money side and the
fundraising side, if people want to donate their time, their resources, if
companies want to get involved — you guys are very well-known in the community.
If people want to get involved, where do they go?

Chad: You can go to FondySoccer.com.
We've got all the information out there. We're doing our capital campaign,
which I didn't mention, for our brand-new turf field. We are set to break
ground next month — just in about two or three weeks.

Adam: It's going to get done this
year?

Chad: It's going to get done this
year. We've had a very generous benefactor in National Exchange Bank and
Foundation that did a $500,000 match. And we've had other great companies in
the area step up — Grande, the Mike Shannon Foundation, Mid-States Aluminum,
C.D. Smith, J.F. Ahern, and several others. We still got some area to go. But
these days, costs are not going down. They told us, if you're willing to pull
the trigger now, it was about a $50,000 difference if we were to wait. So we
said, well, let's get it done. The community is going to come together, and
we're going to be able to do it.

Chad: So we're excited to get that in.
It's going to be a full-size field, but we're going to have it lined for our
U11s and U12s. We're going to put as many people out there as we possibly can —
for Little Kickers and everything else. All things go smooth — hopefully they
do — we should be able to play on it in October.

Adam: It's awesome to see. When
there's such a great community asset that people are investing in, all the
momentum behind it is awesome. It just keeps getting better and better.

Chad: I've been kind of on the circuit
a little bit, talking about the club, talking about the turf field and
everything else we're doing — talking at Rotary clubs and Kiwanis and
everything else. If anybody — I tell everybody, hey, if you have a board of
directors, if you have another nonprofit or a service organization, I'm happy
to come in, whether you give me two minutes or two hours. I can talk about
soccer nonstop. Full transparency — my cell phone number's on the site, my
email's on the site. People can call and ask me anything they want.

What Soccer Does for Kids

Adam: What is your pitch? What does
this do for kids? What does this do for the community beyond some of the things
that we've talked about? What have you seen firsthand, either with your family
or with extended family?

Chad: It's fantastic. The soccer
complex and the enhancements that we're doing — it shows us reinvesting into
the city, into the community, giving back. These kids — it's great because
they're getting out of their shell, they're getting out of their bubble, they're
meeting new people. With my kids, as they grew up, they would all suddenly be
somewhere and they'd know this kid or that kid. I'm like, how do you know them?
I know them from soccer. It's just not those kids that go to the one school
that they're friends with. All of a sudden they know kids from across town.
When they get into travel soccer, suddenly they're friends with kids from other
teams in other cities. I think it really helps bring them out.

Chad: And with that, I think some of
the parent bonds within their teams have just been spectacular. A lot of
friendships have been formed. People that weren't friends before are now
vacationing together, hanging out. When you're down there and you see all the
families together, it just warms your heart.

President's Cup & Premier Lighted Fields

Adam: What's the website?

Chad: FondySoccer.com. That's a great
address. Volunteering, donating money, time, getting involved, signing up kids
— go to FondySoccer.com.

Adam: When you guys are ready for
lighting, we're going to throw in some color-changing lights, throw in some
controls, do whatever we can to support it. Because it's just a great community
asset. Whatever we can do, please reach out.

Chad: It's been spectacular. We've
gotten so many compliments from other people that have come to town. In fact,
last fall we had two — so there's a President's Cup tournament. It's within the
state's association. The highest level is the State Cup, and then there's the
President's Cup. They had two championship games they needed to play. They
called us in Fond du Lac and said, hey, can we play one of the championship
games on your lighted field? I said, do you want both fields? And they said,
you have two lit fields? They couldn't believe we had two full-size lit fields.
Uline Park in Milwaukee is the only other club that has that. So Fond du Lac is
the first true club to have that. They played two simultaneous championship
games at night under the lights.

Adam: That's such a cool resource for
the kids in the community. We're talking about color-changing lights and turf
and Little Kickers — I think it's something that people probably take a little
for granted in the area.

Chad: Oh, absolutely.

Adam: That's why, when we're
developing products and systems and software and controls and our support
model, we're trying to get people to think beyond it just being turning the
lights off and on. There's all these other values that it unlocks. It really is
an entertainment component. Once the application is ready to go for your phone,
it's just going to continue to enhance the experience over time.

Adam: Well, man, thank you so much for
everything you do for the community and the investment that the association
makes. The positive energy, the positive momentum — it builds more momentum and
positive energy and gets other people involved. Keep doing your thing. Thank
you very much.