2022 MEMBERS’ ASSEMBLY SESSIONS
On October 22, 2022, USA Curling will be hosting the ninth annual Members’ Assembly.
The 2022 USA Curling Members’ Assembly will offer free virtual seminars that cover a variety of topics. This year, the Members’ Assembly sessions will include:
Member Conversion & Retention
Junior Programming
Arena to Dedicated
Growth and Development
USA Curling members are welcomed and encouraged to attend any of the offered sessions by registering through each of the corresponding registration links listed below.
SATURDAY, OCT. 22ND
12:00PM (CDT): MEMBERSHIP CONVERSION & RETENTION
Join this discussion with Dr. Bernard Mullin and Bill Fagan of The Aspire Group, as they discuss membership conversion and retention. This session will offer a new lens on membership strategy supported by the long list of Mullin and Fagan’s accomplishments on membership initiatives, building and maintaining supporters, and maximizing organizational effectiveness.
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Bernie is Founder & Chairman of The Aspire Group. The Aspire Group works with best of brand sport and entertainment industry partners such as the NFL and the LA Chargers and Rams, the NBA and the Charlotte Hornets and Detroit Pistons, the NHL and MLB’s Cleveland Indians and LA Dodgers. Aspire currently serves over 50 collegiate athletic partners including Maryland, Kansas, Purdue, and Rutgers. Global sport sponsor brands served include Allianz and Coca Cola through Aspires leadership role with Pope Francis’ Sport 4 Humanity global initiative designed to get more youth and their families involved in sport programs that teach values.
Aspire specializes in maximizing people, team, and organizational effectiveness, growing revenues and attendance and elevating property asset value. This is accomplished by building fans for life through superb data base marketing, backed by sophisticated segmentation that drives cutting-edge digital and social “intelligent marketing” campaigns that are followed by a superb outbound proactive sales or inbound service touch in one of just under 50 Aspire Fan Relationship Management Centers located on-site throughout North America. Under Bernie’s guidance, the firm has rapidly grown into a company that has generated over $1B in new and incremental revenue serving 300+ brands and properties across 11 countries on three continents in 20 different sports and entertainment genres.
Bernie is an internationally acclaimed management and marketing consultant and speaker, who along with Dr. Bill Sutton and Dr. Steve Hardy wrote the best-selling book, entitled “Sport Marketing” which has sold more than 100K copies sold and is published in 11 different languages.
In his career, he has specialized predominantly in start-ups and turn-around situations, building winning organizations on the field, court, and ice as well as developing sustained peak performing organizations taking people and teams to unprecedented levels of success.
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As The Aspire Group’s President & CEO, Bill is responsible for overseeing Aspire’s headquarters’ operations including Fan Relationship Management, Strategic Consulting & Research, Marketing, and Human Resources, and expanding the menu of services Aspire can offer to partners. His noted journey with Aspire started as Manager of the first ever Fan Relationship Management Center (FRMC) at Georgia Tech in 2009, innovating as the first ever outsourced ticket sales partnership in collegiate athletics. While he began as Aspire’s first employee hired by Founder & Chairman Bernie Mullin & CEO Bill Duffy, he has since built a team of over 200 full-time employees. Bill was most recently named to SportsBusiness Journal’s “Forty Under 40” Class of 2017.
Before becoming COO, Bill was Aspire’s SVP & GM of Fan Relationship Management. In this role, Bill built over 30 new centers across the globe including in the United States, Australia, Canada, and England. The key to the growth has been the development of the ‘Raise Your Game-Executive Development Program’, which is The Aspire Group’s proprietary training and career growth program. Bill is known for recruiting the best talent and developing them into industry leaders. Bill has groomed and promoted 40 Managers internally and overseen the development of nearly 600 Ticket Sales & Service Consultants since joining Aspire. When Bill is not managing the Raise Your Game-Executive Development Program,
he services the relationships with all The Aspire Group’s FRMCs and is responsible for growing revenues across all properties. Bill also oversees Aspire’s Client Partnership Development, Sales & Service Training and Performance Analytics units.
Bill Fagan, originally from Middletown, Connecticut, graduated from the University of Miami with a bachelor’s in business administration as a Marketing Major, and a Minor in Sports Management before spending the past fifteen years developing his career in ticket marketing, ticket sales and ticket service. Bill completed his MBA studies at Emory’s Goizueta Business School and was recognized to Poets &
Quants “Best and Brightest” across the top 20 Executive MBA Programs in the United States. Prior to joining Aspire, Bill was a Sales Manager with the Charlotte Bobcats (NBA) and was a top revenue producer with the Phoenix Suns (NBA). In between NBA stops, he spent a year in the Canadian Hockey League with the Moncton Wildcats (QMJHL) as their Director of Sales & Service. Bill cut his teeth in the industry with the Orange Bowl Committee and the Miami Dolphins (NFL). Bill currently serves as a founding member of the University of Miami’s Sport Industry Leadership Council (SILC) and on the Board for the Emory University Marketing Analytics Center (MAC
1:000PM (CDT): JUNIOR PROGRAMMING
Curious about how to initiate and sustain a junior curling program at your club? Join this conversation with Scott Price to discuss the importance, strategies, and programming that go into creating a flourishing environment for youth curlers within your club.
SPEAKER:
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Scott’s love of curling began as a kindergartener when he saw it on TV living in Buffalo NY. It wasn’t until many years later that he was able to play the sport when he joined his high school's team in Montreal. While in college he took a brief hiatus and upon moving to Boston joined The Canadian Club and ultimately Broomstones where he has curled competitively for the last 24 years. He has attended numerous local bonspiels as well as Men’s and Mixed Nationals.
In 2001, looking to give students the same opportunity to experience the sport he had, he started a team at Medway High School. While a small group, the experience gained there allowed him to eventually create a high school curling league at The Country Club. This program started with 4 schools and over the 17 years of running the program, it has grown to include 6 schools with upwards of 120 students.
In 2013 Broomstones was in need of a Junior program coordinator and Scott took over running the Broomstones Junior Program. The program has flourished expanding to approximately 80 kids in three age brackets. In 2013 he also created the Coach in Training (CIT) program in which older junior curlers gain “coaching” experience while helping instruct the younger curlers. Scott holds a Masters in Education from Brown University and currently works at The Country Club as the Assistant Director of Curling and Aquatics and runs the Broomstones Junior and TCC High School Programs.
3:00PM (CDT): ARENA TO DEDICATED ICE - PANEL
Many clubs begin with the dedication and passion of a group of curlers renting ice at arenas. If your membership is currently at an arena and seeking a dedicated facility to call home, this session will offer a variety of perspectives and cover topics including models for different clubs, facility planning documentation, fundraising and financials, and more.
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Kim Chapin is a Board Member and Mike Greenberg is the former Treasurer of the San Francisco Bay Area Curling Club. The club welcomed the public in last spring, but just had its Grand Opening at its first bonspiel in September. The challenges of building and financing a facility in the Bay Area are significant, and this group overcame many obstacles on their way to success.
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Craig Fischer is the President and Co-Founder of the Fort Wayne Curling Club and the only person in the world masochistic enough to construct two dedicated curling facilities in a 6-year span. Craig also started and runs likely the largest curling program in the U.S. for individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities. He will be representing the U.S. in January on the Scot Tour. Outside of the curling world, Craig has a wife and an adult son with Autism, both curlers. His background is IT and Project Management but he currently runs sales for a company that provides services to insurance companies.
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Bruce Irvin's parents helped to transition Alpine Curling Club in Monroe, WI from arena ice to dedicated ice in 1963. Having risked their lives for two years on the snowy roads to the skating rink in "nearby" Rockton, Illinois they bravely approached some local large-animal veterinarians to lease a long, skinny hog shed that had recently seen the demise of a failed artificial insemination business. Piggy production hadn't worked out, but the curling that followed was epic and continues to this day.
Fifteen years later, young Bruce learned to curl at Alpine CC where he and family dominated in the 1981 Alpine Family Bonspiel. Bruce later curled for seven years as a member of Madison CC during graduate school. While in Madison, Bruce watched and cheered as that impressive organization outgrew its leased space and transitioned to its current six-sheet home in 1995.
Bruce then left the game for 15 years while he and wife Jill raised 3 little monkeys They moved to Portland, OR where he eventually stumbled into a merry band of arena curlers enjoying the roaring game at a local mall under a hail of french fries hurled from the 3rd floor food court. Bruce and Evergreen CC braved the potato storm until 2012 when they transitioned Evergreen CC to a leased warehouse and three sheets of dedicated curling bliss. The monkeys later joined their papa to dominate in the 2015 Evergreen Family Tree Bonspiel. Bruce now curls in Thursday league with monkey #3 which reminds him, every week, that heaven does exist and that curling is the greatest sport of all.
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Sue Mitchell was instrumental in moving the Triangle Curling Club from an arena setting into their own dedicated ice facility. Since it's opened, the club has steadily grown and boasts one of the best conversion rates, moving a high percentage of Learn-to-Curl participants into full curling membership.
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When he moved to Cincinnati from eastern Ontario, Jonathan Penney went from being a full-time ice tech to being a full-time cheerleader and organizer for a dedicated ice facility. His background as an ice tech helped the club steer past some typical challenges, and they even introduced few innovative features in their building. When he's not in Cincinnati, you can find Jonathan installing ice at clubs around the country and on the crew at USA Curling events.
4:00PM (cdt): gROWTH & DEVELOPMENT
USA Curling will review new and improved certification and course opportunities, as well as provide insight into the benefits of hosting events, resources available for programming at the club level, and discuss how all these aspects support increasing the pipeline of curlers.
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Dean Gemmell is the Director of Curling Development at USA Curling. Throughout his career, Dean has been involved in all aspects of our sport. He was the President of his home club in New Jersey during a period of rapid growth, served as the USA Curling representative to the USOPC Athletes Advisory Council from 2017 to 2021, and was a member of the team that captured the 2012 Men's National Championship in Aston, PA. He has written two books about curling, and more than 1,000 curlers have participated in the brushing clinic he developed that is now a USA Curling offering. In his role with the national organization, he works with member clubs to help grow membership, expand youth participation, and move from arena settings to dedicated facilities. He also serves as the play-by-play announcer on many USA Curling webstreams, and hosts The Whole Spiel podcast.
