Learn how the Golden Horseshoe Touch Football Association has sustained its legacy for over 50 years with smart leadership, disciplined play, and innovative management strategies.
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Welcome to Episode #22 of the Sold Out podcast, where we interview league organizers across the country for tips on how to sell out and grow leagues.
In this episode, we chat with Dave from the Golden Horseshoe Touch Football Association (GHTFA) in Burlington, Ontario. With a history dating back to 1973, Dave shares his incredible journey through the sport, from being a player to a volunteer executive. We explore the nuances of running a touch football league, the challenges of maintaining player engagement, and strategies for fostering community within sports organizations. Dave also sheds light on the differences between touch and flag football, the role of technology in modern league management, and the importance of adapting to the evolving sports landscape.
Dave also reflects on the cultural importance of touch football, its unique appeal in Canada, and the role of national and provincial associations in strengthening the sport’s foundation. Listen to the full episode to hear more about GHTFA's approach to creating a lasting, well-managed league.
Below is the full transcript from this episode. The Sold Out Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple, or you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube Channel!
Tune in every other week to hear AREENA interview the country's best league organizers about their success in selling out leagues consistently.
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Lance McDonald (00:01.198)
All right, today we have Dave from Golden Horseshoe Touch Football Association. Thanks for being here, Dave. So yeah, as usual, let's get started with some of the basics of where you're located, what kind of leagues, sports you're running, how many teams, obviously football, and maybe a little background on the operation.
Dave Nelson (00:21.586)
Thanks Lance. I've been around touch. I'm involved with a touch football association here in Burlington, Ontario. I started playing the sport in 1973. About a year later, I was quickly brought on to the executive of a very small touch football league here in my city. Then in 1980,
we created a new bigger association to encompass a larger area. Touch football has been.
a massive sport here in Canada and through the U.S. actually. I was fortunate enough over the last 50 years, I've been involved with the sport to play and travel through the U.S. had U.S. teams come to our events, tournaments. So I've really grown a network of friends and people in the sport around North America. And actually even I won't get into it now, but I even went to Australia and played there.
in the 80s, so it's a big sport. We have touch football certainly up here in the late 70s, 1980s and 90s was our peak years. My league, which right now has 22 teams.
Lance McDonald (01:36.558)
Okay.
Dave Nelson (01:47.826)
We were over 50 teams back then, women's division and over 35 masters for the older guys. And then A, B and C levels based on caliber. We still run on each of those, although our women's league has been consolidated with another league elsewhere now. But the sport has died in turn or not died. It's fallen off in numbers.
over the last, I'd say since the end of the nineties. During the peak times and it's still a big sport here. I'm actually, our Ontario championships are this weekend. I'll be attending as I'm not playing anymore, but my son plays and I'm friends with.
all kinds of people in the sport, so I will definitely be attending that event. I was actually the president of Touch Football Ontario for 20 years, from about 1981 to 2001, I'll call it. So my background in the sport goes deep. Yeah, it's been fun, fun experience.
Lance McDonald (03:00.504)
So I'm not very familiar with touch football. So would you mind explaining just like the format of exactly how it works, how many players are on the field and all that kind of stuff?
Dave Nelson (03:06.782)
Well, it's.
It's a seven on seven. We're similar to the flag that's now being very popular and it's a springboard. I would say flags a springboard of touch. We're seven on seven.
It's really just the version of tackle football, but with no contact, or one handed touch. In the U.S. for years, and I did play when I was younger in the U.S. national tournament countless times, they used a two-hand touch for a play to be dead, but they also had blocking at the line of scrimmage.
So it's here in Canada, it's non-contact, one-handed touch football or one-handed touch to end the play. We have three certified referees on the field. We use a regulation football field. In Canada, we use three downs to make 10 yards. The US game is four downs, but we're
very, very similar in the version of, everyone knows, football. So, yeah, it's, and a lot of the guys that play are either...
Dave Nelson (04:26.436)
Former football players or people that maybe didn't play football if you're a good athlete There's a lot of running and cutting and high hand coordination skills and so on So we've we've drawn people into the sport that were basketball players hockey players volleyball all other sports soccer players So it isn't just tackle football players that migrate to our sport. It's really everyone and We've got people playing
I played myself up until I was 63. Now, I was a quarterback, I was able to, I didn't have to run around like the rest of the guys. But, you know, we certainly have guys that try to play as long as they possibly can for the love of the game. So, yeah.
Lance McDonald (05:16.824)
So you said a regulation field like 100 yards by, what is it, 50 yards or something? So it's a full.
Dave Nelson (05:21.492)
Yeah, well in Canada our field is a little bigger. Our field's 110 yards by 65, which is just a little big. even in the tackle game here in Canada, we have an extra man on the field. So that's why the wider field. Yeah, we use a regulation.
Lance McDonald (05:38.604)
Hmm.
Dave Nelson (05:44.254)
football field, 20 yard end zones. And I know in the US they only have 10 yard end zones, but it's very, very similar to the US game.
Lance McDonald (05:54.23)
Interesting so what what are like if somebody was was you know liked to play football wanted to play football Are there pros and cons to touch versus flag football? And why do feel like flag football has grown so much whereas touches kind of faded away it sounds like
Dave Nelson (06:09.234)
Well, mean, certainly the NFL had a large impact on that. They've thrown their financial support behind flag.
Lance McDonald (06:17.368)
Hmm.
Dave Nelson (06:18.608)
It again, it's the same version of the game, very similar version rather of the game. I would say it's easier to referee flag football because when someone play ends, you grab them and hold their flag up that you've made the, know, that's how you stop the play. Whereas in touch, sometimes calls are missed if a referee doesn't see the actual touch. So I think that might be one of the reasons that flag has surfaced because it's easier.
Lance McDonald (06:39.662)
Mm.
Dave Nelson (06:48.494)
I'm not going to say anything's easy to referee, I would say it makes it easier for the referees to have a play come to an end when a tag is made.
Lance McDonald (06:52.014)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (07:00.322)
Yep. But that's kind of like the only main difference, right, is that moment of tackling.
Dave Nelson (07:07.922)
Well, yes, mean, flag has so many downs to get a certain area on the field. We use three downs to make 10 yards. We use bean bags, the referees in the field mark that 10 yard stretch. So here's the line of scrimmage. Here's the 10 yard marker. And we have a rusher.
that on the snap rushes from five yards away from the line of scrimmage. So as soon as the ball is snapped, a rusher sprints at the quarterback. The quarterback takes a typically about a 10 yard drop shotgun snap.
Lance McDonald (07:36.461)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (07:47.053)
Hmm.
Dave Nelson (07:47.628)
And he's got to get rid of the ball quick. He can run, can scramble, can, but you know, sometimes if there's a running quarterback, the defensive team will rush two people at the quarterback so that he doesn't get to scramble and run around. The quarterback only has, you know, split seconds to get rid of the ball. So it's quick and the receiver's got to run their patterns quick, be ready for the ball quickly and
Lance McDonald (07:59.584)
Hmm
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (08:17.278)
Yeah, it's a quick game, very quick.
Lance McDonald (08:19.884)
Yeah, that all makes sense. I'm trying to imagine myself as like a customer and thinking about doing this and all of the rules you just mentioned about the rusher one or two or those seems like that could work either way, whether there was a flag or whether it was touch. Is there a reason people prefer to do touch versus flag? mean, it like flag has the advantage of refs, it's easier for refs to call. But I'm curious if.
Dave Nelson (08:32.318)
Yep. Yep.
Dave Nelson (08:42.804)
We don't, I mean, I enjoy watching flag. I played it a little bit in the U.S. when I played in their tournaments. One thing about touch is you don't have to have a belt with the flags on it. So that, you know, from an equipment standpoint, you don't need to do that. But maybe it's just our being stubborn and our sport being around for as long as it has. The people that play it here in Canada.
Lance McDonald (08:56.654)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (09:12.508)
Just love the game the way it is. So we leave it as it is. And that's no knock on flag. It's just a slightly different version of football. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (09:21.55)
Got it. Yeah. Okay. Is flag football also present in your area as well? there's, you see both.
Dave Nelson (09:27.06)
It's really big with the youth movement now with kids. There are a few adult leagues in the area, but they're not as well attended with the number of teams that we have. You know, we've got 22 teams, typically 15 guys on a team. And then in our structure with our league, you enter as a team.
Lance McDonald (09:39.494)
and
Dave Nelson (09:54.694)
So at beginning of the year when we promote it, someone puts a deposit down on our registration deposit and comes to our annual meeting and then they make their final payments after that. Which really, the cost of the game. We're a non-profit organization. The main costs, if you will, are renting fields and referees.
Lance McDonald (09:54.702)
Mm.
Lance McDonald (10:19.096)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (10:19.954)
You know, we have some awards and, you know, we budget for those things, but really the bulk of our costs are the field rentals and referees.
Lance McDonald (10:26.574)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about that because, different sports just have different sort of profit structures. And a big part of that is how much of a facility do you need? And I was kind of thinking 7v7, there's 14 people on the field and that's a very large field. We run 7v7 soccer here locally, but it's on essentially a third of a field. So, you know, we're getting a lot, you know, three times as many players who are all paying on one, you know, sort of field. And I think that helps bring the costs sort of down a bit.
Dave Nelson (10:56.062)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (10:58.106)
So you're saying with with yours, it's pretty expensive to rent that kind of big field
Dave Nelson (11:02.834)
Yeah, well, for sure. Especially if it's a turf field, like when we play on natural grass, mean, it might cost us 50 bucks to run a game to rent a field. A game typically takes an hour and a half, four 20 minute quarters. But, you know, when we have to use a turf field, it's about triple the cost for renting.
Lance McDonald (11:06.946)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (11:13.56)
Mmm.
Lance McDonald (11:18.348)
Mm.
Lance McDonald (11:27.991)
Right.
Dave Nelson (11:29.3)
And then if you add games at night and we've got lights, it can get really expensive. And then we've got three referees. We're talking $120 a game for officials. So, you you add it all together, a team to play a 14 game schedule, you're probably looking at about an $1,800 entry fee. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (11:44.845)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (11:53.538)
Yeah, that makes sense. So what is the structure of the program in the sense of, so you're saying people register like, is it one season per year, 14 game season, or is it two? It's one.
Dave Nelson (12:04.104)
Yeah, yeah. We run from late May right through to the end of October. are tip, traditionally we play Sunday mornings. We do not play on any holiday long weekends, which holiday weekends. But in addition to the Sundays, we have to sometimes.
We have weeknight games, a Thursday night game. We'll mix some of those in because it began that we had a shortfall of referees and we couldn't get all enough referees for Sunday mornings because our league was so big back in our heyday. So we started to move to.
Lance McDonald (12:29.038)
Mm.
Dave Nelson (12:44.904)
We're traditionally mostly Sundays, but also mixing in weeknight games. And some teams might prefer to play on weeknights. And if they ask us that at the start of the season, we will.
alter their schedule to give them more weeknight games or vice versa if they prefer only Sundays. So we'll do everything we can with our scheduling to accommodate. And in fact, at the beginning of the year before we do our schedule, even tell teams, give us any dates that you don't want to play. Because they don't play every single Sunday.
So if there's a weekend where somebody on the team's getting married or there's some reason that they wouldn't, a bunch of the guys wouldn't be there, if they tell us in advance, then we'll schedule around that for them. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (13:33.974)
And then are there playoffs at the end? I think you mentioned...
Dave Nelson (13:36.776)
Yeah, everyone in our leagues, everyone makes the playoffs and then we whittle down. We have an A league, which is that the elite, the higher level B league C league is more.
I wouldn't call it recreational. The guys in the C league play just as hard as the other guys do, but maybe the caliber, the talent is a little better in the A league. I would say the difference truly between A, B and C is the quarterbacks. We have some really, really talented quarterbacks at all levels, quite frankly, but the A level teams, the elite level. In fact, we occasionally get some former professional quarterbacks.
right now in our league that played in the Canadian Football League, the CFL in Canada. And he's maybe mid-30s, I guess now, and his professional career is over, but he's still playing. And we've got probably four or five, maybe half a dozen former professional receive players that played in the CFL that are playing in our league. Again, they just love the game, so playing to get paid anymore, they're playing for fun.
Lance McDonald (14:44.546)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (14:47.95)
It's kind of hard to imagine because I feel like people who are pro are often so much better. You don't realize often until you play a sport how good professionals are any sport or whatever. it's really hard to imagine a pro. I feel like I mean, are they just tearing it up out there or?
Dave Nelson (14:57.557)
absolutely, yeah.
Dave Nelson (15:06.38)
They're doing well, but I'll tell you, some of the guys that didn't play pro that are playing our sport are pretty damn good. They're fast or they got great hands. They're just really, really good athletes. the difference between making pro and not, some guys don't make it, but are really close to the guys that did.
Lance McDonald (15:31.255)
I see, yeah they played college or something and got close.
Dave Nelson (15:33.554)
Right. And like I said, I'll tell you, I'm a former, I have a basketball background as a high school basketball coach. And I brought to the sport a number of my basketball players over the years, cause they were just really good athletes and they excelled at touch football. They weren't, they didn't have a background in football. They were basketball guys, but they fell in love with the sport quick. got great hands.
You know, so like I said earlier, just a good athlete can play this game. He doesn't have a football background.
Lance McDonald (16:06.542)
Yeah, right. Yeah, I went to school at Texas A We had a receiver who was a basketball guy, but he switched, Mike Evans, and he was amazing and went pro. And just like you said, just translated really nicely one to the other. how do playoffs work? You said everybody makes it? Is that all in one night? Or is it spread out?
Dave Nelson (16:19.912)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Nelson (16:27.4)
Well, we give every every team qualifies for playoffs. And then we have a we whittle down sudden death games to our championship day, which is this year on October 20th. And we have all our game. got nice big trophies, annual trophies we present. But it's yeah, we have a championship day and that's the goal for everybody to make to that that final day. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (16:54.333)
It's all everybody plays like all the playoff games are on that one day. Just take a break between and yeah got it
Dave Nelson (16:58.716)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And guys hang around, play, you know, the C league championship might be at nine o'clock in the morning and they'll be hanging around to watch the A championship at noon or 1 30 in the afternoon. You know, it's pretty well attended our championship day with guys hanging around socializing and that.
Lance McDonald (17:18.572)
Yeah, and your league has been around a long time, so I imagine there's kind of a pretty set community in terms of people knowing each other and...
Dave Nelson (17:24.804)
yeah. Yeah, we're one of the oldest and I'd say most well established leagues in the country. Likely there's others as well. Certainly in Ottawa, touch football began in 1961. A good friend of mine who's now passed away, Frank Bola, started the first organized football league in Montreal mid sixties.
He connected with Ed Laverde in Ottawa.
And next thing you know, there's an Ottawa league and from there, Toronto and where I live in the late sixties and the game sort of came, was birthed in in the early sixties. I mean, people were playing on the sand lots playing pickup football long before that, I'm sure. But leagues all across Canada and the U S really came together in the 1960s and seventies and, and onward.
Lance McDonald (18:09.073)
and
Lance McDonald (18:14.37)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (18:24.688)
So because we've been around for such a long time, we're well established. have a website that people can find out about us. That's ghtfa.org. Golden Horse, You Touch Football Association. That's the ghtfa. Yeah, yeah.
Lance McDonald (18:42.574)
Yeah, we'll put it in the blog as well that we put out there and all that. And so then is the league then, I think you mentioned this, connected to other leagues and an association? What's the broader and what does that look like?
Dave Nelson (18:58.349)
Right. Okay. Good question. So we have an association I mentioned, I was president of it for a long time, Touch Football Ontario. So we pay, our league pays fees to be a member of that association. The majority of the fee is for insurance. We have liability coverage. I'm a volunteer. I've been doing this for a long time as a volunteer. So it's mandatory to have insurance.
And that insurance also covers our executive and all the volunteers that run the sport. if somebody got, God forbid, if somebody got seriously injured and they chose to sue us, our insurance policy would defend us volunteers and give them, don't get paid. That's, that's pretty important thing to have set in place. But we do have a provincial association. They run tournaments across the province.
teams earn points based on how well they finished in those tournaments. And those points produce rankings, provincial rankings, which from there they also have national rankings with other provinces that are doing the same thing. So there is a national championship as well. And yeah, we're all interconnected and it's great for players to...
play teams from outside of our league. You know, so now they're playing teams from across Canada in a tournament and that makes it all more fun. You know, you've got guys traveling and and rivalries get established. Certain certain teams have, you know, got reputations because their program every year they're the same. That team is good. They're constantly recruiting new players and getting better if they can and
It certainly can, it really can get him competitive, I can tell you that.
Lance McDonald (20:58.764)
Yeah, I imagine with the pro or almost pro type, yeah, I can imagine the competitiveness there. Those tournaments are usually kind of one day things people can travel to and...
Dave Nelson (21:02.099)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (21:08.128)
over a weekend, you need at least two days. The provincial and national championships are usually run on a long weekend. Like our provincial tournament is coming up next weekend, which is Thanksgiving here in Canada. So Monday's a holiday. So the tournament can run over three days. As a team in a tournament can play six or seven games to get to the champ, you know, to go, if they go all the way through.
Lance McDonald (21:28.536)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Nelson (21:37.096)
Well, you can't have all those in one day. It's just two moves from the players, yeah.
Lance McDonald (21:40.108)
Right. Right. And that's probably why you 15 players on a team, but it's 7v7. So you got a lot of subbing in and out. That's a lot of running. Interesting. So I'm curious then, how do you see the future of this sport? So it's had a long, rich history, but it's kind of gone down. Flag football has kind of gone up. mean, what do the next 10 years look like to you?
Dave Nelson (21:46.11)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Nelson (22:03.976)
Well, I think the biggest reason it's gone down is that we aren't, we haven't been bringing, getting young youth, the young people into the sport. So guys like me, we play our whole adult life until we literally physically can't play anymore. The guys will hang around as long as they can till they just can't play. They're too, you know, too old. And for the sport to grow, we need to get the youth involved. And I think that with touch, with flag rather,
It's got a really big impact at the youth level and I'm sure there'll be adult flag leagues, but a lot of those players that are, that play flag also will want to play touch. So, you know, we think we're going to be drawing some players from the flag leagues, at the adult level I'm talking about here. so, you know, it is a concern that,
Our numbers have slowly gone down. I think that might be a change in how people spend their personal time too. don't know, back when I was younger, was sports to me was everything. Whereas nowadays people got a lot of other things on their minds. I don't know. We've tried to run and we have run high school tournaments. High school now has got a flag.
Sorry, they have had a touch tournament every spring to complement their tackle programs. And because tackle, unfortunately, the numbers are dwindling there because of the injury issues and concerns from parents. Touch and flag is a good alternative for tackle. So, you know, we're kind of soliciting or recruiting players from high schools as well and promoting our game through them.
And we're offering to put on tournaments for them, not at a profit for us. We just wanna try and expose them to the game and bring them over to play in our adult leagues after. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (24:09.422)
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I'm also curious, you've been doing this for a really long time. What are some lessons learned over the years in terms of actually running a great league? So the operation itself in terms of staff and getting them to show up and controlling sportsmanship, which I know in your leagues, but in some leagues that can get quickly out of hand if you don't have a really strong culture. So how do you think about just...
those type of things, the staffing side, the sportsmanship side, just making it really great experience that people want to come back to.
Dave Nelson (24:46.984)
Well, that's another good question, Lance, because you can't run an association by yourself. I've I've spearheaded this for a long time. I'm a dedicated volunteer, but I can't do it by myself. and we're all volunteers. We don't get paid. So you need to find people in the sport that, that love the game that will put in some time. We have an executive, we meet three or four times a year. And if we have issues,
involving player discipline and that we can meet and now with the computer we can have a meeting virtually instead of having to all come together in person but it really is important to find volunteers and I at one point I had a list, people weren't volunteering to do anything so I drew up a list of what the tasks were to run the league and
We made it mandatory at one stage that every team had to take on a small job. we kind of for part of the deal of playing, you had to take on a small task. And we weren't asking a lot. But then from there, we found guys that said, hey, this isn't too bad. Maybe I'll step up and be part of your executive. We do have a constitution, which I think is important, which outlines our rules and bylaws, not just the rules of the game, but
Lance McDonald (25:49.491)
Mmm. Wow.
Dave Nelson (26:13.618)
the rules of discipline. We don't allow any intent to injure or we don't allow fighting. You throw a punch at somebody in one of our games, you're looking at a minimum two year suspension. So we don't fool around. And some people got their noses, the people that got put in those situations where they did do something through a punch are...
Lance McDonald (26:31.692)
to you.
Dave Nelson (26:43.86)
an intent to deliberate intent to injure and we heavily discipline them. We made it clear to them. We've we've you know the rules. We we make sure at our annual meeting that all the team representatives are aware you guys got to police your own teams. If somebody is getting hot under the collar, pull them off the field. It's your job to police your own players and their tempers and their intensity because if they step out of line, it's going to be in there.
They're going to be suspended, period. I don't like it. A perfect year would be to have no one suspended. And some years we don't, but other years we do because players just lose their cool and we say, sorry, all of us got to go. Everybody's got to go to work on Monday morning. So you're going to play safe or you're not going to play here at all. And we had to take that attitude. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (27:27.235)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (27:39.128)
So constitution and then pretty severe or yeah, know, intense, I guess, repercussions of somebody. Is it usually just the player that stepped out of line or are there ever team suspensions?
Dave Nelson (27:51.156)
Well, teams will get disciplined if they default a game. They pay a fine and that that fine actually goes to the team they defaulted against because because they paid their money to play football. So if they show up on a Sunday morning and the other team doesn't have enough players, that team gets $150 fine and we send it over to the other team to say, hey, this is for you towards your entry fee that
Lance McDonald (27:57.569)
Okay.
Lance McDonald (28:01.739)
wow.
Dave Nelson (28:21.14)
because you're one game short in the standings. And again, we're not here to find people. I mentioned our website and you will probably note it somewhere later, but on our website is our constitution. I'd welcome people to feel free to look at it. And if they're running a league, plagiarize it if you want, I don't care. We fill our constitution and we're adding to it every year. We have an annual meeting.
Anything that changed the Constitution has to be submitted minimum two weeks before our annual general meeting so we can circulate the recommendations that are being proposed so everyone gets a chance to read them and digest them and then in our annual meeting you have to have a 75 % majority to approve something to be added to our Constitution or have it amended or slightly changed.
Lance McDonald (29:18.008)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (29:18.948)
We're constantly trying to tweak things in the best interest of the players.
Lance McDonald (29:25.496)
Have you ever had any issues trying to get that money, that $150 fine? mean, do teams just cough it up? They're like, yeah, I'm so sorry, here you go. Or is that common for that to happen?
Dave Nelson (29:35.252)
Well, every team puts up a performance, they pay their entry fee and then they have to put up $150 performance bond. So they get that $150 bond back at the end of the year. But if a team defaults a game, for example, they, would take their bond and they have to replace that bond or their next, we don't, we take them off the schedule. We won't, they don't get to play their next game.
Lance McDonald (30:01.304)
Hmm.
Dave Nelson (30:04.198)
if their bond isn't refilled.
Lance McDonald (30:06.766)
That's an interesting way to do it, yeah, because then you're not having to get the money from them. You already have it.
Dave Nelson (30:11.516)
I got tired. I got tired of chasing people for money. I go on like I'm a volunteer here. I'm just trying to do everything the best for everyone. So now we have a very strict policy that you have to have your bond always in place or else we take you off the schedule. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (30:14.275)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (30:26.219)
Interesting, yeah, I had not heard of that, but that makes a lot of sense. So what about the staff, the referee sort of side of this? think you, I thought you mentioned earlier maybe that there was a time when you had a shortage and were having to shift things around. So how did you solve that problem?
Dave Nelson (30:41.106)
Yeah. Well, we have a referee in chief who he he gets paid a fee for assigning. That's like not not a lot, but for assigning the officials. And obviously all the referees get paid to work games. We are referee in chief has done a wonderful job. He runs a clinic every year recruiting new referees that.
Want to either make a few extra bucks on the side or they for the love of the game, they want to stay involved. A lot of our referees are players that have sort of given up the game because they've aged out. So they're, they can't play anymore, but they can stay connected with the game by being a referee. They already know the rules. They have to go through a clinic and get certified and, so, so on and so forth. But we find that our best referees quite frankly.
Lance McDonald (31:29.262)
Hmm.
Dave Nelson (31:39.986)
are those that have played the game already. So we do have a fairly large stable of referees now. A lot of them are rookies, university-aged kids that want a part-time job, and they're not really ready to be a head referee. So there may be, we start them on the sideline. They get paid a little bit less than the head referee and the back umpire does. But we also...
have a program, a computer program, I think it's called a signer, that our referee and chief uses, because we've got all kinds of games being scheduled, and he uses that where the referees can pick up a game assignment, they're all, you know, that's what, so we always know that there's referees gonna be at games. And we actually have fines in place for referees that don't show up to do their games. They get charged.
Obviously, they would not be paid for the game they were supposed to, they were scheduled to referee. But when we go to pay them, we pay the referees twice a year. We will deduct one game fee if they didn't show up for a game. And if they do it twice, we take them off our roster of referees. We just simply can't have, we need to have three referees at every game. It's really important. That's how.
Lance McDonald (32:58.831)
Mmm.
Dave Nelson (33:07.372)
That's what the players pay for, the teams pay for. And the games are intense. So you need enough referees there to do that, to have the game played.
Lance McDonald (33:19.054)
Have you had to, have referee prices gone up quite a bit in order to just maintain a good...
Dave Nelson (33:25.261)
Yes, they have. You know, we by comparison, like our head referee makes $45 a game. Game takes about an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes maybe. We have to see what other sports are paying hockey, basketball, baseball umpires, you know, if they're getting paid more in another sport, then we have to keep slowly bumping our fees up.
our rates up rather. And you know, they deserve it. Unfortunately, if those rates go up, then next year's entry fees are going to go up too. So we do have to raise the that we pay the refs periodically. We usually do a two year contract with them. So you're going to get paid this for two years and then we'll look at what it is and rework the numbers again.
Lance McDonald (34:04.994)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (34:09.069)
Yeah, yeah.
Lance McDonald (34:19.092)
Okay, So yeah, what about I guess maybe one of my last questions here is around the technology. So you mentioned the assigner has a tool called Assigner. you, and I'm sort of also, I always like to ask the question about how you've seen technology evolve because it's such an interesting thing where it's gone from checks and cash and all that kind of stuff. So where were you guys and where are you now and how do you feel about it?
Dave Nelson (34:31.379)
Yep.
Dave Nelson (34:45.65)
Well, because I've been around so long, I've gone through all the technology, the changes. Thank God for the internet. have a website and that's our main source of information. we post all the game results are there, the standings, the schedule, like our constitution, everything about our association is there. Whereas in the old days I had to mail, you know, photocopy and mail information and letters. had to collect payments by check.
Lance McDonald (34:50.221)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (35:13.1)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (35:15.848)
Now everything's done with e-transfers and so on. It's so much easier as an administrator nowadays, except for an old guy like me trying to learn all the technology. really, it is so much better now with technology from the standpoint of running a league. You can communicate so easily through email and
Lance McDonald (35:31.362)
Right?
Dave Nelson (35:44.37)
And like I said, through the website, it's really been helpful, really, really helpful.
Lance McDonald (35:49.644)
Yeah, yeah. What tools do you use? You use a tool called the signer for the referees. What are the other tools that you use?
Dave Nelson (35:54.61)
Yeah. I'm not sure the name, but we have a, our, we, on our executive, we actually have a, a vice president of technology. and he's a computer guy that runs our website and he does the schedule. For example, we also have software that does, that lays out all our schedules. and I don't know, I'm not the one, I used to do this stuff manually.
I would with the pads and pads of paper, I'd sit at my desk writing schedules out and now I don't do any of that. have, luckily I have people to do it, but they do it with software. So there are, and I mentioned about running a league and our costs are mostly referees and field rentals. We do have to pay for website costs and to rent this an annual fee for the assigner program. And so there is some costs that we have, but
Lance McDonald (36:26.272)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (36:52.052)
They're really, we don't mind paying them because they really help us be way more efficient that way, yeah.
Lance McDonald (36:56.654)
save a lot.
Okay, guess maybe yeah, maybe last question here is if you were advising somebody who's young and maybe I don't know coming out of college or maybe older or whatever but just wants to get into into the space and not necessarily Touch football, but they want to run a league They want to build a business so maybe maybe nonprofit as you know, but we see a lot of young hungry sort of entrepreneurs who want to get out there and build something that
can provide them a job that's maybe a little bit more exciting than other types of things that they could be doing. What are some key things you might advise them to do to get something off the ground and to make it great and make it work?
Dave Nelson (37:44.21)
Well, you know, that's a tough question because, but just like in business, if you want to know something about business, you would pick the, you know, you would find someone that's successful and maybe go and have a coffee with them and, ask them questions. What do I got to do to, you know, improve myself in this business? Same thing with running a league. think, maybe look at other associations.
doesn't even have to be in the sport you're thinking about. But like in our case, go on our website, there's all kinds of sports associations that have websites that would have constitutions and some kind of model on how their leagues and associations are run that can give them the groundwork of somewhere to start. You got to be really dedicated. I would certainly try and find people to help you, but I would...
Lance McDonald (38:31.726)
Hmm.
Dave Nelson (38:43.762)
just reach out to, or at least source other associations and seeing what they're doing and then take the best practices that they have to be successful and build them into you starting up your own league.
Lance McDonald (38:59.31)
Sure. Sweet. Okay. I think that's all my questions. Any other things you want to share?
Dave Nelson (39:01.522)
Yeah.
Dave Nelson (39:05.234)
No, I enjoyed this Lance. you for having me. And as I said, I just welcome it or encourage anyone that wants some assistance to go to our website and take a look at our constitution and how we do things and go from there.
Lance McDonald (39:20.876)
Awesome. Well, thanks for your time, Dave. I appreciate it.
Dave Nelson (39:23.346)
My pleasure, Lance. Great talking to you. Have a good day.
Lance McDonald (39:25.922)
You too.
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