Latest news with #youthcamps
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Equinox Guiding Service Highlights Summer Adventure Offerings and Community Partnerships in Midcoast Maine
Camden, ME June 04, 2025 --( )-- Equinox Guiding Service, an AMGA-accredited climbing outfitter based in Camden, Maine, is celebrating the launch of its new headquarters and a packed season of rock climbing adventures, youth camps, and professional guide development programs. Located at 20 Mechanic Street in downtown Camden, the new office space is a central hub for Equinox's growing operations, offering improved access to Camden Hills and regional climbing destinations including Acadia National Park and Grafton Notch. The grand opening event will take place on Saturday, June 8, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, featuring a prize drawing and local refreshments. Equinox Guiding Service continues to expand its instructional offerings this summer. The company's youth summer camps are already enrolling climbers ages 9–16, with programming that focuses on skill-building, movement, and outdoor exploration in Midcoast Maine's scenic rock climbing areas. In addition to its recreational programs, Equinox is reinforcing its commitment to professional development by supporting three of its guides through the upcoming AMGA Rock Guide Course. The training represents a major step in the company's goal to maintain the highest instructional standards in the industry. On June 6, Equinox Guiding Service will host Maine Outdoor Brands at its Camden headquarters, joining other businesses and nonprofits committed to advancing Maine's outdoor economy and stewardship. With increased demand for private guiding and instruction, July is expected to be a particularly busy month. Advance bookings are encouraged to secure preferred dates. Equinox Guiding Service offers private rock climbing trips, instructional clinics, and certification courses throughout Maine, including Camden Hills, Acadia, Katahdin, and Western Maine. The company is locally owned and operated, with guides certified by the American Mountain Guides Association. For more information, visit or call (207) 619-3957. Contact Information: Equionx Guiding Service Noah Kleiner +1 (207) 619-3957 Contact via Email Read the full story here: Equinox Guiding Service Highlights Summer Adventure Offerings and Community Partnerships in Midcoast Maine Press Release Distributed by
Forbes
03-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Youth Soccer Camps Build Legacy Around FIFA Club World Cup 2025
While thirty-two of the world's top clubs play for the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 in stadiums across the United States, thousands of kids will be wearing those same teams' kits on local fields in cities around the country. Clubs like Manchester City FC and FC Bayern Munich will be running official youth camps, each designed to create long-term connections that remain long after the Club World Cup trophy is lifted. The Club World Cup will feature sixty-four matches at twelve venues in eleven U.S. cities. It's a festival of football that offers a preview of what's to come next summer, when the U.S., Canada, and Mexico co-host the FIFA World Cup 2026. Both tournaments are expected to generate significant economic and social impacts through commercial activations and community initiatives that reach far beyond the matches. Youth camps sit between the commercial and community efforts. They're part engagement, part development. More than that, they're platforms for introducing youth to the cultures, values, and methodologies that define storied clubs and the places they call home. Over the past dozen years, Marc Segarra and Alex Isern have worked with some of Europe's top clubs to grow those platforms in the U.S., including youth camps, academies, and development programs. The two co-founded and co-lead ISL Agency as a strategic partner that helps build meaningful, lasting relationships between young players, their families, clubs, and the sport. ISL, with main offices in Barcelona, Madrid and Miami, has grown into one of the most respected marketing and management firms in global football. It works closely with top clubs, national teams, players, and leagues on a range of strategic partnerships and sponsorship programs. But the youth programs that led to the company's founding remain at its core. In a recent conversation, Segarra and Isern explained why youth is the foundation of everything that ISL does. 'While the immediate impact in numbers may not compare to securing a strong sponsorship deal, organizing a summer tour, or doing a quick crossover with other U.S. sports franchises, grassroots programs are what create the deepest, most lasting connection with fans,' Segarra said. Born and raised in Barcelona, the childhood friends grew up around FC Barcelona and its La Masia youth academy. It was during the generation that produced players like Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, and Jordi Alba. 'We had the opportunity to see up close the best football in the world, with the best teams in Europe, especially in Barcelona with Pep Guardiola's teams, a city where soccer was one of the top things and with the top methodologies and the top style of play,' Isern said. In their late teens, Segarra and Isern headed to university in South Carolina to study management and play Division I soccer. To make ends meet, they coached on the side. What they saw were families paying thousands of dollars in fees each year but getting little in return—no coaching education, no development plans, no clear goals. The resources were there, but they weren't being used in the efficient, structured, and effective ways that Segarra and Isern had grown up with, the ways that had become second nature to them. 'That's when we realized the difference in the development and the methodology on one side of the ocean and the other side, and we saw there was an opportunity,' Isern said. 'We were shocked and thought 'That's not fair,'' Segarra recalled. 'So, we wanted to come up with something that is fair. And what to us was fair was what we experienced in Barcelona, in Europe, with proper coaching, right exercises, and individual education.' In 2013, Segarra and Isern organized their first local summer camp in Rock Hill, South Carolina, just south of Charlotte. They coached it themselves. Eighty boys and girls showed up. That success encouraged them to run more camps. The success of those camps motivated them to start designing a larger grassroots soccer project for the U.S. market. The plan began with expanding camps up and down the East Coast, then gradually spreading them across the country. It was a learning process: coaching on the pitch, recruiting staff, managing operations with limited resources, and spotting new opportunities along the way. Before long, Segarra and Isern saw it was time to tap into relationships back home—especially people who they knew at FC Barcelona. Their idea was to replicate the Barça training model for boys and girls ages six to eighteen, on fields in U.S. cities. Camps and programs would feature coaches from the Academy, official training kits, and, overall, a chance to feel like an FC Barcelona player for a week. This year alone, more than 12,000 boys and girls will take part in Barça Academy camps across the U.S. Since 2013, ISL-partnered programs have directly engaged more than 100,000 players and families. 'We are targeting the younger generations on a yearly basis. What happens [at the camps] is something that will stay for the next ten or twenty years,' Isern said. 'Then, when a club comes with the first team to play in a FIFA Club World Cup or even a friendly game, if you have been working with these younger generations for the past years again and again, they are the ones that will go to the stadium . They will already be your fans.' 'We spent twenty years in Europe and almost another fifteen in the United States. So, it's by living on 'both sides of the wall' that it was easy for us to understand what was missing in one or what was needed in the other one,' Isern continued. 'Being passionate about soccer since we were born, understanding the soccer culture and industry was important, but also understanding what works in one market or the other one, and how we can help there.' Along the way, ISL and FC Barcelona saw that their partnership—and the mutual trust built through it—could lead to more working together. Bringing the FC Barcelona men's first team to the U.S. for pre-season tours and friendlies was one thing. Another thing was creating opportunities for players in the camps and academies to be selected to travel to Barcelona, where they would spend one week being put through paces on the pitches at the club's training ground and academy base, visit the Camp Nou home ground and museum, learn in off-the-pitch educational sessions with club staff and legendary players, compete in matches against youth teams in the region, attend men's first team and women's first team matches, and take-in the city's cultures, cuisines, and communities. Within ISL, working closely with European clubs in the U.S. means following different paths to get the right things done. Bayern Munich, Germany's most popular club, is expanding its U.S. presence through youth summer camps and Club World Cup activations. One example is a clinic with legendary players, scheduled the day before the first team's match against Boca Juniors at Hard Rock Stadium near Miami. It's part of a broader strategy to grow the club's connections in the U.S. over the long-run. Camps like the ones that Manchester City and Bayern Munich are running in the summer and those that Barcelona run year-round have a direct impact on the children and families who participate in them. That impact extends to their hometown youth clubs and spreads through local soccer communities. Ultimately, it helps raise the bar for soccer education, development, and fandom—now and for the future. The key, Segarra and Isern believe, is an authentic commitment to caring. It is an ethic that guides how people and programs at ISL operate. It is an ethic in the way that people and programs at ISL function. To their hearts and minds, putting kids in club-branded t-shirts and running them through some drills is one thing. But presenting them with full kits, teaching them about club culture and values of the club, and having academy coaches on the pitch using the same methods they do with the pro players is an experience a child carries with them through life. The soccer landscape in the United States—fragmented as it is—has matured a great deal over the past two decades. Twenty years ago, there were relatively few international players in Major League Soccer and even fewer U.S. players in European leagues. The American game was largely insular, coaching education uneven, and infrastructure limited. Overseas club matches were rarely seen on U.S. television. That has changed in the span of time since. MLS rosters are now filled with international players. Clubs from Europe, South America, the Middle East, and places in between and beyond have turned to the U.S. for fans, friendlies, and match broadcasts. Social media and streaming have made global football accessible to anyone with a smartphone. And major leagues from other sports have made internationalization and globalization a strategic priority: the NFL has expanded into nations across the world through its Global Markets Program, the NHL has its annual Global Series and the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, and the NBA plays games in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Abu Dhabi. The FIFA Club World Cup 2025 and FIFA World Cup 2026 will help move the ball even further. So, too, will youth initiatives that build personal connections between players, families, and the sport. Grassroots programs like the clubs' official youth summer camps are how players grow. The personal connections they create are how the sport grows with them.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Ohio State football announces dates for summer 2025 youth camps
If you have a child that's interested in honing football skills, then you might be interested in this bit of news. The Ohio State football program has announced its upcoming youth football camps, and you might want to get in on the action and get some instruction from the defending College Football Playoff national champions. And if you know anything about camps, it's not only a great way to improve, but a fantastic chance to be seen and maybe establish a recruiting relationship with the OSU staff and coaches (at least once you are of age) Advertisement There are single-day and multiple-day camps. The one-day camps for those entering ninth grade and up include the following dates: Thursday, June 5 Monday, June 9 Tuesday, June 10 Thursday, June 12 Tuesday, June 17 In addition to single-day camps, there are those that are held over multiple days covering different age groups. Those include: YOUTH CAMP Tuesday, June 3 and Wednesday, June 4 (entering 5th to 8th grade) 7-on-7 Competition High School Wednesday, June 11 and Wednesday, June 18 (entering 9th grade and up) These Ohio State camps routinely welcome hundreds of campers from around the country and are one of the best run in college football. For more information, you can visit OSU's website. This article originally appeared on Buckeyes Wire: Ohio State football releases dates of its 2025 summer camps
