With baseball ending soon, NASCAR’s race for the cup in full swing and the road to the Super Bowl underway, sports fans are showing their teams’ colors. How do you show people you are serious about your team? Do you yell louder in the stands or at the TV than those around you? What compels a person to wear a fake block of cheese on his or her head, paint a bus or their own face with the team colors, or fly a flag at the house? They want others to see how serious their devotion is to their team.
Last month, nearly 60 ASCA members met with legislators in the House and the Senate in Washington D.C to show them how serious we are about the issues burdening our industry. They didn’t need ASCA or our company logos on their shirts to show their determination to make their passion for their livelihoods known. The ASCA member’s true colors were displayed by taking time out of their schedules and money out of their budgets to travel to the nation’s capital and show lawmakers how big of fans we are of our industry. It was quite a wake-up call to see how little they knew about the risk we are taking just to keep our operations going and provide for ourselves, our employees and our local economies. They know now! In the same way a fan talks about their team, our position was delivered with passion and followed up with the stats to back it.
I live in Kansas City, and while the Chiefs don’t usually win as much as I’d like, Arrowhead is the loudest stadium in the NFL. On game day, 79,000 fans rally for their team, making for a visiting quarterback’s worst nightmare. As members of the snow and ice management industry we are the players. There are no seven-figure endorsement deals. We actually have to make a living based on our performance. People don’t buy jerseys with our company names on them. We don’t have our own trading cards. So, who are our fans and how loud are they cheering for us? Let’s face it, we are the players in a game in which we have to be our own cheering section. ASCA members who attended 2018 Legislative Day on the Hill were not there to cheer on their own teams, but to be fans for the entire industry. The ASCA is the fan base of snow professionals everywhere, as well as being a coach. The ASCA has even provided a playbook for us by developing and writing the only Industry Standards for the snow and ice management industry. Online courses with yearly re-certification to achieve and maintain ASCA-C designation are offered, as well. ASCA members have shown how serious they are about bettering the industry, so why are you still on the bench?
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