An Introduction | The People are the Community | The Purpose is the Mission |
Growth is Diversity | The Rules are the Culture | Putting it all Together
There is always an origin story when building a community. The beginnings are always simple, born from a single belief, interest, or thing. Overtime people who share that same interest come together and BOOM a very basic community is formed. It’s nothing pretty, but it doesn’t have to be. The point of the community is to share that interest among like minded people. There are countless community origin stories out there, but for the sake of this collection I’m going to use Viking Sports.
In the early 90’s a former soccer player named Mike from Boston University missed the sport he loved so he started playing pick-up soccer with his friends. As a result a small community was formed. As life would have it he and his friends started having kids and the small soccer community of grown ups grew to include kids. Obviously the little kids couldn’t play along side the grown ups, so Mike did small soccer lessons separately for the kids. This community within a community started to grow as more parents wanted that same introduction to soccer for their kids. While parents were watching these mini soccer practices, they were interacting with other parents. They all shared the commonality of soccer and being parents, but they started conversing with each other about other things which added to the group’s diversity. The soccer group became bigger and bigger as more parents brought their friends who in turn brought their kids.
Feeling bad for taking advantage of Mike’s time for free, the community came together to pay Mike for his services. They suggested Mike turn the soccer community into a business. So, they started throwing out ideas and landed on Viking Soccer Camp because it was the easiest name to remember.
In 1993 the Viking Soccer Camp Inc community was established to provide soccer services to kids and adults.
Pretty cool huh?
LeRoy J. Watkins III 