What The Heart Wants

Taking Care Of Business

The Hearts left Cary at 10am to embark on their six-hour trip to Washington, DC. Once outside the greater Raleigh area, Wendy gathered Lauren, Kristie, and Bill and the four began discussing Heart-to-Heart and potential security arrangements for it.

Wendy: Kristie, Tyler came into my office on Thursday afternoon concerned with how we were planning to "protect" our players from patrons who might cross the line, as a few did during the pub crawl and Orlandini did at Hearts United. I threw the question open to my husband, who as you know used to coach at North Carolina, to see if there might be a way for us to assuage Tyler's fears without putting the players on notice or making things worse. Can you tell him what the general plans for the evening are?

Kristie: The plan is for each of our 20 players, along with Erica and Carm, to head a table of 10 where specific groups will have 30-35 minutes to engage with them in an informal Q-and-A. Each table will also have one member of the Anderson Monarchs/Shissler Rec Center pick-up group who will be the team escorts for the home opener against Orlando on the 14th. There will be two rounds of this informal questioning, followed by a series of panel Q-and-A's involving the players, the coaching staff, and Wendy, with questions submitted to Lauren by patrons.

Bill: How are the groups determined?

Lauren: When attendees ordered their tickets, they had a chance to select three choices from each of two lists, one of which is compiled of Erica, Carm, and the nine most identifiable players on the preseason roster, with the other list made up of the other eleven. As the roster has turned over a bit since then, there will have to be some judgment calls made for those who purchased tickets early on which players they will get to meet. Each group will get time with one player or coach on the first list and one on the second, with there being eleven pairings. For example, Steph Labbe and Liz Eddy are paired. The group that gets Steph first gets Liz second, and vice versa. I will be spending time over the next couple of days pairing up the lists and assigning patrons to groups.

Bill: I am pretty sure that some of the non-player significant others and local journos will be there. My thought is that perhaps we can embed them into the groups, not in an obvious way mind you, but as assurance that if things were to get out of hand, someone would have the player's back.

Kristie: Play this out for me. The team culture really has the players sticking up for each other and I don't think we want to call attention to us needing "handlers" to deal with the public.

Bill: Since Tyler is the one that brought it up, let's use him as an example. He will be there, I am guessing, so we place him in a group with seven others, then have him watching out for the two players they meet from the inside. It is a LOT less intrusive than pairing him with a specific player, because it will look like he's just one of the attendees and not part of the club's ring of support.

Wendy: I think I get it. Take you, Bill. You'll be there, but a LOT of people in Philly won't necessarily know who you are. Lauren puts you into one of the groups and you participate in the Q-and-A's. You thinking random draw for this or some other criteria?

Bill: The biggest thing would be the embedded not getting someone with whom they are fairly familiar, since that puts both them and the player on the spot. Example of that would be Danny Colaprico. She's dating Jen Hoy and went to college with Emily Sonnett. You wouldn't place her in a group that would draw one of them. Same goes with the other SO's. I wouldn't draw Wendy, Jason wouldn't get Erica, Tyler and Steph Ochs, etc.

Kristie: Let's see if I have this right. You're suggesting that someone from the club's inner circle be assigned a group for the evening, then join them for the two sit-down sessions. The player(s) may know the person, but he or she still comes across as an interested fan since there isn't some obvious connection between them that would be noticeable to the rest.