Firm provides management from sidelines

SHORELINE — If you or someone you know attended a sports camp in Shoreline, there is a good chance you did business with SportsCamps Management.

But you might not have known it at the time and that’s the way SportsCamps Management prefers it.

“You really won’t see us in the forefront,” said Tony Ditore, president and CEO of SportsCamps Management.

Instead, the Shoreline-based company stays in the background by partnering with various youth groups, cities, coaches and athletic departments and assisting them with the business side of their organization.

SportsCamps Management’s services include, but are not limited to, recruiting, marketing/promotion, registration and administration of camps. What sets the company apart is that it offers a complete package of services from start to finish.

“There are other companies out there that do bits and pieces of what we do,” Ditore said. “We try and tie it all together.”

An example are the Thunderbird baseball camps run by Shorewood coach Wyatt Tonkin. SportsCamps Management takes care of all the business details of the camps and lets Tonkin and his staff concentrate on the instruction.

“We handled all the administration, the marketing, the promotion of the camp, getting the insurance and ordering the T-shirts for him,” Ditore said. “The main hassle for coaches, at least what makes it a full-time job for them, is having to answer the phone and to answer questions and those type of things. We take that burden off of them.”

Ditore had been kicking around the idea of the company for several years. The concept grew out of his involvement with Richmond Little League. Ditore was a coach in the league for seven years, a board member for five years and served as league president for two years.

“The idea actually came from working closely with the little league and seeing what it, non-profit groups, youth groups and coaches needed,” Ditore said. “It was just an idea I had for a company … when my son got into high school, I decided to give it a shot and have been working on it ever since.”

Ditore credits a former baseball coach for the idea of creating a sports camp management company. Many years ago, the coach was looking for some assistance in promoting his baseball camp.

Ditore, who was involved in Richmond Little League at the time, helped publicize his former coach’s camp.

“I realized at the time that he didn’t have a camp if he didn’t have the kids,” Ditore said. “So the kids were the most important thing. That was the first time it clicked that you could do this on a mass scale .. and help coaches out.”

Ditore founded the company in January 2003 and started out with two employees. SportsCamps Management now employs 11 individuals and is looking to expand beyond the Puget Sound region to the rest of the state and into Portland.

The goal is to develop a regional presence up and down the West Coast, Ditore said. The company currently has about 60 clients, including the city of Shoreline.

Ditore initially thought his company would focus mostly on the management of camps during the summer. The plan was to offer registration through the Internet and physically get out and market the camps.

But due in part to the growth of the Internet, SportsCamps Management has developed a significant online presence.

“Where we’re going in the future is much more Internet-related than what I originally planned,” Ditore said.

SportsCamps Management can help organizations develop their own Web sites. Within each site, the public not only can register for a camp but can also shop at the organization’s own online store.

“So from a business standpoint that adds another revenue stream to that group,” Ditore said. “Our responsibility is to promote (the Web site) and we do that through our Web design and Web program.”

Organizations, such as local little leagues, have a built-in audience for camps.

Instead of having someone from the outside come in and handle the camps, SportsCamps Management allows organizations to run the camps themselves and as a result reap the financial benefits.

“Our program is designed to work with area groups to keep the money within the area,” Ditore said. “They’ve got the fields. They’ve got the coaches. We’ll do the administration … then they can pay for their programs.”

Ditore is finding there is a definite need for the services his company provides.

“All these groups from athletic departments to youth groups needed money,” he said. “Part of their main focus is raising money for the support and existence of their organization.”

For more information about SportsCamps Management’s services, visit www.scmsports.com.