West Virginia Soccer Association Partners with Affinity Sports to Grow the Game

SAN DIEGO and BECKLEY, W.Va., March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Affinity Sports (http://www.affinity-sports.com) and West Virginia Soccer (http://www.wvsoccer.net) — today announced a technology partnership to help grow the game of soccer.

Specialists in bringing technology to the soccer fields across the USA, Affinity Sports continues to expand its customer base and adds another US Youth Soccer State Association.

"Soccer is the world's favorite sport - a game filled with passion and heart.  In the US, millions of people of all ages love to play this beautiful game. Our goal at Affinity Sports is to provide the platform technology that drastically reduces the work involved in registering players and managing a sports organization so that people can focus on growing the game," said Mark Skeen, CEO of Affinity Sports, a rapidly growing San Diego company that has developed the premier association compliance platform with integrated online registration and is currently serving the needs of 26 State Associations and their more than 2 million players, coaches, volunteers and staff members. 

"At Affinity Sports, we are focused on growing the game of soccer and we are excited to partner with West Virginia Soccer to bring innovative, ground-breaking technology solutions to their 20,000 youth and adult soccer players," said Skeen. Over the past 3 years, 7 out of 8 US Youth Soccer State Associations that made the decision to migrate away from their current technology vendor have chosen Affinity Sports.  "During this time, Affinity Sports has successfully migrated association clients from Active, GroupNet, GotSoccer, and Demosphere," said Skeen.

"We are very impressed with Affinity Sports' online registration. West Virginia is dedicated to making sure our soccer programs have the leading technology available," said Dave Laraba, Executive Director of West Virginia Soccer Association.

"Our goal, as a youth and adult soccer association, is to provide quality adult and youth soccer programs for every player. We feel Affinity Sports is the best solution for West Virginia and will meet our needs," said Laraba. "Affinity Sports provides an innovative platform with benefits not available elsewhere on the market. Their technology will help make it easier for West Virginia to register our youth soccer players and for us to offer all our programs on one single platform."

"We are very excited to welcome another US Youth Soccer State Association from Region I to our Affinity family.  Dave is delightful to work with and is a leader in youth soccer who has helped grow the game since he first became involved in the sport in the mid-1980's.  We can't wait to bring our online registration, interactive digital cards and outstanding customer support to West Virginia," said Shannon Stewart, Affinity Sports VP of Customer Success.

"The Affinity Sports platform will make it easier for our players to register online without having to go through a registrar, which reduces the amount of time a club registrar has to spend on administrative responsibilities," said Laraba. "In West Virginia, 99% of the people helping register players for soccer clubs, teams, and leagues are volunteers who generously give time and effort because they love soccer.  Now our volunteers will have more time to watch their kids play soccer and not have to sit behind a computer until 2 am re-entering player registration data — the player data will already be in our association's database powered by Affinity Sports."

Eliminating the need for people to enter in player data minimizes mistakes and avoids duplicate player records, which is a serious problem in youth sports. Affinity Sports unique player records provides unequaled data integrity and safeguards players.

Over the next 12 months, Affinity Sports anticipates processing over $100,000,000 of payments through its online registration service.

"West Virginia Soccer Association appreciates our next-generation solutions for sport associations and recognizes Affinity Sports' online registration will deliver better performance, greater security and a far superior ease of use on any mobile or desktop environment," said Skeen.

"Affinity Sports has a vision of how technology can help all of us grow the game of soccer and a solution which makes it possible today  — and, we are very excited about their new mobile app which we can use from our phones on the soccer fields," said Laraba.

About Affinity Sports
Since 2002, Affinity Sports has invested over $10,000,000 in continuous technology improvements to become the nation's largest integrated software solutions provider to state youth and adult soccer associations.  Today, Affinity Sports assists more than 1.2 million players, 250,000 administrators and 4,500 leagues and clubs through 17 US Youth Soccer State Associations and 9 US Adult Soccer State Associations.  Partnering with its association clients, the Affinity Advantage Sponsor Program offers integrated marketing services and value added products and services to soccer teams, players and parents.

For more information, photos and interviews please contact Andrea Garcia, Affinity Sports Communications Manager, Direct: 619.207.2603 | Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Affinity Sports

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