Post by fwp on Mar 19, 2010 7:34:10 GMT -5
www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/mar/18/venom-trace-their-start-to-one-simple-question/?sports
WENATCHEE — It all started with one question.
In August 2008, Mark Helm was talking with his good friend Rob Cline on the shores of the Columbia River.
“I just asked him what it would take to get an indoor football team to Wenatchee,” Helm said. “Everything else is history.”
Nineteen months later, the Wenatchee Valley Venom will play their first game in the American Indoor Football Association.
Helm, the principal at Pioneer Middle School in Wenatchee, worked with Cline, then the general manager of the Town Toyota Center and current principal at Cashmere Middle School, to mount the resources and manpower needed to build a franchise from the first brick.
“Rob put me in touch with Mike Mink (AIFA president) and we started talking about whether it could work in this size of a town,” said Helm.
Helm then reached out to another old friend, Wenatchee accountant and former city councilman Frank Kuntz.
“It took us a while. We were in the formation stages for seven or eight months,” Kuntz said.
Kuntz added that a stumbling block early in the negotiations was the league’s insistence that the prospective Wenatchee team join the league for the 2009 season, beginning in March of that year.
“They really put a lot of pressure on us, and that was earlier than we wanted to do it,” he said.
“Two of our potential investors didn’t feel good about doing it at that point,” Helm said. “It was too fast. We wanted to slow it down and do it right.”
The man who started it all with a simple question thinks he’s done just that.
“I didn’t realize it when we started, but Wenatchee has the number one attendance for its hockey team and for summer college baseball,” Helm said. “This town really supports local athletics, and people understand that the Wild and the Venom have to be successful for the Town Toyota Center to be successful.”
With opening night fast approaching, it’s starting to sink in for Helm that what he helped build will finally come to fruition.
“There are times where you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, ‘What did I do here?’, but I’m feeling really good about it. It’s working out well.”
On to more pressing matters.
“I have to buy yard markers.”
WENATCHEE — It all started with one question.
In August 2008, Mark Helm was talking with his good friend Rob Cline on the shores of the Columbia River.
“I just asked him what it would take to get an indoor football team to Wenatchee,” Helm said. “Everything else is history.”
Nineteen months later, the Wenatchee Valley Venom will play their first game in the American Indoor Football Association.
Helm, the principal at Pioneer Middle School in Wenatchee, worked with Cline, then the general manager of the Town Toyota Center and current principal at Cashmere Middle School, to mount the resources and manpower needed to build a franchise from the first brick.
“Rob put me in touch with Mike Mink (AIFA president) and we started talking about whether it could work in this size of a town,” said Helm.
Helm then reached out to another old friend, Wenatchee accountant and former city councilman Frank Kuntz.
“It took us a while. We were in the formation stages for seven or eight months,” Kuntz said.
Kuntz added that a stumbling block early in the negotiations was the league’s insistence that the prospective Wenatchee team join the league for the 2009 season, beginning in March of that year.
“They really put a lot of pressure on us, and that was earlier than we wanted to do it,” he said.
“Two of our potential investors didn’t feel good about doing it at that point,” Helm said. “It was too fast. We wanted to slow it down and do it right.”
The man who started it all with a simple question thinks he’s done just that.
“I didn’t realize it when we started, but Wenatchee has the number one attendance for its hockey team and for summer college baseball,” Helm said. “This town really supports local athletics, and people understand that the Wild and the Venom have to be successful for the Town Toyota Center to be successful.”
With opening night fast approaching, it’s starting to sink in for Helm that what he helped build will finally come to fruition.
“There are times where you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, ‘What did I do here?’, but I’m feeling really good about it. It’s working out well.”
On to more pressing matters.
“I have to buy yard markers.”