Business involvement in sports has become more than just sponsoring a softball team.
As sports’ popularity has diversified, so have business owners’ and workers’ interests.
One Springfield company with roots in Germany took that country’s love of soccer to heart, competing in the company’s recent worldwide soccer tournament.
A local Western wear operator owns two bulls that compete in the Professional Bull Riders circuit.
And a Strafford business owner considered the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach as a rare opportunity to see history played out at the storied club.
Worldwide soccer A soccer team from Siemens-owned Turblex Inc. returned to Springfield June 14 from competing in a company-sponsored worldwide tournament June 12–13 in Erlangen, Germany, on the Siemens sports grounds.
The tournament coincided with World Cup 2010 play to pit 40 teams from Siemens plants in 24 nations, including five teams from the United States.
“They kicked our butt,” says Fernando Blanco, a Turblex project manager. “We played four games and had a lot of fun. The teams were really good – like professional-type of players.”
More important than winning or losing, Blanco says, was the camaraderie developed.
“We met people that worked for Siemens from all over the world,” Blanco says.
A team from the Czech Republic won the tournament, defeating a team from Denmark.
The Springfield team comprises Ricardo Alzate, Nathan Averett, Blanco, Dale Buechler, Carlos Callender, Chad Cantrell, Eli Casillas, Doug Hopper, Adam Reighard and Sean Schwendinger.
The team lost all four games, but looked good trying – it won the award for best jersey with the team’s name, “Best of the Wurst.”
Team members – engineers, a project manager and a controller – designed the jerseys and came up with the name during lunch.
“We tried to be humble, knowing they were going to beat us,” Blanco says.
A lot of bull Randy Little, owner of PFI Western Wear Ltd., can justify his involvement in an extreme sport. Little bought a bull, Disco Baby, for the Professional Bull Riders Ford Tough Series tour with the idea of creating a line of boots with the bull’s name.
“I got into it because I like bull riding at the PBR level – the highest level possible, the Ford Tough Series,” Little says. “Being able to get one in … was my goal and to use it as a promotion for the store.”
Disco Baby’s career rating is 20.46 – out of a maximum 25 – and he has been ridden for the standard eight seconds in four of nine attempts.
Into his second PBR season, Little bought a second bull, appropriately named Boot Daddy. Born in 2005, Boot Daddy has a ranking of 21.17 for 2010 and has yet to be ridden in five attempts.
Little wouldn’t estimate the cost of care for his bulls but says the purchase prices vary widely – between $40,000 and $500,000.
“It’s like owning a race horse,” he says. “They’re pampered all the time.”
While fun, he does take the bulls’ performance seriously.
“The reality is you like to have a bull that’s out there bucking and a good one that’s going to buck off the world champion as we did in Springfield with Disco Baby,” he says, referring to last year’s PBR event at JQH Arena, when Disco Baby bucked off 2008 world champion rider Kody Lostroh.
“(Lostroh) was so sure that he was going to ride this bull,” Little says.
A little slice, or hook, of golf history Mike Walker, president of Strafford trucking company TCSI/Transland Inc., spent June 19–20 at the U.S. Open Championship golf tournament at storied Pebble Beach Resorts in Pebble Beach, Calif.
It was his first time to attend a major golf tournament.
“It’s a once in a lifetime thing,” Walker says. “You kind of go out hoping that you’ll see some history. The likelihood of you viewing a historic moment with your own eyes, I think, is pretty slim.”
Walker was hoping just to capture a piece of golf history, but members of the media and the huge crowd made it difficult.
“You have a better view watching it on TV,” Walker says, “when you don’t have to work yourself to death to get in position.”
Walker was able to catch a glimpse of eventual tournament champion Graeme McDowell. [[In-content Ad]]
A relocation to Nixa from Republic and a rebranding occurred for Aspen Elevated Health; Kuick Noodles LLC opened; and Phelps County Bank launched a new southwest Springfield branch.
