When it comes to sports, there are three essential components make a successful event: awesome weather, great venues, and a safe environment. Finding all three can be difficult, but the Rogue Valley has earned the reputation as Your Sportground, because it offers easy access to these components. In fact, a cultivating a safe environment in which athletes of all sports and ages can compete has become our number one priority. Southern Oregon fully integrates the following mindset in our local athletics: “You can be a parent, you can be a player, you can be a coach or an official, but you can only be one. Know Your Role!”
Adopting and applying this mindset throughout the Rogue Valley has helped us to accomplish two goals: host more local, regional, and national events at our amazing venues and steadily increase in the number of local sports officials. This growth in sports officials, though small, is unprecedented in the world of sports today. Officials have had to endure participant abuse at sporting events causing many areas across the country to significantly cut back on the number of sporting opportunities they can offer.
Thanks to SOSC and our Know Your Role Marketing Campaign, this growing problem has been drastically mitigated throughout Southern Oregon. Over the past 5 years, SOSC has infused our local sports teams and venues with this powerful message through media assets and deliverables. In fact, Know Your Role was introduced into our local sports market prior to the outbreak of COVID -19.
Know Your Role has partnered with most sports organizations, associations, and school districts throughout the Rogue Valley who have strongly endorsed this campaign. Attendees at these local sporting events and participants within these organizations are now familiar with the message of Know Your Role, and the responsibility they each hold to contribute to a safer and healthier playing environment. Lithia and Driveway Fields, one of the largest local venues and home to the Rogue Valley Timbers, proudly displays our Know Your messaging. The RV Timbers are a junior affiliate youth soccer club of the professional club up north, the Portland Timbers, and are led by the Southern Oregon Sports Commissions very own Kevin Primerano. Kevin and his staff have been associated with the Know Your Role campaign since its inception, and have been instrumental in helping to spread the message not only on a local and state level. Kevin assisted SOSC in partnering with Oregon Youth Soccer Association (OYSA) to help pass the message on to every registered soccer player throughout the state.
In addition to OYSA, SOSC has also recently partnered with USA Softball and their 2 million members to help grow the message and to educate others on the importance of it. As the brand continues to grow, and as more and more national partners joins with us in this vital endeavor, we are proud to know that the Rogue Valley was ground zero. This idea started, developed, matured, and ultimately blossomed here in Southern Oregon. While we are far from where we’d like to be in terms of sportsmanship as it pertains to youth sports, we know that great strides have been made thanks to our amazing local partners throughout the Rogue Valley. The Southern Oregon Sports Commission reaffirms its commitment to all of our partners, local national and regional, that we will continue to improve the culture of youth sports, and move the dial in a positive direction each and every day. It’s our job to keep our sports great, and we need your continued help. Know Your Role!
