This was our reply to Dave & Tiffany regarding the email they sent out about Cincy SC. They didn’t reply, and to the best of our knowledge they don’t plan on retracting any of their statements. We’ve continued to update our website with our best available information about our tryouts, teams, leagues, and tournaments.

Dear Dave & Tiffany,

Several of your parents forwarded me the email you sent out last night. I’m not sure why you sent it, but whatever the reason, I’d like to extend an olive branch to you in hopes that we can coexist peacefully from now on.

This time of year, many players and families are exploring their club soccer options for the fall of 2015 and beyond and potentially exercising their right to choose. Any emails we’ve sent have been intended to communicate that our club exists and that players have a right to choose us. Obviously with Cincy SC’s location and my past affiliation with KH, there will be players, families, and coaches that have affiliated with KH in the past who are interested in our new club.

You said you’ve got 1,400 kids signed up, 250 more than last year. That’s fantastic! We’re feeling pretty good about our relatively modest tryout numbers too. But basically if you’re King Kong then we’re just… Curious George. Frankly, we’d be ecstatic if we had just 2 teams at each age group from U7-U12 and a team each at U13 & U14 this year. I don’t think that would impact your club that much. We want to create a smaller club with a community feel, that’s full of families and coaches that buy into our EPIC values. Cincy SC’s offering is different than yours – not necessarily better, just different – and that’s ok. For some age groups we’ll likely have players without a roster spot and we’d certainly suggest that they check out KH. I hope you’d do the same.

By the way, although we don’t have teams above U14 this year, we plan to add U15 next year, U16 after that, and so on. We’ll continue to provide long-term options for our players and teams.

Regarding recruiting, I suppose you may consider me sending out an email to personal adult friends of mine trying to let them know about Cincy SC’s existence to be “recruiting,” but I think many would consider that to be a pretty broad interpretation of the term. BPYSL rules also state that contacting players is even permitted between May 15 and June 15. The EPL has no rules on recruiting or tryouts. Our tryout dates for U7-U9 comply with EPL and our tryout dates for U10+ comply with BPYSL.

We try to keep our website updated with our best available information about our league options and we’re not sharing any information we believe to be false. You’re right in saying that we’re not a member of OSYSA or any league yet. We don’t have any players or any teams so we can’t even apply. But we will apply once our teams are formed. In the event that we apply to CUSL, I’d appreciate your support in voting us in.

I think some of the content of your email last night could be considered libelous. We don’t really want to get into that though. Our approach is to not comment on other clubs and I’d prefer that yours be that as well. My request is that you send a clarification email to the people you contacted yesterday retracting your comments. I think it will make you look a lot better and it will save us from having to share the information in this email with those people in some other way.

Finally, I wanted to address the email that your lawyer sent about me being prohibited from soliciting Kings Hammer players for two years. I’m going to have our lawyer respond officially, but I’d encourage you to check our contractor agreement. There is no non-recruitment or non-compete clause (nor is there anything in my termination agreement).

Cincy SC will be a club in 2015/16 and many years beyond. So my belief is that Cincy SC and KH are going to coexist for many years and will want to play one another. I hope that it will be a peaceful and productive relationship.

Yours in soccer,

Russell Lewis
russell@cincysc.com | www.cincysc.com | 513.354.9959