No Youth Day this year.

Submitted by uofmdds96 on
After emailing the Kids Go Blue Club a few times asking when it was this year and kindly requesting that it not be on a Thursday, they emailed me back today. They said, "The event will be moved to the spring season from the precious late summer time frame. We understand the move impacts many people, especially our loyal Kids Go Blue Club members and their families. It is our belief that this new spring date will offer greater flexibility for our student-athletes and coaching staff. We will offer more details as we get closer to the Spring Game." This was very disappointing for my daughters to hear. Their favorite players are Kalis and Wormley. I am assuming that the seniors and fifth year seniors will not be in attendance for this. Also incoming freshman that are not early enrollees will not be there. I know that whatever is best for the student-athletes is paramount, but nonetheless, it is disappointing. They did not give a date for the formal announcement, so don't tell anybody.
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Wolverine Devotee

July 29th, 2016 at 8:31 PM ^

I can understand not wanting the distractions since the fall pracice time is so limited, but Alabama manages to have their annual Running of the Gumps every year and they do alright.

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Wolverine Devotee

July 29th, 2016 at 9:52 PM ^

Warde has pissed off a lot of people already. I'm getting a little concerned.

Still waiting on that Harbaugh contract extension to be announced. 

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sum1valiant

July 30th, 2016 at 7:10 AM ^

How do we know this is Warde's doing? Seems reasonable that JH decided that there were too many distractions during camp and wanted to eliminate a few? If that were the case, would you be concerned that he's pissing off too many people?

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Bando Calrissian

July 29th, 2016 at 10:25 PM ^

Well holy hell that's odd. We haven't gone in years, but it used to be a really great event in Crisler with a lot of really nice perks and a great speech from the head football coach that slowly got whittled down to "well, if we have to... Here's a tent in the hot sun and some Cottage Inn catering." A lot of my earliest memories as a Michigan kid were at those luncheons. It was kind of a wide-open fun-fair for the family and friends of the AD's most loyal supporters--and there were a lot of them.

Maybe this is a bigger indicator of the way the Victors Club has changed over the years. Now that every donor is a member, big or small, the prestige value (or, maybe, incentive) of being a member is essentially zero. When it started in the late 70s-early 80s, it was a really small group of devoted Old Blue types that could fill a conference room in Crisler and a single row of parking in the (now) Blue Lot. After 20 years now of the Athletic Department doing everything they can to piss off what's left of those original members (hell, they even got stingy with the point level for media guides during the mid-2000s), I guess I can't be surprised if they got rid of the luncheon--especially if (as I suspect is probably true) this means a different and far more exclusive kind of event for high-level donors.

And this isn't a Warde problem--it started in the 90s and has been going on ever since. There's a lot of folks out there who were ecstatic that Joe Parker didn't get the AD job for that precise reason.

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UM Fan from Sydney

July 29th, 2016 at 10:08 PM ^

I went to what is now called youth day one time. Got close to Braylon for an autograph and the storm came and they canceled the rest. I was pretty pissed.



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1VaBlue1

July 29th, 2016 at 10:22 PM ^

Are these cancellations Manual's doing, or some other reason?  Seems like a lot of sadness in the donor base the last few weeks, between the fiasco of how ND was brought back and these cancellations.

And yes, I base my view of the 'donor base' on what I see in MGoBlog...

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umbig11

July 30th, 2016 at 8:05 AM ^

Satellite camps also impacted these events. This was not Warde's fault. Within the Athletic Dept, the Athletic Development Office was still trying to get the donor events scheduled. Football Operations could not fit the event in due to several schedule constraints. Some of which you mentioned (Jumpman release, Media obligations, etc).

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ThadMattasagoblin

July 29th, 2016 at 10:34 PM ^

Hackett seemed to be able to get things done. Not really impressed with Warde so far. No night games, no hockey coaching search, no Youth Day, Notre Dame deal favors ND. What has he actually done right so far?

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Maize Craze

July 29th, 2016 at 11:34 PM ^

Don't really see the big deal here. Just want the team to win. Don't care about jersey styles, number fonts, where there are sarifs present, or if they will have a day for kids to run around on the field. Just win football games.



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sdogg1m

July 30th, 2016 at 8:04 AM ^

You are unable to clearly articulate the Michigan tradition or full of it.

A lot of talk about snowflakes on these forums but these events being cancelled or moved and the grumbling about them reflects a snowflake mentality. I guess some snowflakes are more important than others.

I am with the above poster, winning is our tradition! We win the national championship this year and all this talk about movie night, victors club, blah, blah won't matter. We win the Big 10 and it won't matter.

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The Mad Hatter

July 30th, 2016 at 1:23 AM ^

One of my best early elementary school memories was a field trip to an open practice. All the local schools were there and they gave us the run of the mostly empty stadium and let us on the field to meet and interact with players and coaches. Damn near every kid came home a Michigan fan that day.

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Ty Butterfield

July 29th, 2016 at 11:49 PM ^

Wonder if Brian will have any reaction to this? He has seemed pretty neutral on Warde. I don't want to rush to judgement but Warde is making it really hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Joined: 09/07/2009

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clarkiefromcanada

July 30th, 2016 at 12:14 AM ^

Between cancelling donor events, moving the movie night to June (which wasn't really a big deal) and then cancelling an event for the kids...not sure what Manuel is getting up to here.

Warde understands, I am sure, that you connect your program with your donors (and their families). He's not doing a great job of that. While winning solves a lot of ills there is more to fundraising and attracting donors. He could be doing better, IMO.

We'll see where Brian sits on this now that he has a kid?

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