What does it take to bring Sporting Kansas City players and fans together for a fun-filled day of snow-throwing and burritos? Apparently just one Tweet.
Wednesday night, Kei Kamara looked out his window and saw a lot of snow. He wanted to have a snowball fight. So he Tweeted it.
The beauty of Twitter is instant communication. Long-time Cauldron member and superfan Jeff Szajnuk saw Kamara's Tweet, called fellow Cauldron member Sean Dane, and the pair quickly responded to Kamara with tweets from their personal accounts (Szajnuk, Dane). From there, the rest is history. Tweets were flying around with as much intensity as the falling snow the night before. The Kansas City Star picked up the story, and Dane informed as many Cauldron members as possible that there was a must-see event on the horizon.
Kamara challenged Matt Besler, Michael Harrington and Jon Kempin to join him, and all three accepted enthusiastically. Local marketing firm FreshID, full of social media ninjas, jumped into the fray and pledged to stream the event live via their Intefy product.
It all went off without a hitch. Click here for a great photo gallery courtesy of Westside Studio. Watch the recap video below:
After the event, Kamara treated all participants to burritos from his favorite restaurant, Chipotle.
"I was very surprised at how many people that didn’t have to work, or at least didn't go to work," Szajnuk said. "You know no other athletes are going to do this. We’ll end up making more fans out of this. The connection we have with the guys is really great."
As if on cue, Michael Harrington and Matt Besler walked over from their table at Chipotle and said thanks to the fans once more, causing Szajnuk to stop his thought short to wave at the players and thank them for their time. The sense of community is real, and it is extremely strong.
"Yeah, the guys are great," Szajnuk continued. "Mike [Harrington] just signed a [new] contract and he’s out there going into 50/50 balls in the snow with fans."
The event garned attention from all over, including a big write-up from the Kansas City Star and a post on Yahoo! Sports' Dirty Tackle blog. Local fan bloggers SportingTimes.net and Down the Byline got in on the fun as well.
RELATED LINKS:
-The Back Post Photo Gallery
-MLS Rumors recap blog post
-We Follow Football blog post
-The Free Beer Movement blog post
-MLS Insider Blog post
-Big Soccer forum thread
