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Silkworms And Danbury Play for the "UNO's Cup"

Manchester CT 2/14/2008

Earlier this month, Silkworms General Manager Ed Slegesk, traveled to Danbury to meet with District and local management of the UNO Grill and Danbury Westerners.

From that meeting came an understanding that the longtime supporter of the Danbury Westerners, would enter into a partnership with the Silkworms also.

Instead of the usual sponsorship, Slegeski proposed something just a little different which he hopes to be a model for the entire league going forward.

The UNO's Challenge Cup

The concept is one that puts each company restaurant in competition with the other by entrusting their winning and display of the trophy to each of the local teams.During the 2008 season the cup's final resting place will be determined by the best overall league record between Manchester and Danbury. At the end of the regular season, the team with the best overall regular season record will present the Challenge Cup to the management and staff of their local UNO's restaurant.

Slegeski has been working on this concept for over a year. "This particular challenge cup deal is very important to me because it can be used as a model for the rest of the league", said Slegeski. "The rest of the league could use this deal as a boiler plate for other such challenges on a league-wide basis adding advertising dollars, local involvement, and a little bit of fun between competing franchises"

This concept also adds a little more of a reason to play harder for the teams, because not only are they playing for the coveted league trophy (The Fay Vincent trophy), but also for the various national franchises locally within the towns and cities that the NECBL plays.

"When I look at the possibilities and felxibility that this program has on a league level, the possibilties are endless", says Slegeski. "Each team in Each city has national franchises located near them. For a small amount of money, a local franchise can choose to participate in one of these challenges, entrusting their fate to theit Home Town Team". The concept allows a loally owned national franchise to determine if they would like to participate or not. In the case of UNO's, they only have restaurants in Manchester and Danbury. Other national franchise might have locations in one of the six New England States that the NECBL plays in. Each franchise location can now make their own decision whether they want to get into the game.

	.....Manchester has a huge base of National franchises and with this deal now in place, Slegeski is hoping that other NECBL towns would follow the lead of Danbury and UNOS and bring more challenge cups into the fold. This is not only limited to restaurants but any type of franchise could join. When you look at all of the "Big Box" outlets in New England, the competition combinations are endless. The ideal competition would have all of the locations of a national franchise competing The second would be like the Danbury/Manchester combination where franchise only has a smaller amount of locations The third would allow for a national franchise having say 6 locations to only have three locations in the Challenge
Team Locations
Montpelier Vermont	Lowell Mass
Keene New Hampshire	Lynn Mass
Sanford Maine	Torrington CT
North Adams Mass	Danbury CT
Pittsfield Mass	Manchester CT
Holyoke Mass	Newport Rhode Island

One of the concerns in the initial design was the fact that the NECBL uses "Divisional Play". Because the competition is based on the overall League record, the problems with divisonal play, location, and records goes away.

Ed Slegeski can be contacted by...

E-mail @ silkwormsgm@aol.com
Phone (860)-559-3126