Tide Talk Awarded Valley Breeze VOTV26 Best Influencer

I'll never forget the feeling of walking into Beirne Stadium in March 2024. After years of waiting, I was finally able to see this new soccer team from my home state play. Donning my Defiance 1636 scarf fresh out of it's packaging, I was overwhelmed with the incredible atmosphere, the last minute goal and this do-everything-midfielder wearing the number 12. Needless to say, after that match, my soul was truly amber and blue.

If you know me, you know that I struggle to do anything halfway. After the match, I searched for anything and everything RIFC, especially podcasts and social content. I stumbled across a Reddit post from RIFC Nation and starting writing very succinct recaps (novels) of the matches as a fun way to interact with other fans in this growing community.

After a month or so, I received a DM on Discord that, quite frankly, changed my life.

When Matt reached out to jump on the podcast I almost said no multiple times. I'm honestly not sure I have ever told him this. Luckily, he's barely aware that we have a blog so this will fly under the radar. But I fought the nerves, jumped on the show and as they say, the rest is history.

Over the past two plus years, we've seen RIFC Nation transform into Tide Talk. We launched a blog with Player Ratings, news and pre/post-match analysis. We've extended our podcast/YouTube to include interviews with prominent figures in our community as well as other fans. And we've continued to find people that have a fun idea for content that they want to share with other RIFC fans.

As a group who's motto is "By the Fans, For the Fans" winning the VOTV 26 award means a lot. We do our absolute best to represent the fan voice and amplify your feelings on our show. While I like to think only the Tide Talk group listens/reads anything that we do, getting this recognition through fan voting and nominations means the absolute world to us. Without you all, none of this exists.

I'd be remiss if I didn't shoutout the full Tide Talk crew. Thank you Matt, Timmy, Hands, Andrew, Tyler, Pat and Scott for the incredible work that you put in. This is all just a hobby for all of us and this group puts in a ton of extra time to crank out the content factory.

We promise to not let this new found glory go to our heads. I will still be bugging Hands to get his blog out on Fridays and Matt and I will be live Sunday night after the Pittsburgh match.

If you're new to Tide Talk, you can find us on socials at @tidetalkri, on YouTube live on Sunday nights or anywhere you get your podcasts.