Engage Sports Blog Youth Sports Matters

We are seeing a decline in today's parents willingness to help. If parents don’t know about your needs, the different opportunities or feel welcome, then the chance of them volunteering are slim to none. So how do we get them out of their chair and on the front lines?

Here are six tips on how to position your association to get the help you need to create a strong and sustainable association:

The keys to managing a great youth sport tournament are not as complex as you might think. To help peel back this onion, we reached out to Tim Brownlee, president of Diamond Sports Promotions to get his thoughts. Diamond Sports Promotions (DSP) was started in 2005 and is based in Normal, IL, which is located in the heart of Illinois about 2 hours from St. Louis. DSP runs about 70 high-school aged tournaments per year encompassing 800 to 1000 teams per year.  DSP is a very busy and well run program, and while their focus is baseball, their approach to running tournaments applies well to all youth sports. 

If you are attempting to evaluate the pricing for an online sports registration system you are probably finding a wide variety of pricing terms and perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed and confused. Your total cost will include service provider charges applied across a wide set of parameters plus merchant charges for credit card clearing houses such as Paypal and Stripe. As such, determining the true cost differential between providers can be a challenging task. This blog, and the accompanying Online Sports Registration Cost Calculator serves as your guide for understanding the pricing practices for online sports management services.

Many coaches and association leaders look to share useful parents do's and don'ts at youth sports practice to help create a better practice environment. The challenge is sharing such sports parent behavior tips in a supportive and no accusatory tone.  We  have gleaned tips from experts and resources across the web to come up with some of the most useful tips for parent do's and don'ts as youth sports practices. If you have more, we'd love to hear your comments and suggestions.  

Here's a tip off...there are a least 4 key tournament management tips that youth sports leaders can learn from the 2016 NCAA basketball tournament. 

If you are new to managing a youth sports organization or a veteran, implementing effective management strategies and techniques is essential to operating and growing your organization.  Volunteer leaders often feel overwhelmed given work and other life commitments. A youth sports leader may wear many hats: leader, finance wizard, grounds crew, weather forecaster, cook and peacemaker - all in the same day. As online sports management service providers, we feel your pain. Let us help you through the process with our aptly named free ebook "Effective Management Strategies for Youth Sports Leaders.”

Youth sports participation statistics compiled since 2009 show significant losses and gains across a wide spectrum of sports.  The best available data stems from a multi year tracking study done by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association from 2009 to 2014 which is presented and discussed herein. 

If you manage a youth sports website, one question you may have is how to make your youth sports website rank higher in Google.  You are not alone! The process of improving a sports website ranking is called SEO, or search engine optimization.  SEO is most commonly associated with business and eCommerce websites, however youth sports organization can benefit from improved website ranking by following the following SEO tips for youth sports webmasters.  

Today's headlines are filled with instances of youth sports coaches, board members and volunteers, committing crimes. The charges include sexual misconduct with players and parents, financial theft, equipment theft, battery and other crimes.  Many youth sports organizations are turning to background checks to prevent criminal behavior before it happens.  This post reveals the results of a nationwide survey of over 1,400 youth sports leaders and the degree to which background checks are being implemented, on which personnel and their perceived level of effectiveness.  

Seeking help in creating a youth sports league or tournament schedule? You are not alone. Creating a game schedule that works for everyone’s needs is often a very difficult task. League scheduling is made more complex by conditions such field availability, time limitations, field lighting, blackout dates, division balance, rest requirements and much more. While you may feel like punting the schedule process to someone else, here are 8 sports schedule development tips that will help you keep your sanity and produce a great schedule.