Why does every youth sports league insist that I download some crappy app for messaging?

[Anonymous]

I only have two kids but we average about one new app a year. I have about six different ones now. It’s seriously annoying.

[Anonymous]

Coach here. If we are supposed to get a kickback for using TeamSnap, GameChanger, et al, please tell my mortgage banker. I could use the extra funds.

The sports apps make it so that the volunteers who are engineering the season for your kid don’t have to do even more (unpaid) work.

The league scheduler is able to push out everyone’s team schedules, and update them when rain closes the fields. Otherwise, you’d have a bunch of cranky parents showing up at the wrong place and demanding why I didn’t tell them. Or a coach who constantly has to email people about individual field/time changes.

Parents can contact each other for carpool needs, “I’m running late can somebody grab Larla,” and the inevitable “Did someone see Larlo’s glove/soccer ball/cleats/water bottle?”

I can see RSVPs in one place, and don’t have to hunt through my own email to tally who’s coming and who’s not. Because inevitably, a parent will respond to another random thread saying something important like “Larla is coming on Tuesday, but she’s not cleared to pitch yet.”

I love coaching, but the logistics of ensuring all players (and their gear) get where and when they’re supposed to make me want to stab myself with a rusty pocketknife. My suggestion is to offload some of the photos on your phone to create more memory, then customize the app notifications so you’re getting the useful info but not the other stuff. Help your coach help your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Coach here. If we are supposed to get a kickback for using TeamSnap, GameChanger, et al, please tell my mortgage banker. I could use the extra funds.

The sports apps make it so that the volunteers who are engineering the season for your kid don’t have to do even more (unpaid) work.

The league scheduler is able to push out everyone’s team schedules, and update them when rain closes the fields. Otherwise, you’d have a bunch of cranky parents showing up at the wrong place and demanding why I didn’t tell them. Or a coach who constantly has to email people about individual field/time changes.

Parents can contact each other for carpool needs, “I’m running late can somebody grab Larla,” and the inevitable “Did someone see Larlo’s glove/soccer ball/cleats/water bottle?”

I can see RSVPs in one place, and don’t have to hunt through my own email to tally who’s coming and who’s not. Because inevitably, a parent will respond to another random thread saying something important like “Larla is coming on Tuesday, but she’s not cleared to pitch yet.”

I love coaching, but the logistics of ensuring all players (and their gear) get where and when they’re supposed to make me want to stab myself with a rusty pocketknife. My suggestion is to offload some of the photos on your phone to create more memory, then customize the app notifications so you’re getting the useful info but not the other stuff. Help your coach help your kid.

I appreciate a coach’s viewpoint and the functionality of the apps. It’s the number and variety of them that drive me crazy as the parent of multiple kids who play multiple sports/activities during the year. Especially when you have a team where the parents are very active in the group chat and use the group chat as individual conversation to the coach (ie Larlo will be late to practice tonight).

As a coach, would you rather these types of comments go to only the coaches and manager or to the whole team chat? I usually send them to just the coaches and manager but always seem to be in the minority. With overlapping seasons right now, I have 8 sports/activities over 4 apps and a text group. I don’t really need notification that Larla is sick and will miss practice, followed by a response from each coach and a parent or two.

[Anonymous]

I too hate these apps! I also hate the school apps. I love email. I can easily categorize it and it gets automatic labels.

What would be nice is that instead of an app, there’s just something like a Team in Teams like I have for work. And I get a new team for each activity or class my kids are in. It’s very useful at work. We can chat with each other, files go there. Mostly so I don’t have to download and log into things.

[Anonymous]

Older parent of teens who also hates all the apps. Have been told by those who run some of the League that younger parents like the apps and utilize them better.

Feel like a dinosaur

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I too hate these apps! I also hate the school apps. I love email. I can easily categorize it and it gets automatic labels.

What would be nice is that instead of an app, there’s just something like a Team in Teams like I have for work. And I get a new team for each activity or class my kids are in. It’s very useful at work. We can chat with each other, files go there. Mostly so I don’t have to download and log into things.

Lots of people don't have access to teams. What a privileged, clueless suggestion.

[Anonymous]

I am fine with a sports app. I agree that they work better than email. It’s the number and variety of them that’s maddening. Add the sport specific ones like Swimmingly and it’s going to send me over the cliff

[Anonymous]

And, every app has personal info about your kid because the teams keep changing apps year to year. It is incredibly frustrating.

[Anonymous]

You can turn off all notifications. I like them because they have the game and practice calendars in them.

[Anonymous]

Our league uses Demosphere and it works well for keeping track of multiple children and multiple sports. It's nice to have everything in one place and I can sync it to my Google calendar. One year a coach used TeamSnap on top of Demosphere and it was dumb because it did the exact same thing.