I have drawn the short straw many times in my sporting life and taken on the task of getting the right amount of players out, deciding who would play and who would sit, collecting the monies and paying for all the expenses. Some teams were easy and some were very stressful. Nothing is worse than donating the time it takes to get the players out but losing money at the same time was painful indeed. Then the complainers, arg…
Finally I had to take over the organizing of a pickup hockey group that I enjoyed for many years as a player but the numbers were dwindling and the organizer could see he was going to get stuck with a hefty shortfall. Bomber he said, you are the man or we are done and handed me the short straw.
I did not have the time to get out there and recruit so I started phoning around to the on line organizer services at the time and although they allowed you to post the game in a calendar and some had attendance features, there still was no vehicle to get the right amount of player on the bench. At $20 dollars per player per game, missing 3 guys was $60 dollars gone. Then too many players are just not workable either.
The remaining players all graciously split the second half fees and we all pledged to go on a recruitment drive. I said straight out, WE have to administrate this or this will not work. Thus began my strategy of creating the TGO online sports team management software that was based on “Self-Administration”.
Within only a month or so, we had the roster grow to the numbers we needed. So this is where I proved self-administration worked and worked well. Now how to duplicate that and automate so any team could do it or anybody.
So, I love generating order from chaos so I designed my own on line attendance system. With the help of my sister’s digital marketing company eVision, we sculpted a number of variations which lead to the system my teams continue to use now for over 5 years. Quite the beta test but it is all for the sports.
Self-administration sounds unlikely to many administrators that have babysat for many years. Although this is a tough pill to swallow for many players that long for the days the high school teachers would always be diligently of service. But once we got this going, it was super easy. Even guys who had a hard time turning on their computer were able to get there 5 year old kids to help them out and before too long; attendance self-administration was working like a charm.
OK, so now the money thing. Well money is really the art of dividing the gross expenses by the optimum number of players. $3000 for season fees divided by 12 players equals $250.00. That is easy but that assumes you get 12 full time players who play all the games. So I started paying the guys $10 back for each game they missed if they gave me 2 days notice. Well this was great incentive to have everyone recruit and generate a good sized spare list. This year’s spares often convert into next year’s regulars.
Oh, there is the other factor, “Quality of the game”. Some sports you can get away with a short bench, hockey is one of them where a skater can be happy for the extra ice time but then if you are too short, it is not much of a game. Baseball is almost impossible when short of players. Ever played soccer when you are short? Ouch.
The optimum amount of players each game makes cost and quality and longevity almost certain.
For the teams,
Kelly