Felzani, Matthew

I don't know myself, but if you want to attach a sample of the reports (maybe give the kids fake names or something) I'd be happy to take a look and maybe be able to come up with some kind of vlookup-type logic?

If I'm thinking of the same thing as @freezinKT then you would go into Competition > Season Management > Click "Teams" on the Season you're looking to administer. That will show you all your Teams and their visibility status (i.e. - the "Team status"). Then use the screenshot below to navigate the rest of the way. And this is the help text from the Info button on the Teams Page: Controls how the team is viewed in the mobile app and Team Center. Inactive - not searchable, Private - only rostered individuals, Public - searchable for all.

I'm always happy to take advice and suggestions ... thanks for circling back with the additional notes! Below is how we attach our sale items. On one of the upstream screens the user specifies the kid's grade, and based on that I restrict which option shows up in the Division widget: Each Division prices differently and I think that might be where we're different. To align how you have yours I think I'd need a separate question for the Division (since that's the most important piece of data in my Registration) and then a Radio list like above where I add a 5th entry of "Pay Offline". Thus the entry field above then becomes a tracker of "how-they-paid-and-coincidentally-their-Division-if-they-pay-via-card" and each person would see two options of "Pay Offline" and the grade-specific Division. I've often thought that I don't really need the Division at all because the Division is just a function of the grade (e.g. - a 5th Grader will always be in the "Majors (5G/6G)" Division), but having it does make it more straightforward for rolling up the data and sorting during Team creation. If I could find a way to default the value conditionally then I could suppress it all together, and pretty easily / cleanly move to what you are suggesting and what I talked about above with a 5-option field. Thanks again for sharing.

Right now we have a structure where you register for the sport and then the fee gets set based on the Division, and the Division is automatically set based on the Grade you choose (i.e. - I hide any Division which doesn't match the Grade chosen), so I can't quite envision how this would work? I could see if we went all-or-nothing where everyone did cashapp, but not on a case-by-case basis. Or do you prompt the user if they want to pay offline and then have two different versions of your Division Question? One with sale items attached and then one without? Though that feels like it would make things harder data side since those would be two separate fields in the Registration data. I'd be interested to hear more, but don't stress over it. Unfortunately at this point we've resolved we'll soon be moving to a new platform.

Yup, and no two platforms are exactly the same for sure. I was just trying to offer an item that has caused some heartache and might be cool to have that 'Group By' design I mocked up as part of the platform. I imagine a lot of LA alumni are in the same boat where getting counts takes a few extra steps.

Right, but I need counts. If you get a second have a look at the screenshot I mocked up. I mean, I could sort by Division but that doesn't tell me how many kids are in that Division. Previously on LA we had a separate Registration per Division because it was a different fee for each so anytime I looked at the main Registration page it told me the counts. This wasn't my site, but something I grabbed off the Internet to use as an illustration of what a 'Group By' feature would get you back that was sort-of there in LA:

Right but then I need to have and run nine reports, right? Most of our seasons have a PreK, 1G/2G, 3G/4G/ 5G/6G for Girls and then the same for Boys so that would be 9 reports (PreK isn't separated by gender) and then I'd need to view the nine to collect the data. With a 'Group By' option I'd get it in one shot.

I wanted to circle back on this one just to try to address the, "Why?" In SE I like that I can have one Registration for everyone, and then attach the fee based on the Division chosen by the registrant - in this way SE has an edge over LA because in LA I would have needed separate Registrations to charge separate fees. However, one thing I didn't see coming with a commingled athlete population is that I lost the ability to easily see how many kids were registered for my, "Boys' 3G/4G Basketball" division, or my "Girls' 1G/2G Basketball" division. Now, in order to do that, I need to save the data locally and pull it into a pivot table. I don't know if this is a feature which has been suggested before, but it would be great to have a 'Group By' option on the Report. It would require some validation logic since the 'Group By' would render the 'Fields' and 'Sort' parts of the report moot (and vice versa), but here's what I put together as a mock-up using MS Paint:

With hopes of keeping content in one area for SE and others who might come along later, these are some items which caught me off guard: I spend 25% of my time saving the data, importing it into Google Sheets, and then being productive with it Inability to allow someone to register without paying. I know this one seems counter-intuitive, but when we were on LA I would say that 5-10% of our registrations were people who signed up and then we just hounded them for money over the course of the season. Certainly not perfect, but I'd rather that than a child not play The model where it seems like SE was built on some existing point-of-sale system and if it can't be done in a point-of-sale system it can't be done. I don't like how much work I need to do in order to scholarship a child, create a family discount, etc. Data fidelity - we still (?) seem to have people register as members and the data we see of theirs in Season Management is not consistent (at one point we had 15 of our 60 Basketball kids show up with a gender of 'Unspecified') In fairness I haven't played with the Auto Groups yet, but I feel like it's going to be really hard to send emails to multiple registrations. That it's going to end up with people getting multiple copies of the same email. With LA I could select all the Registrations I wanted to include - for example highlighting the past three years' worth of sports - and know that each person got one email. That it was a union of those folks and not sending one copy to each person per registration. I still don't understand how SE doesn't have an 'opt out' setting at the account level. I believe this violates the CAN-SPAM Act ... the answer to, "How do I opt out?," cannot be, "Delete your account." There appears to be lots of thinly-covered topics in the way of documentation, and virtually every link on our site was broken when we got it (e.g. - references to helpful material) Inability to add additional recipients when sending emails. For example, most of the messages I send also need to go to the Snack Shack Coordinator; however, if she doesn't have a kid registered then she doesn't get the email. It's a pain to have to remember to forward her stuff afterwards. Some fields I cannot modify like Grade? I need PreK ... asking people to register their 3-year-old as Kindergarten makes no sense to them and then I get questions. I don't see a way to do reporting across registrations, only within a registration And each League is different, but of the items previously mentioned these are ones which have caused us the most grief: Inability to unregister a player once payment has been received Lack of an auto-incrementing age/grade The issues with the App Lack of recurring events; buggy-ness of conflict checking (we keep getting messages that events conflict, but then can't get at them to be able to delete them) Inability to have late fees kick in on a configured date The fact that everything now seems to be an up-sell ... that it seems the base features are just there to check a box and that add-ons are the only way to have a usable platform And our background: we're a small league with about 350 registrations each year. We run four seasons with Basketball in the Winter, Soccer + Baseball in the Spring, Baseball in the Summer, Soccer + Flag in the Fall. Most of our sports recruit from the other sports so while we have 350 registrations annually there are probably only 200 unique athletes. We're all volunteers and each sport has a Director who usually did the team construction, messaging, etc., but with how Season Management works a lot of that has now fallen on me as the Web Admin because of how cumbersome, error-prone, and feature-deficient it is.

As the operators we already pay you $800 per year + $2 per credit card swipe + a rake of 3.5% per transaction - the app should be ad-free, you're getting paid out of their Registration fee.

But you need a Pro subscription to use the API, correct (outside of Connected Apps)? Can you share what percentage of Organizations have that level? The API seems like it would be really useful, but the cost of the Pro tier is not in our budget.

Or you could invert what @riseatl suggest and have the questions be: What is your 1st preferred practice day? [Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri] What is your 2nd preferred practice day? [Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri] etc. And while the text field would work I'd probably go with a dropdown just so you don't get people creating their own numbering scheme and giving you an answer of 9 3/4 or something. If you go with either of the two ways mentioned you may want to include a '0' value so that people can say they aren't available on a given day so you can know the difference between, "I'd rather not practice that night, but I can make it work," compared to, "If you have practice that night my player won't be able to attend because of conflict." Just my 2c, but if you're looking to create teams based on preferred practice days you might want to just capture the top two days or something. In general there's no way to accommodate everyone's needs. Second step will be making sense of the data you get from the Registration and you'll probably need to use Google Sheets or Excel to do that - feel free to message me if you want a hand with that as there's lots of tricks you can do there with formulas, etc., if needed.

I hit the shed today and the brand of pylon we use is Pro Down. I like them a lot. I couldn't find the weight on the box or the tag, but I threw it on a scale here at the house and each pylon weighs four pounds. We use ten of them per field -- four for each endzone and then one on either side of midfield. And then the Umbro Soccer bag works really well for carrying them around as the bag has a flat bottom so they all sit on their bases in the bag. I'm not sure what material is in the pylon to weigh it down - I'm guessing sand - but I'm pretty sure it's in its own pouch in the pylon as if you flip the pylon upside-down the material stays put, and I think this helps it to stay bottom heavy. We do have one pylon where I think the inner pouch broke, but I'm willing to bet that's because one of the kids tried to dropkick it, or some other thing that kids do when coaches aren't looking, lol. I'm not sure where we got our pylons, but the Pro Down ones don't have a huge presence on the Internet it seems (though they are on walmart.com) - looks like a box-of-4 ranges from $65-$80 so a pretty large front-loaded cost. That said, I think they're worth it and they really make the field look cool. This Adidas bag is kind of expensive (in my opinion), but you can see the shape I was talking about above. I did find some cheaper ones out there, but spending money might be a good idea as it's a one-time investment and I doubt the cheaper ones are going to do well holding 40lbs of pylons since most people use them to hold a couple pounds of soccer balls. We've had the same pylons and bags since the league started in 2016: https://www.amazon.com/adidas-Team-Stadium-Black-White/dp/B076PGTRF4/ref=sr_1_32?crid=191WEAF8GO2G4&keywords=umbro+soccer+bag+team+gear&qid=1702148769&sprefix=umbro+soccer+bag+team+gea%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-32 One last thought on the field, if you can get the turf that will save you on paint (if you planned to paint the other field). This year we ran three fields from early September until the end of October (they each got painted on Saturday) and that's where the $2,300 in field lining came from in the post where I shared our expenses. We had a slush truck at one of our Jamborees one year and that was pretty cool. That was a full day and we made $185 in commission. Good idea with tiering the playoffs based on how the teams finish - this year our largest Division had five teams so we'd need to grow quite a bit to have that as an option. :) Your jerseys are sharp and thanks for the nod on the logo design - if you can get the girl to get back to me that would be a huge help. lol.

For the second one that's generally frowned upon by the Internet - essentially spoofing a From Address. It was certainly popular at once time, but not really these days. However, that said, you could always just create an account in SE using the winterdevelopment@myorg.com account as the login and share the account password with the people who need it. It's kind of roundabout, but probably your best bet to avoid having your emails get picked up by spam filters. On the first one, I miss the ability to have 'extra' recipients as well (even if not automatic).

I have to image it's a fluke. We only have one season, and it's active, so I'm not really a good comparison, but it does look like there's a hook for grouping past seasons. Maybe it was a fix applied after you were in there? And when I flip to that tab I get different filters: Manually Archived, Expired

I did not, but I can as the email thread is still active with @Jessica Christiansen. And it is weird, right, that the app knows how to show the infraction row in italics, but not to re-sync it on its own?

If others get here one tip I got from the Support folks is that the data inconsistencies between the Season and the Registration can be because the data somehow got out-of-sync. I'm not sure the below advice will work in all situations, but if you: Navigate to the Member Directory and then hit the Filter button, then the second downward chevron you might see some items in italics (keeping the 'Registration' Filter active). If you click on those it should kick off the sync step. That fixed my Data Display issues from my original post, but not the Pagination one.

That all sounds really good and as long as you're prepared to play with your dimensions a bit I expect you'll be fine. Any High School field is going to give you at least 7Y-8Y beyond the sideline because they're all multi-purpose now and men's/women's lacrosse and men's/women's soccer run wider than football. If the field also has a track around it that's the only thing that I can think of which might cause an abrupt change in surface just because the track is going to be a fixed size. No matter what you should have a pretty easy time getting at least the three fields in left-to-right. I'm pretty sure we ran from the back of the endzone to the 20YL, then 35YL to the 35YL, and then the 20YL to the back of the other endzone - so that gives us a 15 yard gutter between fields. We did have one night with just one game so were thinking about running our field on top of the football field (parallel instead of perpendicular), but then we were going to lose an entire 70Y of painted sidelines so we just ran the config I drew above on that turf field. The park has been great for us and we bend the rules as we need. The only true parking area is at the top of the photo, but then there is an emergency access road so we invite our older spectators to use that. And then as long as people are careful we tell them it's okay to drive along the treeline as long as they go super-slow ... both for safety as well as to minimize the stress on the field itself. The park is pretty old so there's really no considerations there for ADA unfortunately. All the gear is in the shed at the moment, but I have to head over at some point to get rid of all the coaching bags so I'll check on the pylons. We've had really good luck with them and they fall over sometimes, but mostly because the kids like to play with them. I've left myself a note so as long as you don't need that info urgently I'll definitely get it to you. If your field has been there for a while you should be able to go to Google Maps and enter the address. By default it will give you the drawn version, but they have aerial coverage for most everywhere so you should be able to get that no problem. Not sure if this is where your games are, but I tried to highlight what I clicked: If that's your field then I think you're in good shape as the black lines are the soccer sidelines so could serve as the back of your endzones. You are a little snug up against the track, but might get stuck trying to choose between the lessor of the evils. I love the reward bucks and I think that's a great idea. I'm sure it would be well-received by the kids, too. I like working with NFL Flag and their customer service is very responsive. Essentially you get your teams together and use their site to place your order. Each order is 1 Jersey + 1 Belt so they don't come with shorts. And then for every five orders you get a football. This year they offered an upgraded football if you want, but you get one of those per ten orders. And the jerseys are nice ... a good material and reversible. No one's ever asked me to replace it because it didn't fit their player the way they expected so I'd say the size chart is pretty accurate. NFL Flag does also sell shorts, sleeves, gloves, etc., so if you want more you can get more. And they'll also set up a Team Store for your organization where you can give the families a link and NFL Flag will give you a credit for some percentage of what the families order. I've never even sent that out though. From the player pool perspective I'm not sure why we only offer it to the kids in the District. In 2016 I think they were just trying to get it off the ground so I don't know if there was a vision to get larger. The kids do play the other towns in other sports like Basketball, Soccer, Baseball, etc., so it's not like there isn't precedent, though those teams are only ever made up of kids from the towns as opposed to a massive pool. Something to think about for sure, though as you said I'd need some more help (and fields) to pull it off. Part of me is jealous when I see Spiked and SYFFL with so many registrations, and I don't even want to compete with them, but I just always thought I'd be able to grow the League each year (within the District) but seems I'm going in the other direction, lol. That's my take, too, to just have one price. Our $110 gets the kids the jersey, flags, and covers the League expenses so my $16,000 above is essentially 145 people playing $110. It's not quite that simple just because the PreK/K division was only $50 per player, but the expenses were much lower (e.g. - no refs, we didn't use the field lines, etc.), and we scholarship some kids. Your price is spectacular especially since you add in the shorts. What I'd love to add in for us is a separate shorts option (additional fee), but to get our logo on them, as well as make tie dye tee shirts to sell on the side, too. I've been working with someone on the logo, but she's super-busy. This is what I'm trying to go with (I had her put it on a tie dye background just to get a feel), though want it to be "Flag Football" instead of "FLAG FOOTBALL." I have a bit of an ego, but I like the incorporation of the laces in at the top, and the Flag belt + Flags across the shield. We were $100 for the longest time, but then NFL Flag increased the jersey cost from $25 to $30 and my paint guy had to increase the paint cost so that's where the $10 bump came from. We also threaten with a late fee, but I end up waving it every year. I feel like we never had enough late registrations to have it be a needle-mover for the income, as well as it gave me the opportunity to send one last email saying, "Okay, I decided to waive the late fee so now is the time to sign up." And we have the credit card fees factored into the $110 so what the families see is what they get when they go to pay. I haven't logged in to our NFL Flag account in a while, but if you want me to pull pricing for the other apparel they sell just let me know and I can do that. Having a Security Offer is a great idea, but like you said that's going to be a pretty massive expense. I imagine the minimum there is $500 for a shift (I think that's what it is up here through our PD). On the playtime, I think it all depends on how you market your League. Just meaning, if you're saying it's a rec League then the kids should get about equal playing time; however, if it's being offered as a competitive product then all bets are off and the families need to understand that play time won't be equal. There's certainly benefits to both (side note: NFL Flag holds a Regional in Atlanta every year and those are a fun time. There's no one from the NFL team there, but the Division winners move on to other sites. New England has one each year also, and I've reffed a few times. Really fun times.). What I find is that there are some coaches who follow it religiously ... ensuring each player gets the same amount of touches, and then some coaches who just don't even realize how important the parity is. And I don't even think they do it to be jerks, it's just subconscious that they call plays to the same player over-and-over. And the passing game is tough because the QB is going to throw to the open player - I remind coaches that the handoff is the great equalizer. And if you're doing 5v5 then I'd say definitely set your max roster size at ten as otherwise at least one kid is playing less than half the game (my opinion anyway). I do have a blast with it, but the reality is that I should really be asking for more help. At this point I don't have a kid in the League so I really don't need to be the one setting up the fields at 7:30am on a Sunday and then packing them up at 2:00pm, and managing the refs, and running the PreK/K Division. But, you're right, I do love it and there are a lot of kids and parents who go out of their way to say thanks for what I do, so that's nice. Plus, the woman who runs the Snack Shack stores the candy in the same shed as I store the gear so that's a nice perk. :)

All awesome stuff for sure and thanks for the notes. I have these amazing plans in my head, but then I remember that they're hard to pull off. My big thing for this year - well, relatively I guess - was the 8.5" x 11" posters with the pull tabs and QRs. I figured that was a cheap way to get in front of people where they were ... you know, bring the mountain to Mohammed, but the only tabs that were ever torn off were the ones I tore off before hanging the signs in an attempt to suggest interest. So that was an unwelcome dose of humble pie. Alas, at least I know something I won't spend my time on next year, lol. If I'm being honest, I'm somewhat conflicted on the League being offered only to the kids in the District. I mean, in a lot of ways it's great because most of the families know each other, and if they don't then it's a cool way to be introduced. However, on the flip side the area we live in is a bit of a microcosm and in some ways this just closes the kids off even more. I dunno, no one complains about it so for now there's bigger fish to fry. Since we go through NFL Flag we get new jerseys through them each season. I had thought about a 'buyback' program and also a 'gently used' program, but it came back to manpower and storage space. It would take years to collect enough jerseys to pull something like that off, and they're always changing the dye lots, etc. The price from NFL Flag is fair ($25 for the jersey, $5 for the belt), but it would be cool to make registration even cheaper. I'll just hint at my personal view on the field fees, but I don't think we should be paying anything. The Town collects taxes and is maintaining the park regardless of how many groups use it. I dunno, in the end it's not much, but free is always better, lol - color me Libertarian I guess. I mentioned what we charge in the previous post, and the summary of the breakdown for this year looks like: $16,000 in Registration income $800 in Snack Shack income $5,000 in uniform expenses $750 in trophy (1st & 2nd Place per Division) expenses $5,700 in referee fees $2,300 in field lining fees $200 for field renting of the high school turf (Championship games under the lights) $1,100 for Insurance $450 in Miscellaneous (e.g. - footballs, tape, batteries, etc.) $700 in field fees $700 in website maintenance fees (i.e. - our share of the website annual fee + credit card processing fee) So in the end we'll probably post a $600 loss, but I'm okay with that especially since I increased the Registration fee from $100 to $110 this year. For the Semis and Championship games we did use the High School turf and ran the field perpendicular to the actual football field so that gave us lines for about 95% of the field which was nice. For the regular season games we have a large open space in Town that has room for a full size soccer field, two slightly smaller soccer fields, and a baseball field. So we drop one Flag field in the baseball out field (it's close to the parking lot), and then the two smaller soccer fields. And then in the picture I painted that purple field (it's only purple in the picture, lol) one time just because the walk to the farthest field is tough on the older spectators. The parking options aren't great and there's a good-sized hill you need to walk down to get from the baseball field to the lower fields. The coaches weren't a huge fan of the purple field but too bad for them - my wife's parents certainly appreciated it, and we only used it when we needed to run four games at once. On a regulation football you can easily fit three fields if you're shooting for 70Y x 30Y, and definitely four fields if you want 70Y by 25Y. A regulation football field is 160' from sideline to sideline so that ends up being 53 1/3 yards. That's obviously more than the 50Y you need for your inside length, but having the sideline be the front of the endzone is a tradeoff we've always been happy to live with, so the playing area is a little longer in those situations. Depending on the facility you may run short on endzone depth, but when we're at the high school we run 7Y endzones and no one seems to mind. Then a football field is 120Y from end-to-end so you've got plenty of space for 3 x 30Y or 4 x 25Y. Depending on what sports your field is painted for you might even get lucky that your soccer lines can serve as the back of your endzone. Our league invested in pylons before my term started and those are worth every penny in my opinion ... it makes for a cool look and an authentic feel. Our high school fields are literally brand new as of this Fall so Google's aerial imagery hasn't been updated yet, but I found this one which works. Sideline to sideline gets you 53 1/3 yards, then to the yellow line (Soccer) is 7Y for the back of the endzone. So the only part we don't have lines for - just using what's already painted on the carpet - is the sidelines of the endzones so just 28Y of the entire 188Y perimeter. Oh, and I guess we don't have the midfield line painted, but you get the idea. The Cash Calendar is just a glorified raffle. You sell tickets for something like $5/each or 5 for $20 in the month of June (for example) and then every day in July there's a cash prize, or mix in some gift cards which were donated or that the League bought. Passive fund raising is the best. I'll happily give a kid $25 for a Cash Calendar as opposed to $20 for cookies I'll just throw away, or for a discount card to stores I'll never go to. Plus you can just say, "Prizes to be determined," so that you can come up with your denominations based on how much you bring in and how much you want to pay out. My second favorite form of passive fund raising is when restaurants donate a portion of their proceeds. Panera is really got about that and also Chipotle. Any excuse to get takeout is a good one and it's the same thing ... I don't leave with something that I don't need. The restaurant ones might only get you $150, but it's $150 of income. The one other unsolicited thing I'll offer is to use a stiff policy with coaches, and in two specific areas: If a coach is a jerk - and there will be no doubt when it happens - sever the relationship. I guarantee you won't regret it. I've had guys yelling at my 14-year-old refs. I was like, "Dude, this is Flag Football ... settle down or I'm calling the Police." Create a culture of equal playing time. Despite my best efforts this is where I could do a lot better (though I have no leverage ... not like people are begging to coach). I try to set an expectation with the coaches that they come up with rotations pregame, but I still see tons of them making situational substitutions and parents telling me that their kid doesn't play as much as some of the other kids. I even gave them them this cheat sheet, but with little avail. And each Season I open with my line of, "You're competing for $9 trophies ... there's really nothing to win and these kids are not destined to be professional athletes. Your goal for any given week is to make sure each kid walks away feeling like he/she made a contribution." I don't know what your youngest age will be for your League, but I'd say to give consideration to the PreK/K ones as a 'skills & drills' Division. Man, those kids are hysterical. A couple of my favorite stories: In the first week I asked the kids what kind of cheer they wanted to do at the end and one girl suggested her Soccer team's cheer so we did that I bought plush footballs from Walmart for the catching drills and that was the smartest thing I did. In one of the weeks the kids just wanted to go deep, which was foolish, but you have to fight the fights you can win. I threw one pass about 20 yards and the kid took it square in the face. He laughed so I laugh about it now, but in the moment I was like, "Oh, sh*t, I just broke that kid." I love messing with the kids so one week I opened by saying, "We're going to do stations: first station is run until you cry; second station is run until you puke; third station is run until you drop. It's right here on the practice plan." Then I showed the plan to one of the kids and he said, "That's a smiley face!" Last, but not least, one thing I'm really proud of is that we do a donation drive every year. With NFL Flag they send you one football for every five registrations. For years we had footballs coming out the a$$. Then one year I said, "donate a pair of shoes and get a free football." Second year it was, "donate clothing and get a free football or choice of a raffle ticket for a Dick's Gift Certificate." And this year it was, "donate nonperishable food and get a free football or raffle ticket for a Dick's Gift Certificate." I'm not sure how to quantify how much we've raised over the three years, but that's probably been the most rewarding part of being the operator. Oh, and then I used one Gift Certificate as an incentive (raffle) for people to fill out the post-season survey. Now you know all my secrets. :) Definitely don't hesitate to reach out if there's any way I can help, and really nice getting to know you, Sam.

Great notes, also, and I'm happy to share as much as you need from our side. We're up in Massachusetts so our outdoor seasons are limited. We don't have Flag in this area as a High School sport yet, but it will happen eventually. There was an attempt last year to stand up a Female league, but it didn't take off. Another attempt this year and I think there is more traction so it's only a matter of time so that's pretty awesome. I'm not sure if anyone has tried for the Boys yet. Thanks for the IG note and if I can get the group together I mentioned I'll let you know. Our situation is a bit unique in that we aren't really a 'public' league. We run a league just for the three towns that make up our local school district so we can't really blanket advertise. I'm sure we can do better, but for right now it's just me running the League so I don't really have the [hu]man power. I'm hoping that if I can partner with those other sports we can share the cost and all benefit from the lift. Up until this year we ran Divisions of 1G/2G, 3G/4G, 5G/6G, and 7G/8G and we had about 150 kids in those Divisions. Then this year I started a PreK/K Division - which was HYSTERICAL - and that got us up to 170. PreK/K registration was $50 and the other Divisions were $110 (PreK/K is much cheaper because we don't need refs and don't play on lined fields). We'll end up taking a small loss this year just because our numbers are way down. Comparing the 1G to 8G numbers this year was the 150, last year was 177, the year before that 210 and before that 207. The 210 and 207 numbers were a bit inflated because that was during COVID and Flag Football was the only sport running, but it breaks my heart the haircut I took from last year to this year. People tell me not to worry about it, but that's little comfort. Most of the people who didn't return told me that they really like the League but their kids are just too busy. I can send you copy of our Spending Plan if you'd like? Each Summer we reach out to the Schools and ask them to include a note to the families, and limited success there. The newsletters the schools put out are okay, but I think maybe only 20% of people read them? And I don't think all principals included the note - hard for me to say as my youngest is a Freshman so aged out of our League last year. We have insurance through a local agent (I think the Policy is through Nationwide, though) and we pay about $1,100 annually for that. Kind of pricey since we only run the one Season, but we've never shopped around to my knowledge (WNYL started in 2016). There's a League called Spiked nearby (not sure what ruleset they use), and then Seacoast (SYFFL) is enormous and nearby. There's not really a ton of competition, though, since our big selling point is that the kids in WNYL will only play with / against kids they're in school with, compared to the other Leagues I mentioned who are open enrollment. I've heard good things about Spiked (Spring + Fall I think ... outdoor), and my youngest did SYFFL the past few Winters (indoor). We run via NFL Flag so we're registered through them. I like their rulebook, but it was just too much for the kids to understand (our refs are all High School kids) so I condensed it into this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CmDJlkmiIUUdqjjJo-SKsiF0nxNDSMdWvmcUgQ0wJWo/edit?usp=drive_link Speaking of refs, if you go with local kids I'd set expectations really low. I love all my refs, but they're probably 50/50 with catching calls. In fairness to the coaches the stuff that drives the adults crazy is when they miss a kid stepping out-of-bounds, or them getting lazy and not running along with the play. Each year we invite our 7th Graders to join the ref crew and they make $10/game in that first year and get mostly 1G/2G and 3G/4G games. In years 2+ they make $30 a game and get the older Divisions, too. We play 5v5 on a 30Y x 70Y field. I know NFL FLag switched to 25Y x 70Y at some point, but we never made that switch. No real reason for us to be on a larger field ... mostly that the extra 5Y didn't seem to be a big factor. Personally I like the 5v5 game, but I don't have experience with any other team sizes so no real basis-for-comparison to have a qualified opinion. Given the New England weather we run a Jamboree the weekend after Labor Day (each team plays three 'half' games), then we have six games over the next seven weeks for our Regular Season (we don't play on the long weekend in October), then semifinals the next week, and finals the week after that. So all-in everyone plays three Jamboree games, six regular season games, and at least one playoff game. Oh, and we do an eval night the week before Labor Day so that we can get the jerseys before the Jamboree. The evals are run by the coaches (volunteers) and I'd give us a C+ (maybe a B-) for the teams we assembled this Season. The non-Jamboree games are two 30 minute halves. All of our stuff is outside on fields here in town, and we pay $5/hr for a field usage fee. Oh, and we use scoreboards from Scoretronics ... there are a lot of options out there, but we've had really good success with those and the customer service is amazing. The setup (i.e. - scoreboard, cover, tripod) does run about $2,000 each, but we got a generous grant in our first year which covered the four we have. And one other note for you, I think there is money out there - if you have someone who's well versed you could probably come up with a base letter that you could tweak and go to a bunch of local businesses for some angel (/ recurring) money for your League. Or, do a Cash Calendar ... in my opinion those are essentially a permission slip to print money. I wanted to do one this year, but ran out of time and energy. A Lacrosse league in our district raised about $15K with those and they're about 200 registrants. If I raised $15K I'd only have to charge $5 or so for Registration - how awesome would that be, lol? Not sure if there's a Dick's Sporting Goods in your area, but they have an amazing program for supporting Youth Sports ... more info here. They generously donate a gift card and gift certificates to us each year - we use the gift card to buy supplies and raffle off the gift certificates. And really great job getting so many people interested in the League so quickly ... I'm sure the same success will follow for any other sports you add. Just let me know any other questions I can answer, and if you want to chat at sometime I'd be fine with that ... just message me and we can figure something out.

We have about 170 kids in the Flag Football sport in our League, but our Divisions only go up to 7G/8G. I tried starting a High School one this year and invited all the families from our Registration system who had a kid in High School and only got two kids so we had to punt on it. I think the biggest thing you're up against is that the kids get really busy: 1) they have jobs, 2) they have boy-/girlfriends, 3) they have High School sports. So I guess my advice is mostly to get the info to as many people as possible because that's your biggest barrier - that there are people out there who would do it, but just don't know it's an option. Even the Divisions we run they should be so much bigger but I constantly run into people who don't know it's an option. This Season I tried those pull tab posters with QR codes at all the popular destinations (e.g. - Convenience Stores, Ice Cream Stands, etc.) but that didn't help at all. We asked the Schools to include notes in the mass emails they send out, but also not very helpful. We posted on a ton of local Facebook groups, but the return there was pretty low. The vast majority of our Registrations were from returning families and then them telling their friends. Everyone says Lawn Signs are the Bees' Knees, though I only put out one sign this past year (we only have a dozen) so that might be a good option if you have enough runway to get them designed and printed? We also tried referral bonuses, but not much traction there. One final thought I have, but haven't been able to put into action, is that I believe no matter what city you live in you assume the following three sports are there: Baseball, Soccer, and Basketball. Other sports like Lacrosse, Flag Football, Field Hockey, and Wrestling are typically available as well, but go under the radar. I'm hoping to get reps from those other sports in our area to partner up and create some kind of clearing house where we invest in a mass mailing with hopes we can reach more people. In our League we also have: Soccer (Spring + Fall), Basketball (Winter), and Baseball (Spring). Flag Football is a Fall sport for us. I'm not sure how clearly this will paste, but these are the responses from our post-Season Survey for our Season which just ended:

But it's not even possible for compliance to be done by the League as that would mean we'd need to check every account against some kind of external list we maintain to see if we can send them marketing-type information. I guess that's possible, though completely impractical. And also create a channel by which someone can declare their intent to opt-out so we could manage that for current and future communications. @Marie Fitzgerald - if you're still watching this one could you share your thoughts? The "receive commercial emails" consent is at the Account level not the Registration level (i.e. - a person should not have to say, "Don't send me emails," for each Registration he/she creates). Does SE provide a way to manage the opt out? If not, how have Leagues done it? If the FTC determines a violation has occurred the fines can be massive, and they're on a per-email basis. And if there is a flag it shouldn't be all-or-nothing as the 'transactional or relationship' messages should still get delivered. More info on this is in the aforementioned article on the FTC site.

Is the absence of an "Unsubscribe" link compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act? If not doesn't that open SportsEngine / Leagues up to fines: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business ? An excerpt from the site:

Having the Sale item reflect the price including the late fee and then making an automatic discount is like wiping before you poop. It's a solution that "works" using the constraints of the system, but is not a very good solution because (a) it will misrepresent (i.e. - over-inflate) your income generated by those Sale Items (you'll need to peel off all the Discounts to get a more accurate picture), as well as (b) you need to create a discount for every Registration you have so you can control the date and have a tight coupling of the Discount used. Also, it looks goofy ... a person who registers on-time by ten seconds sees the over-inflated registration cost and then an "early bird" discount? To each his/her own, but I like what we did much better ... even if it did require me going in and flipping the default value on a specific date.

I wasn't a fan of the "Discount Code for Ontime Registration" so our Sale Items reflect the regular price and then we have a hidden question that defaults to 'No' and then on the date we want Late Fees to kick in we flip it to "Yes" (and the "Yes" has the 'Late Fee' Sale Item attached to it). It would also be great if the conditions for the fields could be non-fields. For example, to be able to set the default value for the aforementioned question based on "if today > 9/15/23" as opposed to only using the value of another field in the Registration. Though, thinking about it, I think the conditions only control show/hide as opposed to default values. We're a small League and across our four sports (Soccer, Baseball, Basketball, Flag Football) I don't think we've ever needed to waitlist anyone so can't help there, sorry. That said, I've yet to see a post by @freezinKT which wasn't articulate and well-thought-out so I'm inclined to say his solution is probably a really good one.