Parents emailing entire team?

[Proulx06]

Yesterday we had a parent (not a coach, not any sort of site admin) email our entire team. The issue? He took it upon himself to tell everyone the address for a game, but he was wrong. The correct address was already in the calendar entry. Fun times. 

 

I had no idea parents could email the entire team like that from the mobile app. Is there a way to disable that? Figure if parents want to talk they could just use the chat feature, but this particular email came through with the organizational banner, and really looked like it came from a coach/admin. 

[SportsEngine Staffer]

Ugh, not ideal. As a coach, I may or may not have lost my mind. 

 

Let me ask the group here a few options:

 

First, we plan on implementing a "1:1 chat" in addition to the full team chat. So keep that in mind. 

 

1) Do you think we should have the "Email Team and Staff" option only available to coaches/managers?

 

2) Should we disable the ability for parents to individually send emails altogether? If yes, should we wait until the "1:1 chat" feature first?

 

 

 

[Proulx06]

Yeah, it was not ideal, but I feel like parents lose their mind over lots of things, and so I'm happy more of them don't know this option exists, and that this was an honest mistake versus something more sinister. I do think this opens the door for parents to "vent" to everyone on the team, which I'd want to squash if I could. Only a matter of time before that happens, haha.

 

My thoughts:

 

-I do like parents being able to email a coach ("we can't make it friday but we'll be there saturday", or "timmy's birthday is friday we'll bring cupcakes"), or another parent ("timmy needs a ride"), but maybe just limit the ability to email the 'Email Team and Staff' list? That feels clunky but would have stopped this one in its tracks. Coaches and site admins would be able to email everyone. 

 

-That said, the 1:1 chat would allow them to ping the coach (assuming they have the app installed...whole other topic, haha, but probably relevant here) and the other parent, but would still limit their ability to contact everyone. 

 

Entirely possible that this parent could have done what he did within the chat feature...but I guess just having it in the email gave it a little more weight, helped along by the fact that it had our organizational banner at the top, which is ALWAYS (until now) an official org message. This time, though, it looked like an org message but was not. 

 

 

[Mike Kaczmarek]

We run a high school program and we've made the choice to have the student athletes have their own primary accounts. This way they are held accountable and responsible for RSVPing to events and all the chats and messaging are among coaches and the players.

Parents are invited to create a Sports Engine account and to be a Fan of their child's team and can see the schedule but don't participate in chats, messages and email storms. 

The downside is we need to do behind the scenes processing to connect parents to the players so we can send the parents team appropriate communications. This would be a great feature to have.

[Proulx06]

@mikekaz - could you set it up where the parents are guardians of the kids? I believe that would give them the ability to interact with the team through the mobile app. 

[Mike Kaczmarek]

We don't want guardians to have the ability to interact with the team. We believe it builds accountability and responsibility in the kids if only the players and coaches can participate in the chat and to RSVP. 

 

We have team representatives that communicate with parents to take the burden off the coaches and free the coaches to spend their time with the athletes. Ideally guardians should be able to have their own community for communications with their team representative so they can understand schedules, logistics, volunteer opportunities, etc.. but it should be separate from what the players and coaches use. Unfortunately, that feature doesn't exist just yet.

 

 

[SportsEngine Staffer]

MikeKaz, you bring up awesome points and as we continue to build out our team features we often discuss the "older reponsible kid" and the need to have them be the ones interacting.

 

With that said, we do have a bias towards safety. We believe that parents should be copied on communications to athletes. That's the way it's designed today.

 

One way I look at it, is first.... who is the financially responsible person? That should be the account owner, and the athlete a profile under that account. If you want the athlete to RSVP and Chat etc, have them create an account and add them as a guardian.

 

Now, that doesn't necessarily create the experience you are looking for, and I imagine we'll continue to work out use cases and put together features to meet what you're doing. 

 

Thanks for being a part of the Community!