Your program’s registration period has come to a close and you have already managed orders and transferred the necessary players to their appropriate divisions. Now what? With the season start date quickly approaching, preparing for game day can feel like a lot to manage, whether you are a seasoned professional or new to youth sports administration.

This list of five steps to take following registration will help ensure you utilize all of the pre-season features within your platform and the DICK’S Team Manager mobile app, keeping your job simple and efficient.

1.Build teams – When registration is complete, the next step is to build teams. Using the DICK’S Team Sports HQ team builder, you have four ways to do this easily, based on your program’s specific needs.

  • Auto-assign teams – Automatically and evenly assigns players and volunteers according to set criteria.
  • Add previous teams – Automatically assign all players and volunteers from a previous season to their old teams.
  • Manually create teams – Manually place players and personnel on each team.
  • Import teams – Import your roster from a CSV file.

If your state or governing affiliation uses the Affinity platform, you can easily submit your teams with the click of a button.

2. Set up an online store – Before your website traffic increases at the start of the season, you want to set up your Fan Wear store (if you haven’t already). In your Fan Wear storefront, family and friends can purchase gear with your program’s logo and even personalize it with their player’s name and number. Simply upload your logo and choose your color and template options, and you are ready to start earning money back on every order.

3. Post rosters – Posting your roster online will alert members and give them the ability to view their respective team webpage and update their player profile. If certain divisions have a try-out or evaluation process, you can also send out accepted or rejected email notifications to inform players of their try-out result.

  • Individual Team Pages (or micro-sites) are automatically created upon the roster posting. These are often used by coaches to update their practice schedule, share news and photos, and communicate with their team.
  • Please note that Team Pages and Team Central are only visible to registered team players, personnel and parents for privacy reasons. However, you can adjust the visibility to include the public or all registered users by updating the settings. Certain personally identifiable information will remain hidden for players under the age of 13 in accordance with COPPA regulations.
  • This is also a good time to run some preliminary reports. Popular pre-season reports include the Uniform Report, which provides a summary of jersey sizes entered during registration, and the Team Roster Report, which contains the contact information for all players and personnel. These are both located in the reports section of the admin site.

4. Create schedules – Creating schedules can oftentimes be the most time-consuming aspect of preparing for the new season. However, with DICK’S Team Sports HQ, it can be made much easier. There are various ways to create your schedule, including:

  • Importing excel schedules
  • Auto-generating with full details (date, time, location, matchup)
  • Auto-generating with pairing only
  • Creating tournaments (single or double elimination)

Once your schedule is posted, it will appear on your program’s online calendar. Games will appear on respective team pages, giving players and parents a more filtered view of the season. Additionally, coaches can add team practices and events to the team page calendar. The website admin will need to update the coach’s user permissions in order to grant coaches this access.

5. Download the DICK’S Team Manager mobile app – Once your rosters and schedules are finalized, encourage your players, parents, and team personnel to download the DICK’S Team Manager mobile app (available in the Apple Store or Google Play). This app gives teams a centralized location for rosters, scheduling, messaging, and photo sharing all in the palm of their hands. It is also a great way for coaches to quickly communicate with players and parents about game or practice changes, as they are synced from the team page to the app in real time.

With DICK’S Team Sports HQ, preparing for the season can be easy and organized. For more tips on managing your program, check out our support site.