Quick Jump To: Volunteer Info | Team Page | View Roster | E-mail Team | TeamApp  | SportsConnect Association | SportsManager

Welcome to SportsConnect Club

Welcome to SportsConnect in Melrose Youth Soccer.  Regardless of whether you have been a coach in Melrose before or not, this guide should be useful in helping you use our new software system.  And please return here frequently as we'll update this page with more information as we learn more about the system and the questions people have with it. 

First, for general coach information, see the general Coaches & Volunteers page in the Program Info section of our web site.  This page is intended to only focus on the use of the software system. 

Second, please also read the Parent Guide to SportsConnect as it covers a lot of the basic information about using SportsConnect.  And that includes information about volunteering for a coaching role if you haven't already done so. 

Navigating to Your Volunteer Info

From the My Account page after logging in, you can see the status of your volunteer role by clicking on Volunteer in the left side navigation.  If you have been assigned to a team, you'll see that info displayed on the page.  In SportsConnect, the text under your name indicates what program you volunteered for, what grade grouping you volunteered for, and to which team you have been assigned.  If you don't see a team assignment, that means you haven't yet been assigned to a team. 

You'll also see information in the Volunteer section about the status of adult training and clearances.  For more information on that process, see the Mass Youth Soccer page. 

From this Volunteer page, you can click on the blue name of the team you are coaching to visit the Team Page for your team.  The Team Page is where you will find the tools to manage your team.  Bookmark this page so you can jump to your specific Team Page directly in the future.  

Using the Team Page

It is recommended that you use a computer for your Team Page.  The layout gets just too small and strips away some capability when doing it on a phone screen. (If you prefer to use your phone for this sort of thing, see TeamApp info below.)  

The Team Page is where you can find your roster and if you click to Print Roster, you'll be able to add in the information about the players and download that roster using the Export button.  Note that this is not the roster you would print to bring with you on game day (more on that below).  The Edit Roster button won't be of much use here to travel coaches so you can ignore that.  

Your Calendar is visible on the Team Page.  Important note: games will not be visible in your calendar here in SportsConnect (more on that below).  But if you want as a coach to add practices, you can create them here using the Create Event button.  Note that the calendar here shows only your team info and not any full league events - for the full league events, go to the league calendar.

The e-mail capability is pretty easy to use.  Just click on that tab, enter a subject and message, and then choose "Select All" to send a message to everyone.  Then click Send. 

And if you like, you can replace the stock image on the Team Page with your own image. 

Things to do inTeamApp

TeamApp is the "app" version of SportsConnect.  It links to the data in our SportsConnect database which means that you don't need to do anything to use it other than let [email protected] know that you want to use it for your team.  When TeamApp is activated for your team, all of the parents on the team will receive an e-mail message inviting them to join the app for your team and will include a link to download the app.  One of the great things about TeamApp is that even if a few parents don't choose to get the app, it will send them e-mails instead.  So you don't need to force everyone to get it to still benefit from using it as a coach.  And the coach tools are more robust in the app than they are in the main SportsConnect.  

When you log into the app, use the same e-mail and password you use for the main SportsConnect site.  If it asks you to create an account (i.e. shows you the password field twice), then you are using the wrong e-mail address.  You can also log into the TeamApp web site to do a lot of the things you might do on the phone but on a computer.  You will see the same data on both the app and the web site.  

When you want to send a message to your team, you will want to use the “News” feature.  Tap on the News tile on the home screen for MYS and then click the triple dot menu (a “kebab”) and then the ‘+’ for a new news item.  When you write a news item this way, it will send a push alert through the app to all team members that they can click on to read.  It will also send an e-mail message to users who do not have the app set up with their account.  If you want a more interactive form of communication, you can use the chat feature in the app.  The Chat tile is also on the home screen for MYS.  However keep in mind that this only works within the app and it doesn’t send e-mail notifications to non-app users like News does.  A few of you may end up connected to multiple teams in the app.  If that happens, you may need to specify which team you will be acting with when creating a news item, a chat, or a schedule.  Just make sure you have the right team selected before you proceed with the action.  There are a few other features that you can play around with.  And there are a few features that are available I haven’t turned on because I didn’t want to clutter up the app.  So if you have a “I wish I could…”, let me know and maybe it is already there.  And definitely let me know if you find problems or setup issues or just generally have questions.  The app is “free” when it is ad-supported but as we discovered previously, the ads could be really obnoxious and even scammy so we’ve paid to get rid of the ads.  You might still see an ad on the launch page, before switching into the Melrose Youth Soccer world but once you are in MYS, it should be clear of junk.  
At some point a parent who is not yet connected in the app is going to ask you how to join the team.  The answer is simple - they just need to be part of their player's account.  Say for example the player's mother signed them up to play and the father just has shown up to games but now he wants to see the schedule in the app.  The only way for the father to be added to the app is for the mother to add him as an "additional user" in the SportsConnect site.  Once added in the main site, the info will automatically appear in the app.  So if you have any parents who want to join, tell them to go to the Parent Guide To SportsConnect page.  Again, that is the only way to be added to the TeamApp account. 

Things to do in SportsConnect Association

Stack Sports now owns a few products and have renamed them as "SportsConnect".  The league software that Middlesex is using this season is called SportsConnect Association (SCA, formerly called "Affinity Sports") and interfaces with SportsConnect Club (SCC, formerly called "BlueSombrero") so that you only need one login and same the team information is visible in both SCC and SCA similar to how things used to be when SportsManager was used at both club and league level.  

The travel schedule is publicly available to everyone at https://myslfall24.sportsaffinity.com.  Parents can go there and either search by team name or select the “Flight” (grade and division) of your team and then look in the schedule.  It shows the field location and has a link to a map.  All of the info that parents used in Middlesex’s former SportsManager system is visible here through the other tabs on the top.  

For Middlesex coach admin activities, you’ll be using the SCA site.  The login link is https://ma-adultinfo.affinitysoccer.com/Foundation/Login.aspx  You use the same sign-on information as when logging into the Melrose SCC.  You’ll find the SCA site works better on a computer than on a phone or tablet.  

Before the season, you will need to make sure the roster has jersey numbers included.  Start with MyAccount, then choose the Teams tab and the Teams subtab if it is not already selected.  Click on Team Info on the right.  Under the list of names, click for the button named “Edit Player Team Info” (2nd row, 2nd column).    Enter jersey numbers in the Home Jrs# column, the first column, and click Save Changes.  You can also review the visual guide just using the first set of steps 1 through 8.  

You will also need to make sure that you have a valid photo for yourself in the system so it will show on the roster.  When logged in, go to My Account and then in the blue rectangle at the top, click on the picture next to your name.  If you already have one you want to replace, first Delete the existing one, then click the blank picture place again.  Choose an image (following the do/don’t guidelines), edit as needed, and then click Upload Image.  Also note that if you upload a picture in SCC, it should propagate into SCA at some point though we don’t know for sure how quickly so going directly to SCA is a safe bet for now.  

For game day, you need to bring two printed copies of a roster as you had needed to do in past seasons.  To get the roster, login to your account and at the top click on MyAccount.  Select the Teams tab if it is not already selected and then select the Tournament & Schedule Apps subtab.  On the right, click the Schedules/Game Scoring link.  Scroll down to the upcoming game and click to Print Roster.  For now, you can use this roster for each week even though it will show a different game date, but if  you are able to get a new game day roster for each game, that would be better.  SportsConnect has a visual guide for these steps too but note that the screenshots in the guide are from the old look of the system.  

Note that if either your team’s roster or your opponent’s roster is not yet activated, you will get a message saying you can’t yet print the roster for the game.  In that case, please contact your travel coordinator to let them know and they will be able to get you a roster for the game.  And they can check into whether it is your team that is not activated yet and if so, see about getting it activated.  (Activation status is the equivalent to Approved status in SportsManager.)  

After a game, to score it, go back to the place where you printed your roster.  There are empty blocks labeled "Score" after each team name and those are clickable boxes (despite there not being a button).  Click on the box to enter a score for each team.  

Player Passes and Game Cancelation details are not yet available but check back again later for updates. 

Things to do in SportsManager

Nothing.  SportsManager will not be used by Middlesex this fall. 

Thanks again for coaching!