Quick Jump To: Volunteer Info | Team Page | Manage Roster | Calendar | E-Mail Team | TeamAppWelcome to SportsConnect
We have been using SportsConnect for a few seasons in Melrose now and as a coach, you'll find this guide has useful info in it - whether you are new to SportsConnect entirely, new to it as a coach, or even have used it in the past.
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.
One question coaches may get often is about how one parent gets messages and the other does not. That is not something that coaches can manage - it's something that the parents do themselves and that's explained in the Parent Guide. So when a parent asks you about that, point them to the Parent Guide.
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 the team name in blue, that means you haven't yet been assigned to a team.
Clicking the blue text of your team will bring you to your Team Page. 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.
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.
Using the Team Page
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. The Roster tab is where you can edit the roster to add jersey numbers.
Your
Calendar is visible on the Team Page. It will show your game schedule and 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. There was a bug in the coach e-mail functionality that has now been fixed so you will be able to send messages to your team normally now.
And finally, if you like, you can replace the stock image with your own image.
Using the Team App
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 - just include your name, your role on the team, and the team namee. 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.