For the second year in a row, the TeamPages crew will be taking a road trip down to Seattle for SoccerPalooza!

SoccerPalooza is a FREE, day long celebration hosted by Washington State Youth Soccer that includes informative workshops, a vendor show and of course, lots of free swag.

If you’re in the area or planning to attend, please come visit our booth and say hi.

1. Real-time scores, standings and stats

Share the workload by letting your coaches update scores and stats. Within seconds a game score can be entered by a coach or administrator, which automatically updates league standings. This results in more up-to-date information and keeps players and parents coming back to the site.

>>> learn more

2. Better communication with everyone

With tools such as text and email blasts, you can send customized messages to your entire organization or to almost any sub-group of members within your league such as parents, coaches, board members and players.  The news and announcement section of your homepage also has the option of broadcasting the information to your membership’s email, meaning you only have to post the information once.  Also, with message boards and discussion forums, your members have a place to participate in the ongoing dialogue.

3. Live scheduling and automatic updates

The TeamPages ‘live’ scheduling feature will automatically generate an email, and, at the members request, a text message any time there is a schedule change or game cancellation.  This eliminates the need for time consuming and ineffective ‘phone trees’.

4. Share photos and videos while creating a vibrant online community

Imagine one place where coaches, parents and athletes can connect with one another and share their favorite memories, photos and videos. With TeamPages you get your own online community, like Facebook, but built specifically with sports organizations in mind.

5. Give your coaches the tools they need

With the TeamPages league management software, every coach gets their own TeamPage to help manage everything from schedules and announcements, to rosters, stats, photos and videos.  Even if they’ve never setup a website before, every single one of your coaches can be up and running in less than 4 minutes.

6. It’s safe and secure

All TeamPages are password protected and allow you to set different privacy settings, providing you and your team with one safe and central place online to post all your team’s information and get your team on the same page.

7. It’s quick, it’s easy!

In less than 30 minutes, you can have a branded new website up and running for your club or league. With TeamPages point and click interface, you don’t have to know any code to get setup, and you no longer need a webmaster to update the site throughout the year.You can also setup more than one administrator with adjustable permission settings.

Learn more by visiting http://leagues.teampages.com.

 League software gets some love.

We just released a couple of new features that make our recently launched league management software that much more flexible and powerful.  Designed and built from user feedback we’ve added the following functionality to TeamPages:

• League leaders - once activated, this feature takes game stats and compiles them into a feed on the league page.  Completely automated and always up to date, league leaders lets everyone see who’s lighting it up.
• Scoring confirmation and challenges - now leagues have the ability to let their coaches score and confirm games.  No more reporting and waiting for a single webmaster to update the website, league scores and standings are always up to date.

In addition to some updates to the league software, we also fixed a few glitches and made some minor improvements to the TeamPage itself.  Issues with editing photo captions have been erased, the video section now displays the most recent videos first and baseball statisticians can account for thirds of innings pitched while also setting the number of innings per game for accurate ERA calculations.

Leave us your feedback.

As is the case with many of our features, each one listed above was the result of user feedback.  So yes we want to hear from you so please drop us a note, or visit our forums and let us know what you think, offer a suggestion or just say hi.

We love hearing about new sports and ways people are keeping active and having fun.  This guest article is written by our friends from the 2009 Pro-Am Beach Soccer, enjoy.

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One Love: Beach Soccer for Life

The cover of One Love, by Levon Biss and Steve Rushin is a powerful expression of soccer as a life style that has not only transcended cultures and generations, but also as a sport that has adapted to all sorts of surfaces re-conquering the world!

From the coasts of the Philippines, United States, Spain, Mexico, Haiti, Uruguay and the list goes on, Beach Soccer, has increased its popularity tenfold since its foundation in Brazil in 1992 by Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW). It’s really amazing!

Although this perfect coffee book table for soccer lovers has awesome pictures of soccer being played in other non-pitches places – a torn up street or a backyard - I can talk about Beach Soccer for Life! Here are some basics if you are new to Beach Soccer:

Players - Five players at a time, including the goalkeeper and unlimited amount of substitutions, from a selection of 3 to 5 players. Throw-ins and kick-ins mean the pace and flow of the game is much higher than regular soccer. Goal kicks are taken by the goalie using his hands to throw the ball.

Gear - Shoes are not allowed, although ankle guards are permitted. You can also wear special sand socks.

Length of Game - A game lasts thirty-six minutes, and is split up into three twelve-minute periods

Fouls and Restarts - Any fouls committed lead to a free kick on goal, which has to be taken by the player who was fouled, unless awarded for deliberate handling. Yellow and red cards can be issued. However unlike in the main game, when a player receives a yellow card he must leave the pitch for two minutes and the team must play with four players for that duration of time. When a player receives a red card, he is dismissed from the game entirely – unlike in 11-a-side soccer, the team can bring on a substitute to replace the dismissed player after two minutes.

World Cup – FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, managed by FIFA Beach Soccer S.L. since 2005.

2009 Pro-Am Beach Soccer – Tournaments hosted by US former National Beach Soccer Coach, Tighe O’Sullivan. Next up is Santa Cruz (May 30/31), followed by Stinson Beach (June 20/21), Ocean Beach SF (September) and San Diego (October).  Registrations and more info at: www.proambeachsoccer.NET

Looking forward to sharing with you this One Love!

(Beach soccer rules source: Wikipedia.org)

We were experiencing some connectivity issues to our West Coast data center this morning from 8:30 - 10am. Our hosting provider, Engine Yard, has their cluster engineers and data center looking into the root cause of these issues.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

-Support at TeamPages

Last September we offered TeamPages users the ability to create their own sub-domain within the TeamPages network.  This week we’re excited to announce that you can now buy and transfer domain names through TeamPages!

How do I buy or transfer my team’s domain?

Buying or transferring your domain takes only minutes.  First, visit http://teampages.shopco.com, then search for your domain which will lead your through an easy 3-step process.

It’s been a while since our last post, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy here at the TeamPages HQ.  Scheduled for later this week we have a series of updates that should help with site performance (i.e. make things faster), and TeamPages CEO Mike Tan, was interviewed on Canada AM this morning http://www.ctv.ca/canadaam.

Also, with the harsh Canadian winter nearly gone,  we recently registered a company team in a local soccer league (http://www.urbanrec.ca).  You’ll be able to follow us all season long (April 26 - June 28th) by visiting our TeamPage at sundaysoccer.teampages.com.

Thanks,

Derek from TeamPages

TeamPages is embarking on a nation wide media blitz and to assist we want to hear your success stories.  How has TeamPages helped you as a coach, busy parent, or a busy athlete.

Please email andrea.bava@teampages.com with details, including:

• Your Name
• Location
• Email
• Phone Number
• A few quick sentences or billeted points on how TeamPages has helped you

Thanks for all your support!

Derek from TeamPages

We are getting ready for a big release that takes place within the next 24 hours.  League and club administrators will now have access to an expanded tool set, allowing them to schedule entire leagues with our multi-game scheduler, send important updates to anyone and everyone in their organization via email or text and manage the content of their website without needing a webmaster (they actually use the same interface as a TeamPage!)

Imagine being invited as a coach or manager to a TeamPage where your schedule, roster and important announcements were already up to date.  What if the moment a game was canceled, postponed or changed, all of your players and parents received a message about the update immediately.  Imagine being able to check out what the other teams and coaches in your league and club were up to.  Wouldn’t this make it easier for everyone?

We hope it does and we’re willing to let you see for yourself. Contact either myself or Mike Tan by emailing sales@teampages.com or calling 1-800-500-7203 ext. 2 to schedule a demo and receive a 1 month trial of our brand new management software for your league or club.

Thanks and keep playing,

Derek from TeamPages

Formatting issues were resolved this morning at 9:10 am thanks to our development team that worked hard to right the ship.  Thanks to everyone who contacted us to point out specific areas that were affected.

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Your TeamPage may be experiencing some formatting issues over the next couple of hours.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.  We appreciate your patience as our talented dev team is hard at work squashing bugs and will have the site back running smoothly within the next couple of hours.

If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to support@teampages.com or call 1-800-500-7203 to talk to a real person.

Thanks and keep playing,

Derek from TeamPages

The response we’ve received from designers around the world has been spectacular!  The contest we are hosting at 99designs.com has received almost 100 different submissions from dozens of very talented designers over the last week.   With only 2 days left we are getting ready to choose a winner and we could really use your feedback!

To view all of the submissions click here: http://99designs.com/contests/15524 or copy and paste the link into your browser.  After you’ve picked a favorite, either post a comment to our blog, send an email to talk-to-us@teampages.com or join the discussion happening on 99designs.

Thanks and keep playing,

Derek from TeamPages