This month’s release included a few minor updates to our team management tools in addition to some added personal calendaring functionality and a major break through with the look and feel for our club and league software.  Read further for feature details and how to take advantage of them.

More Pages and Control over Hierarchy

Teams and clubs often have tonnes of information they’d like to post to their site, so we’ve increased the maximum number of pages from 16 to unlimited, while offering an extra level of page hierarchy.  Now you can easily tag each of your links and custom pages to a category which should help you manage and organize your team/club/league information a little better.  The screen shot below shows how links, pages and categories work together.

“Remember Me” Finally Remembers You

A small bug that had been eluding us for a while now has been fixed.  If you’re tired of logging into the site, simply check the “remember me” box the next time you enter your email and password and the system will keep you logged into the site for next time.

Personal Calendar Subscribing

For those of you out there that rely on your calendar application to organize your life (much like I do), you’re going to love this next feature.  Members can now subscribe to the TeamPages calendar and keep up to date in their personal calendar program (Outlook 2007, iCal, Google Calendar, etc.).  Take advantage of this time-saving tool by clicking “my calendar” and looking for the subscribe link in the header.  From here a pop up box will provide a web address to copy into your calendaring application.

Club and League White Label Solution (Beta)

With TeamPages fast approaching the 1 year anniversary of its launch of club and league software, we’re excited about the recent enhancement we’ve made when it comes to customizing the look and feel of the platform.  Check out one of the teams part of the Windy City Wanderers Football Club:

The new white label version of TeamPages allows for greater branding for the organization by through:

• Customized header, domain and team sub domains
• Player profiles that include the organization’s banner
• Organization branded log in and FAQ pages

For other examples of white labeled sites, or to learn more about to get your organization setup, contact the TeamPages sales team at 800.500.7203 x. 2 or sales@teampages.com.

We recently received this poem from George and Peggy Goldtrap from the Daytona Beach Senior Softball Association and thought it was too good not share with everyone this holiday season. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Twas The Night Before Christmas and out on the field,

The play was exciting – the tension was real

Henry’s in his team shirt and I’m in my cap

We bat 9 and 10 so we were taking a nap.

The game score was tied – excitement was high

Both teams were wishing they’d drawn a bye.

The top of the 7th – defense was a must

Everyone knew it was score here or bust.

The home team was primed with a steel tight infield,

And outfielders ready, no runs would they yield.

Now who is the batter, who’d become a big star

By slamming a homer from Strickland to Mars?

Could be Frankie, or Tom, Billy, Bruce, or By,

Who’d take up the challenge and hit to the sky?

The tension was building, the outfield was deep

Knowledge, playing ability and experience are all useful assets as a soccer coach.

Looking the part is something any coach can get right, but it is amazing how many don’t.

Turning up in construction boots, with soiled jeans and looking like something the cat’s dragged in, will mean the coach better do a super job with his soccer practice. He or she is 0 for 1 before the soccer skills work gets goings.

Jeff Tipping, the Director of Coaching for the NSCAA, when he came on board as the full-time director a few years ago, insisted that the staff instructors adhered to a strict dress code. We were and still are sponsored by Adidas.

So it was red shirt, black shorts, red socks on Sunday; navy blue shirts, red shorts and navy socks on Monday; and so on.

As Jeff said at the time, “If you can’t coach, you better look like an f***ing coach!” I totally agree with him.

There is much more to soccer coaching than looking the part, but it is a great start.

Pity our Dad Coach hasn’t quite got the message below. He’s tried hard, but he is just a tad out of date.

Ah, well! Nice try!

Download the original attachment
The Dynamic Dueler

As a defensive midfielder, you have a crucial role in the success of your team. You are holding back a veritable dam of opponents just waiting to attack and scoring the winning goal. While you are not an offensive player, your position is key to offensive success because you allow them to do their job. However, this can be a lot of responsibility for one player.

Every moment of every game brings with it opportunities for duels and other high impact face downs on the field. The pressure mounts, as each move has the potential to change the outcome of the game. While most people would shrink back in the face of such conflict, you must take it on and conquer it. In order to perform your role as chief tackler and director of the defense, you will need a specific set of skills and personal attributes.

1. Ball handling skills. Courage is important in duels, but your opponents will be quick to call your bluff if you don’t have the superb technical skills to back up your bravado. While defensive midfielders must be strong in all soccer techniques, a lack of ball handling skills will be an immediately obvious shortcoming with the potential to undermine your entire game.

2. Leadership ability. It’s no wonder this position has supplied so many of the world’s top team captains. Because defensive midfielders work in front of the defensive line, they are the natural choice for coordinating the movements of different players. However, this is more than a matter of mere positioning. Defensive midfielders are by nature and by definition leaders, able to assess situations, form a plan and inspire others to follow through.

3. Courage. It takes a lot of gumption to go up against an entire offensive line, but for a defensive midfielder, it’s all in a days’ work. The key to success in this position is not just skill, but also fearlessness and an unwavering sense of confidence. Luckily, you will have opportunities in every single game to develop these traits.
4. Fearlessness in dueling. No player will see as many duels as this player and this makes courage under pressure a must-have personality trait. There can be no shrinking from a challenge or backing away from difficult situations for defensive midfielders. The very best defensive midfielders don’t just face duels; they enjoy them and even look forward to them.

5. Resilience and stamina. Soccer experts estimate that no player covers as much area as the defensive midfielder. So you will have to handle the challenges of the position from an often tired and overtaxed body. You will need to have mental resilience as well, to be able to overcome obstacles and think creatively for long periods of time without growing discouraged or losing vigor. Luckily, stamina and resilience are both traits that can be developed over time.

This is a long and diverse list of traits, but what they all have in common is strength; both physical and psychological. Although defensive midfielders are best known for their leadership skills, mental and physical strength are by far the defining features of this position. While some talent is inherited, no amount of good genes can make up for practice and dedication.

Do you think you have what it takes to meet the challenges of this high impact and high action position? If you have the physical strength to run up and down the field for hours at a time as well as the mental strength to meet every duel with a brave face and a quick mind, you are sure to have a long and notable time in the position of defensive midfielder.

When my wife and I ask our kids how they are doing in school, the answer is always ‘great’. Fortunately, many of their teachers email us weekly progress reports which give us a clearer, more accurate picture how they are really doing. However, nothing beats a parent/teacher conference, especially when our child is included.

One year, based on a parent’s suggestion, I decided to offer player/parent/coach meetings for the competitive youth soccer team I was coaching. My only regret was that I did not do it earlier. It turned out to be very valuable for players and parents alike. To this day, I still get compliments from the parents that were part of that team.

First, I wrote individual evaluations for each player. This was followed up with a face-to-face meeting with each player and his parents. Below, I describe the process in more detail.

Evaluations

With out latest update, we are proud to announce our new Attendance Features that have been eagerly requested by our members for quite some time.

The new benefits include the ability to view your season’s attendance all at once, a default “not responded” attendance setting, and changes to the permisson settings for editing team attendance.

For our Pro teams, we have released an optional discussion board which they can seamlessly integrate on their TeamPage.

Some of the smaller features in this update include:

• Stats Improvement (Turnovers in Basketball, Goals Against for Soccer, Improved Field Hockey Stats, and Better Stats for Fast Pitch Softball)
• The printable list for viewing events should now be cleaner
• Double and Single Zeros can now be used as player numbers

As always, be sure to add a message on our forums or send us an email at talk-to-us@teampages.com if you have any more feature requests!

During challenging economic times like these, successful fundraising is vitally important because it gives athletes the resources they need to achieve their goals.

Here are some costly mistakes that doom most fundraising campaigns:

MISTAKE #1: Asking your athletes to sell products or services

Expect dismal profits and a lot of aggravation if you select a fundraiser that requires your athletes to sell products or services. Why? Athletes HATE selling stuff. They find it time-consuming and uncomfortable.

Selling is challenging even for trained professionals with years of experience. For student-athletes, it is nearly impossible, and very few reach their sales goals. Some athletes succeed, but the majority will fail.

Avoid selling if you want to have a profitable fundraiser. It has caused more campaign failures than anything else.

MISTAKE #2: Letting a fundraising company take 50% or more of YOUR money!

If it’s been a while since you had a good old fashioned Charlie horse, it’s easy to forget how excruciatingly painful a muscle cramp can be. While no one knows precisely what causes cramps, there are things that athletes (and anyone, for that matter) can do to avoid them.

My son, an avid soccer player, started suffering from regular muscle cramps the summer of his sixteenth year – just after his travel season began. Watching him writhe in pain on the field was enough to catapult me into research mode, and what started as a simple inquiry into the cause of muscle cramps turned into weeks of research RE: the nutritional needs of soccer players. In the end, I had compiled hundreds of pages of research. As a self-proclaimed health nut, I always believed I was doing a pretty good job of seeing to the nutritional needs of my athletic children. (Who didn’t, it must be said, share my passion for health food.) As it turned out, I was falling far short of the mark. Here are a few of the things I learned:

Soccer players do not have to trap the ball before making a pass. By perfecting one-touch passing, players can still control the ball and get it down the field quicker and toward the opponent’s goal.

It’s crucial to have excellent technique when making one-touch passes because the ball sometimes bounces on arrival and teammates want to make as smooth a pass as possible. On a one-touch pass, the lead foot isn’t the one that will do the kicking; it should be on the side of the ball, almost touching it, and pointed in the direction that the player will be kicking the ball. This foot serves as a guide for the direction of the ball.

A player will make a one-touch pass with the inside of the back foot. A sturdy ankle, in the so-called “locked” position, allows the player to hit the ball squarely and with momentum. Ending with a good follow-through is extremely important because the ball will follow that same direction.

Practicing one-touch passing is easy. Have two players stand opposite each other so they can pass the ball back and forth. Start with short passes and remember to pass with control. Mix the passes so the players use each foot. Eventually, the players can move back for longer passes, but a possession game of one-touch passes is using done from close range.

Thank you to all the teams that tried out our new Fan Section and took part in our Fan Contest! Without further ado, congratulations to the Milton Winterhawks Atom Select, the winners of our recent Fan Contest! The Milton, Ontario based Winterhawks had 26 confirmed Fans as of October 15th, giving them the grand prize of a $200 Gift Certificate to go towards their team wrap-up party. Thank you again everyone who took part in the competition, and remember that you too can engage your die-hard fans through your TeamPage.

Milton Winterhawks

Here are the final results of Confirmed Fans:

1. Milton Winterhawks Atom Select – 26 Fans
2. Caledon Hawks Minor Peewee – 16 Fans
3. CSS Sabers – 14 Fans
4. Indiana Diamond Kings – 14 Fans
5. Stitchking Senators – 12 Fans
6. FC Lady Patriots – 12 Fans
7. KC Blue Sox – 11 Fans
8. DC Pink Sox – 11 Fans
9. 98 COBRAS – 10 Fans
10. OSHS Greyhounds – 9 Fans

Stay tuned for more contest in the future!