It feels as though we just released the new-look TeamPages (I guess it was only a month ago), but our development team has done it again!  They have been hard at work making TeamPages Pro a reality and since our beta release last night, we are overwhelmed with the feedback and support we’ve already received.

TeamPages Pro is a result of the many emails, messages and phone calls we receive daily from our community requesting features, reporting bugs and working with us to make TeamPages even better.  Many of you who read this blog regularly, contribute to our forums and contact us with suggestions, might notice your accounts have been upgraded automatically to the Pro version.  We hope you enjoy your free 1-year subscription and continue to update us with your success stories.  If you’re reading this and wondering where your free upgrade is, please contact me at derek.story@teampages.com as we’re giving away free upgrades during the first week.

Some of the new features now available with TeamPages Pro include:

• Custom header colors
• Custom pages and links
• Sponsor show case section
• Sub-domains (also available on TeamPages Basic)
• Unlimited photo and document uploads
• Printer friendly rosters, schedules and game sheets

If you haven’t already checked out the new TeamPages Pro, click here to see how it compares. Still not sure? We enjoy talking on the phone too, so feel free to contact us at our customer support number 1-800-500-7203.

Thanks and keep playing,

Derek at TeamPages

 We’d like to say thank you to all of our members and all the great feedback we’ve received.  Based on much of your feedback, our designers and developers have been hard at work creating a fresh new look for TeamPages that will help everyone navigate the site more easily.

All the features are still there (schedules, announcements, rosters, site admin, message boards, etc.) but some will have a more modern look and feel.  Let us know what you think about the new design by taking a short survey:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB2283F6CTQKN

To learn more about the changes we’ve made to TeamPages, check out our updated Tour section for select screen shots and detailed functionality.

Even though we’ve just released TeamPages 2.0, we’re always interested to learn what you would like to see TeamPages do.  Find the Forum we’ve dedicated to TeamPages feature requests where each week we’ll be holding contests and giving away cool TeamPages shwag for people who post suggestions and feature requests.

Where have all the coaches gone?

Finding volunteer coaches is like trying to find a teenager at a Rolling Stones concert these days; we know they’re out there but often few and far between.  Whether it’s due to busier schedules, lessened sense of community or an increased commitment required from teams, parents seem less inclined to help out with their kids’ sports team today.  What is needed in this case is a little creativity on our end to find other ways to recruit new coaches.  Below I’ve listed some successful tactics used by some of the club administrators on TeamPages.

1. Mandatory in-person registration: if feasible, this method gives you some face time with each parent.  This is a great time to build rapport, get to know their background and find out whether they’re a candidate for one of your vacant positions.
2. Recruit from your senior leagues: Many of you are going to either belong to or have a connection to an adult league with young men and women athletes.  These leagues are ripe for the picking when it comes to potential coaches.  Today’s generation of 20-somethings are always looking for ways to give back to the communities that raised them while also sharing their knowledge and love for the game.  Just make sure you approach them correctly, ensuring them the schedule and their commitment level are flexible.
3. Volunteer opt-out check boxes: psychology at its finest.  By making volunteering (whether it be coaching, field maintenance, fund raising, etc.) an opt out duty, you’re sending the message that it is expected of them.  This leaves parents feeling personally accountable and will increase participation across the board.
4. Never turn people away: One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen organizations do is turn away enthusiastic parents who are keen to give their time.  This often happens because a particular parent does not possess the skills yet to coach a team.  In this case, get creative , find something they’re interested in and let them help out any way they can.  Who knows, give them a couple of years around the game and some added training and they could be one of your best coaches in no time.
5. Treat your people like the rock stars they are: Let’s face it, volunteers are what make the amateur sports world go ’round.  Without them no one would play anything other than pickup basketball (assuming the courts were maintained without volunteers).  So why don’t we openly show our appreciation more often? Is it so difficult to recognize a person’s contribution either publicly or in private?  An example of a small yet power gesture is a personalized thank you card, hand written by the president of a club to each coach who graciously volunteered their time all year.

These are just a few approachesI’ve seen work over the years (many of them used directly on me).  I know our community of coaches are organizers are always looking for new ways to fill those vacant positions, so how are you doing it?  Any creative ideas? Please let us know either by commenting below, posting in our forums or emailing talk-to-us@teampages.com.

Like many other aspects of our lives, the Internet is playing more of a predominant role in sport, specifically in the spreading of information.  With the collective knowledge of the entire coaching world at our finger tips, any person equipped with enough time, a keen interest and an internet connection can learn the intricacies of any sport with just a few clicks of a mouse.

With this enormous resource readily available, why is it that we have so many ill-prepared volunteer coaches teaching our youth the fundamentals of the sports we love?  And is it the responsibility of the moms and dads who are already balancing full-time jobs and families to properly train and prepare themselves?  Or should it be the associations’ responsibility to provide the necessary training and coaching (yes, our coaches need coaching as well) they need to effectively manage their teams?

This debate is one I’ve seen come up time and time again, with the conclusion unfortunately being determined by lack of time and budget.  Making sacrifices and trade-offs seem to be the name of the game in many amateur sports; but fortunately with the mass adoption of the Internet, much of this needed training is both easily accessible and CHEAP!

There are a multitude of services and tools out there designed specifically for the rookie coach and I have done my homework to compile a short list of my favorite tools out there for coaches.  Keep in mind that most of these are soccer specific, but with a little time spent on a search engine you can find similar websites for any sport.

http://www.saysoccer.org/pages - This useful website has many practice plan to browse and also plenty of skills and drills covering dribbling, passing, shooting and warm-up.  There is an interesting section with an interactive tactical quiz.

http://www.worldofsoccer.com - Is a site full of excellent soccer resources.  One very convenient feature of this website is the great section of free youth soccer books that you can order directly from them.

http://www.bettersoccercoaching.com - A free archive of coaching tips and advice.  You can also sign up for their weekly coaching tips newsletter.

http://www.completesoccercoach.com - Fairly new to the game, this website offers a plethora of drills, all explained through video demonstration.  They have also recently announced a coaching certificate program that will be available for the upcoming fall season.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/andagain?forum=1 - This is an example of one of the many coaching forums out there; it’s amazing how many golden nuggets you can pull from an online discussion of coaches who may be a little more experienced than yourself.

If you have any favorites or find any more sites out there worth mentioning, I’m always on the lookout for something to share with our users, so please comment below and include links.

Happy coaching.

We would like to pass on some good news to the TeamPages community.  Thanks to many of you creating profiles, telling your teammates, and using many of the tools TeamPages has to offer, we recently squeaked into the top 100 of TechVibes’ Canadian Start-up Index.

Greg Andrews has been producing such indexes for TechVibes over the last six months now, with this being the first nation-wide list.  The criteria for companies to appear on the list include:

• Located in Canada
• Less than five years old
• Not a public company
• Is a tech company; either hardware, software, web app/service, or mobile

Here are a few of the companies grouped together with TeamPages:

Kudos to a couple of local companies also on the list that started up in Victoria with us around the same time.  Indochino,  a designer of custom tailored, premium quality suits, can deliver an order anywhere in the world within days, while Oprius Software provides independent sales professionals the contact management software they need to conduct business.

Again, we would like to thank everyone for their great feedback, bug reporting and recommendations.  Keep up the good work!

With the changing of seasons, the TeamPages crew is uprooting from the quaint city we’ve called home for the last two years and taking the ferry over to Vancouver, British Columbia. 

As excited as we are to open a new chapter in the TeamPages saga, it’s sometimes difficult to leave behind so many memories that are intrinsically tied to Victoria; the excitement that was bringing TeamPages online, as well as the coziness of Mike’s one-bedroom apartment that doubled as a cramped office for the first year, are a just a couple of things that we won’t soon forget.

Another difficult thing to leave behind is the local sports community here in Victoria.  Without their amazing support and feedback, TeamPages would not be what it is today. It’s our goal to continue growing these relationships while also beginning new ones with many of the local Vancouver leagues and clubs.

All of that said, this summer promises to be an exciting one full of product releases and getting to know our new neighbors.  With a new user interface on the horizon, and a premium service scheduled to be released shortly there after, we’re going to be hard at work in the new office to ensure the transition is both smooth and seamless.  I also know that each of us are searching for new leagues, teams and groups to join.  So if you’re looking for an extra mid-fielder, a climbing partner or someone to trek through Squamish on a mountain bike with, drop us a line because we’re always game.

We recently received an email asking about photo sharing on TeamPages. With many of the changes we’ve been making to personal profiles, it seems that photo sharing and uploading got lost in the confusion. We’d like to point out that in order for your teammates, friends and family to view your personal photo albums, you must make sure both your account settings allow for it and you are displaying the photo panel in your profile.

In addition to the account setup process, this email sparked some more discussion here in the office about photo sharing. The main points that were brought up were:

1. Do we need photo tagging?
2. Do we need to make it easier to publish existing albums and photos from profiles to team pages?

Photo sharing is a features many of our users enjoy, so we feel that our community could help guide us in further developing it. If you have a minute or two, please let us know how you’re using photos (and hey, why not send us a picture of your team in action) as well as anything else TeamPages could do to make that experience easier and more fun.

This past week, the team here ventured out into the cold and battled the elements to host a BBQ for the University of Victoria Intramural program. You wouldn’t think the rain, wind and temperature would play much of a factor in the middle of June but as you can see from the picture below, we were forced to find other ways of staying warm…

This event was the first of many we are planning for the summer.  So if your club is in the greater Vancouver area and has an upcoming tournament or event, send us an email or give us a call and we’ll supply the hot dogs and refreshments.  Until then, make sure to pack some extra layers, because you never know when you’re going to get blind sided by a hail storm (even if it is the middle of June).

This past week we improved the multi-game scheduling tool for league administrators. The most notable new feature is the versatile schedule importer. This tool allows you to upload an entire season to the multi-game scheduler, then provides the flexibility needed to make final changes before posting it to the league page. Click the link below and take a look at a screenshot:

Schedule Uploading Tools

I may be biased but it is much easier to use. I hope you like it too.

If you’re not a league administrator with TeamPages yet, and you would like to try out this new TeamPages feature, give us a call at 1-800-500-7203 or email talk-to-us@teampages.com.

We apologize for the temporary site outage earlier today. All of our hosting services were down, but our IT group worked as quickly as they could to get it back up . We apologize for any inconvenience it caused.