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

Not content to just sit on the sidelines, Kasey along with a few other moms whose sons played in the same association VOSHA (Valley of the Sun Hockey Association), started taking lessons last January with instructor Jon Holliday.  “It was fun, footloose and fancy free; no strings attached, time for us not as moms but as ourselves.” says Kasey.

Within a few months the group had grown to five and they entered themselves in a local 3-on-3 tournament to benefit Breast Cancer. At this point they were a team, but without jerseys or an identity.  Cue the team’s sense of humor and creativity. (more…)

Be safe

The safety of you and your players is always the number one factor in your preparation.  Plan ahead by knowing the weather, and be sure to have all your players contact details (and a way to call for help) in case of emergency.  Once on site, make sure that the area is safe (free of glass, metal, holes, etc) and that any goals are anchored securely.  In the even of bad weather (thunder/lightening), always err on the side of caution and take the children to safety.

Be prepared/organized

As mentioned above, be sure to have accurate paperwork for all of your players.  Once on field have a lesson plan that is age appropriate, and makes good developmental sense.  In addition, have appropriate equipment for the practice (balls, cones, pinnies, etc) and check that it is in safe working order.  Being prepared will mean you are less likely to get flustered during practice.

The following clip is a drill we use at Complete Soccer Coach to teach players to head the ball while having some fun!

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An experienced soccer administrator/coach, with a seventeen-year background in coaching soccer at the professional youth, college and recreational levels; Coach Wright’s credentials are only matched by his passion for the game.  For more information about Coach Wright’s background, I encourage you to check out his qualifications: http://completesoccercoach.com/coach.

Team Preparation and Goal Setting

by Robert Wright

For many of us, August signals the imminent arrival of the fall soccer season with lots of soccer practices and games in a short space of time.  Withe everything else that happens at this time of year, it is easy for coaches to feel overwhelmed and under prepared for working with their children.  Some easy tips to help alleviate this are:

Decide on your goals for the season

This may not be as simple as it sounds.  Your Long term goals for the team are important but there are other people who will also have opinions that are crucial, and that must be factored in.  These include your soccer organization, your players , and the parents of your players.  Only by taking all these stakeholders into consideration, will you develop a plan that everyone will support and buy into. (more…)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.