Staying Organized in Youth Sports

With so many moving parts within your league, it is a task in itself just to stay organized. You have to constantly engage with your participants and parents, supervise staff and volunteers, manage schedules, coordinate game days, keep track of equipment, worry about maintenance and your facilities, and much more. Make staying organized a priority by following the 20 tips below:

• Make sure you have a plan for everything. Putting the work in ahead of time will free up more of your time to enjoy your league.
• Give your staff or volunteers more responsibility and empower them to do great things within your program. Taking on too much on your own is a recipe for disaster.
• Use more staff and volunteers the first couple weeks of the season when teams start practices to make sure everything is running as planned and all parents and kids get to their teams to get going. Once games start, the program will begin to run itself.
• Keep a calendar or use software to manage all your schedules together in one area.
• Set game and practice schedules for the season and stick to it. There is nothing more frustrating to participants than the unknown or moving schedules.
• Communicate updates and reminders to the entire league at least once a week.
• Communicate with your staff and referees at least once a week as well as before each game day.
• Have well written league rules, policies, and procedures.
• Keep good documentation throughout the season for your daily activities and incidents that may arise.
• Have an equipment inventory system in place and keep your field or gym storage organized before and after every game day.
• Get feedback regularly from your staff, coaches, and referees so you can get ahead of any concerns or potential incidents.
• Ensure all areas of your facilities are clean and hazard free.
• Keep daily logs at each field or court to allow staff to report back on how each game went.
• Keep paperwork and scoresheets centralized in one area or in one binder per field or court.
• Keep all necessary equipment for each field organized in bins and properly stored.
• Make yourself to-do lists regularly to stay on track with what needs to be accomplished.
• Have clear and concise directions on set up and break down for your facility on game days that includes clean up, taking out trash, and putting away equipment.
• Be responsive to parents and any incidents that occur to make sure there is nothing you have to deal with ongoing that will detract you from other tasks.
• Be forward thinking. Once games have started, let your staff take over so you can start getting ready for whatever is next and make sure you are always one step ahead.
• Set aside office hours to keep up with paperwork and administrative duties. If these things are pushed aside they will pile up.

Keeping yourself and your operation organized will show to your stakeholders and will give you the free time you never thought you had to allow you to enjoy your program even more than you do now!