Communication with parents

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Oct 4, 2018
4,611
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We have used all of them at one time or another. Like WhatsApp and GroupMe. Not a fan of TeamSnap.

Suggestion: Set up 2 Group Chats with everyone on both. 1 is for coaches/team communication TO parents only. The other is for parents to communicate.

Once parents start talking when you only have 1, all of the team communications get lost in the 100's of parents comments about where to go after the game and happy birthday wishes ect. Team communication needs to be easy and available.

Exactly. Between my two girls we've used everything under the sun. None are perfect.

Do communicate often. Parents love that.

Do highly encourage the parents to create a group chat amongst themselves. Coaches love (not being a part of) that.
 
May 6, 2015
2,397
113
after reading all this, 3 channels/groups/chats are needed

-Coach to players and parents

-Parents group and players (who choose to participate)

-Players only group (say at around 10u and up)
 
Oct 4, 2018
4,611
113
after reading all this, 3 channels/groups/chats are needed

-Coach to players and parents

-Parents group and players (who choose to participate)

-Players only group (say at around 10u and up)

Our team is absurd and has about 8. However, better to have more than less.

We have one that's only for moms. :p
 
Nov 20, 2020
995
93
SW Missouri
GroupMe has always been used for the teams DD has played for. I like it just fine.

Her school coach used Band. It was okay.

Someone mentioned it above. Make sure parents set the alerts to be on for whatever app you use.
 
Last edited:
Nov 15, 2019
324
43
We used GroupMe with our last team. I like that it has the ability to set up polls which made it easy to see who was available for certain dates. The coach did send out some info by email (like tournament schedule) because it can get hard to scroll back and find things on GroupMe.
The girls also had a GroupMe, but they didn't use it much, they used their Snapchat group instead (2nd year 14's)
 
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
Used GroupMe.

Tell coaches and players no emails or texts between the two, only pm’s when necessary.

Deleted texts eventually cannot be retrieved. GroupMe pm’s are forever. You might be glad to have them 5 years from now.
 
Jun 1, 2015
500
43
I used Remind this season for the first time ever with my rec team and I found it worked very successfully. Doesn't have to be "linked" to a school or specific group - I just created a class, added the girls by their cell numbers AND the parents in the same way, then you can connect the girls/parents together. All messages are archived, you can send messages to parents as "announcements" and each reply you get comes individually vs. in a group (for those who hate getting 75 individual messages when you're trying to work, etc.) You can also blast out 140-character announcements to everyone for quick updates (rain delays, practice cancelations). The only downside is that, because it's meant to be school-connected, you cannot add anyone under the age of 13 (so if you have a young team, everything would have to go through parents, which isn't a bad thing either). I'll likely use it again next year for my program.
 
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
Depending on age of players and type of team consider not sending most info to parents.

I have seen this done successfully on a 16u team which pretty much all players were college softball bound.

As a parent, it was challenging sometimes. I liked the result. Resulted in much better parent/player communication.

I tried it with a local 18 team and all I will say is I am too nice to enforce it. I consider that a failure on my part, lol

Thats a shame because kids about to leave for college couldn’t manage their own schedule without a parent. It was really pretty pathetic.
 
Aug 10, 2016
686
63
Georgia
Thats a shame because kids about to leave for college couldn’t manage their own schedule without a parent. It was really pretty pathetic.
My husband still relies on me for mostly everything even though he gets the same info as me. Last year where we were only doing texts from the coach - he didn't read those and went to the tournament webpage to find where the park was. He didn't read everything clearly and there was another age group at a different park and he drove to that park instead. Luckily it was only about 30 min away and he didn't have DD since I usually take her early myself. So it's not just the kids ;)

I was watching him on Life360 to see when he would get there and I was so confused - like - why is he going that way???
 

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