Background

The Memphis Youth Hockey League (MYHL) has been in its current form as an organized youth hockey league for eight years, serving 240 young athletes ages 4-18 from in and around the Memphis area, and even as far out as Jonesboro, Arkansas and Tupelo, Mississippi.

Challenge

Years ago, MYHL participants registered each season by visiting the ice rink in person or by sending checks in the mail. The League determined that it needed to offer online registration, particularly for its athletes living dozens of miles away, so it selected Actives RegCenter product to manage registrations. Though convenient, the problem remained that Actives RegCenter product was not integrated with USA Hockey, nor the Leagues current financial system.

Kerry Frankland, president of MYHL, notes, The whole registration process was very convoluted. Our athletes would have to register through USA Hockey, then go to Active.com product to register for our League, then make a payment through PayPal, and then our staff would have to reconcile PayPal payments manually and enter them into our accounting package.

Solution

In 2008, Kerry met with a member of the Active Network team to discuss new options. Thats when he learned of LeagueRegister, a Web-based, integrated online registration and data management application designed for sports organizations of all sizes. Not only would LeagueRegister integrate with USA Hockey, it also integrated with MYHLs financial application. The decision was made and within a few weeks, MYHL went live with its new online registration application.

Success Strategies

To promote the new online service to its hundreds of participants, the organization posted an announcement on its Active eteamz.com website, as well as disseminated an email to all of its members with information about LeagueRegister and a link.

The marketing efforts on our website as well as in our email blast proved very effective in getting the word out and creating an easy, seamless transition for everyone involved, says Frankland.

Results

For the fall 2008 hockey season, every single participant was registered through the LeagueRegister application.

With LeagueRegister, our online registration went from five or six different steps to merely two or three, notes Frankland. LeagueRegister made our registrars jobs easier and it alleviated our registrants from having to remember different account numbers and passwords. Now, they just login to one application to register and make payments. Its really easy for everyone.

So easy, in fact, that MYHL reduced its outstanding registration payments by 84% compared to previous seasons.

LeagueRegister improved efficiencies and enabled access to updated information. With the reporting feature, our board members have access to run their own reports from anywhere. This translates to improved oversight, a more accurate financial picture, and an alleviated strain on our staff members to pull ad hoc reports. As for parents and participants, its now very easy for them to log in to see their balances after deposits have been paid and discounts applied. The benefit of having all of this is we now receive more payments on time. In fact, we significantly reduced the number of outstanding payments and we attribute this reduction to empowering our parents and participants to log in and make payments quickly and easily before theyre due.

MYHLs two key pieces of advice for other organizations launching online registration:

1. Commit time to the process. Spend the time needed during the implementation to see, touch and feel the data before going live. The more lead time you have for implementation, questions, and practice in the demo mode, the better.
2. Have an end goal. Know what you want the registration process to look like and understand your software application options. This will put you in a much better position to know how to not only set up the software, but which software application is the best ft for your organization.

Download a 30 minute LeagueRegister recording to see if LeagueRegister's enhanced features can help streamline your hockey league