Background

For nearly 60 years Southern California’s Los Altos Youth Baseball and Softball (LAYBS) has been a Long Beach mainstay. The program now includes baseball and softball for boys and girls with more than 800 participants comprising approximately 75 teams between the two sports. LAYBS enjoys continued growth, due in part to their beautiful El Dorado Park grounds, replete with a new bullpen where pitchers warm up. But perhaps more important are its numerous volunteers who exemplify (in the words of legendary coach, John Wooden) “how much can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit,” advancing the skill of all players, while helping them become honest, loyal and hard-working citizens.

Warming up with Larry Denyer, Player Agent, Baseball

When it came time to find an alternate solution for LAYBS’s online registration – the firm they had been using was going belly-up – LAYBS Player Agent for Baseball, Larry Denyer, reviewed three firms, each with different fees and services. Once he met with the folks at Active Network, Sports, he knew his decision was made. It’s been three years now, and he’s seen for himself what the Active team told him from the start: Active online registration software is not a static product, but one that evolves to continually meet the needs and expectations of its users. This includes the tech support team. “Tech support is so thorough; they really understand what you are asking and get to the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of the solution with beautifully written, thoughtful responses to my questions,” he says. “I’ve got no complaints; I’ve even referred another league to Active.”

As a nonprofit, volunteer-based organization, timesaving tools are the MVP, and Larry’s a guy who will skip reading a manual and just dive in. He likes the fluidity of Active’s online registration software, saying, “It’s an easy learning curve, plus, I can work any time I choose and do more in less time than ever before.”

Keeping track

The customization offered by Active online registration software is crucial to an organization pressed to make the most of man hours, while gathering and tracking data ranging from geographic location to t-shirt size to age and medical information. The software automatically tells players what division they will be in and what they can register for. As for meeting residence boundary requirements, that’s as simple as inputting boundaries, with a ‘click here’ for players to acknowledge they live within the area. Over time, LAYBS has further customized, ensuring the best possible record keeping from the start. This also has helped track those on scholarship; sometimes a scholarship is partial, sometimes it’s whole, based on ‘payment’ in volunteer hours. Online registration is also LAYBS’s primary outreach for volunteer recruitment. “The response to our volunteer requests within online registration is so strong each year that we don’t need additional outreach efforts to fill positions.” Larry’s convinced that without this kind of flexibility and automated record keeping, there’d be simply too much paperwork to do.

Playing by the numbers

Consistent, effective communication keeps LAYBS on the winning edge. Whether Larry needs to email the entire database, just the players or just the coaches, it’s all there at his fingertips with email tools from Active. It’s also a huge plus that, in the case of separate households, he can email a player’s mom and dad, feeling that, “If parents know what’s up, it makes for a happier family.” LAYBS relishes the scorekeeping functions enabling winning managers to post scores and standings that link back to the LAYBS website, and there’s always a “More to come” notice to keep folks checking back. He’ll also tell you it’s “fantastic” how he can pull up and email team rosters, complete with medical information and how everyone in the organization, from families to administrators, has a trust and confidence about those involved because background checks are integrated into the registration process (based on Megan’s Law). In fact, in order to work with the youths of LAYBS in any capacity, one must have a child involved. As Larry puts it, “It makes sense to have some equity in the league,” and it’s an added layer of safety for the kids.

Helping develop and solidify friendships

It seems likely that youths in a given community would have friends with whom they’d like to team up. At the same time, accommodating such specific requests seems unlikely when working out team slots for 550 baseball players in one fell swoop. But Larry’s done it, which pleases all involved. “With Active’s ‘team assigner’ function, if you have kids who want to play together, you assign them to teams. Once that’s done, you hit a button and the rest of the unassigned kids fill in the open slots. It saves tons of time — and thinking,” he notes.

Out-of-the-park growth

For the past three years LAYBS has been sold out – they simply don’t have field space for more players. They place no ads, and flyers are only distributed to kindergarteners. All other age groups fill up using only the email tool of Active’s league management software. But Larry will tell you it’s more than that. It’s the organization’s core values. “Ours has always been a developmental league, about process not results.” And with stiff competition throughout Long Beach when it comes to team sports, Larry knows the level of retention year after year means LAYBS coaches are all-stars in this area.

Schedule a demo with an Active Network representative to see if Active can help streamline how you manage your league