Background

San Marcos Youth Baseball (SMYB) has a mission to provide the youth of its community with instruction and guidance in their development, both mentally and physically, in the game of baseball while building character and sportsmanship in a safe, positive, and fun environment. SMYB is open to boys and girls, ages 5 through 14. In addition to developing athletic skills and having fun, the organization aims to teach children to finish what they start, whether it is getting on base or pursuing a dream.

To save time and increase efficiency, SMYB has been using the online registration and league management solutions from Active Network since 2006. Below, the organization’s president shares some of the benefits that online technology has afforded SMYB.

Keys to Success from Rene Flores, President, San Marcos Youth Baseball

How long have you been using Active Network’s Clubspaces product?

Originally, we started with a different product but have been using Clubspaces recently. All in all, we’ve been using Active’s technology for about four years. Prior to that, we relied on paper and pens to register players and run our leagues. With over 1200 players to manage, this obviously took too much time and was not very efficient. We’re all volunteers with day jobs and knew that we needed to upgrade our processes.

Why did you select Active?

We liked Active's baseball league software for three basic reasons: It’s a local company (based in Southern California); the product and pricing was better than other providers; and there was a big emphasis on customer service. Cost is always a factor when you’re a volunteer organization and our pricing has not changed much over the years. Plus, even though we know the system now and don’t need as much customer service assistance as we did in the beginning, Active is still pretty attentive. We like Active and wouldn’t make a change to another provider.

What do your parents and players think about Active?

Since we implemented online registration, we’ve gotten good feedback from the parents—they love it. With 1200 kids to sign up, parents used to have to come down to the facility and wait in line for 1-2 hours. Now they can register online at home, whenever is convenient for them. We have about 90% of our kids sign up online—they love it and it frees up time for our volunteers to focus on other things.

What do you primarily use the system for?

We really like the individual team pages. Each team can create its own custom page with info that’s unique to that team (like photos and scores), which is helpful for both parents and players. Online registration is really a huge time saver too….I can’t imagine to going back to a paper form. Part of registration is being able to offer sibling/family discounts. It works great, gets more kids involved and helps us stay organized. We also use the built‑in email tool to send updates to groups or to the entire league. You can choose which segment of people you want to contact. Plus, when a player registers, they get an automatic confirmation email.

Do you use online registration for volunteering?

Yes, we do. Team parents and coaches can sign up online to volunteer and indicate what job/role they’d like to help us out with. It’s an easy way to recruit help and then we have all their contact information stored in one place.

Do you use the reporting features?

Yes, we use the reports every day. We look at the unpaid fees report and also at demographic snapshots. For example, the system automatically groups players by birth date, so we can see how many 7-year-olds are signed up. Or we can see how many players we have from a particular school.

What do you think is the biggest benefit of Active’s online software?

The biggest benefit of Active's baseball league software would be the time saved. We have saved countless hours of time by automating all of the sign ups. We used to have a volunteer who just managed registration and data entry. Now we don’t need to fill that position and can use that volunteer somewhere else. It’s really so much easier to put everything online

Active Network's baseball league software is the official online league management system for PONY