How did you first hear about TeamSnap?
A parent of one of our players had mentioned that his son's hockey team used TeamSnap's hockey team website. Whenever I would send out emails asking for availability, he would mention that there was an easier way that his hockey team used to keep the team organized. Once I signed up for the trial account and started using it, I was sold.

What is your favorite TeamSnap feature?
Many of the features are really useful, however, the ability to easily track player availability has to be the primary TeamSnap feature that I use.

What can we do to improve the product for you?
The TeamSnap folks know about my wish list as I am always sending in new I ideas to consider and they are quite responsive to these ideas.  With events where only part of the team is available, I would like the ability to send an email only to those attending the event.

What is your advice for team managers that may be new to the role?
The best advice I have for a manager running the team is to do a GREAT job of communication.  You should keep everyone in the loop as decisions are made and do everything that you can to eliminate the back channel bickering that often comes with competitive teams.

I've seen many teams select their manager as more of a team parent who thinks that they will be responsible for snack duty, like they do in recreation play. For competitive teams, this person is truly a manager and needs to have experience in the sport, be extremely organized, and be authoritative. The coaches and the parents have to acknowledge this role because the manager is often the one doing all of the legwork to find tournaments, hand out assignments to other parents (e.g. find a hotel and coordinate the room block), manage registration, recruit players, organize tryouts, etc. This person also needs to delegate responsibilities because it is a volunteer effort and the manager also has a day job so it helps to have assistance from time to time.