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Youth football participation has dropped over the years—and with constant professional player injuries in the news, it’s not difficult to understand why. However, football doesn’t have to be dangerous, and with effective football team management in place, you can still ensure your participants have a fun—and safe—season.
This article will explore the components of successful football team management and some of the challenges many organizers face. We aim to help you increase participation in youth football, find the right management style, and have a wonderful sports season.
Components of football team management
Starting a youth football team and successfully managing it throughout the season involves a lot. Follow along with each of these components so you know exactly what to expect as you get your new football league up and running.
Administration
Who you hire as part of your youth sports administration can make or break the success of your football league. There are several important roles you need to consider as you get started.
Some of these roles include:
- Leadership
- Financial
- Marketing
- Training
- Strategy and growth
- Legal
- Event planning
While you don’t need someone from every department right when you start, you may need to look into working with consultants or contractors as you build and grow your new league.
Budgeting and financial planning
Another important aspect of football team management—especially if you hope to build out your administration with skilled individuals—is your overall budget. A new football league has several startup costs.
Some of those include:
- Equipment
- Facility rental/maintenance
- Licensing and insurance
- Logo and branding
- Marketing
- Travel expenses
- Coaching and staff
- Administrative costs
However, there are ways to start generating revenue for your football club, and many sports leagues operate as non-profit organizations.
Some ways to start bringing in funds for your new football league include:
- Sponsorships: Offer local companies promotion in exchange for sponsorship fees. Your sponsorship can include website ad space, banners at the field, team sponsorships, and more.
- Fundraising: There are several ways to raise money for your football organization, such as running a car wash or bake sale, selling T-shirts and other merchandise, or hosting a single-day tournament.
- Registration fees: Once you start up and running, player registration fees will be a big help in covering facility and equipment costs.
- Camps or training sessions: You can consider running paid camps or training sessions for additional funds.
You can also see if coaches and other assistants will volunteer their time so you don’t have to factor their salaries into your budget. Most youth football coaches are volunteer-based, which can be a big help.
Scheduling
Next, you need to consider scheduling. Youth football tends to be a fall sport, though many organizations will also offer spring leagues and summer workshops or camps.
With that in mind, you need to build a sports calendar that aligns with your team’s and facility's availability year after year.
While you won’t be able to create your full schedule until you’ve registered players and divvied up teams, creating a preliminary timeline is important so you know the required season end dates, when registration needs to be completed, and when teams can begin practices.
Jersey Watch’s sports scheduling software can be a huge help when planning your upcoming season.
Easily schedule meetings with your board of directors, coaches, staff, and other key players. Share player registration dates so the information is publicly available and easy to find. Create team schedules once the season kicks off. And easily share all of this information on your football league website.
🧠 Learn More: Tips To Create Your Own Sports Schedule Template
Facility and personnel management
Another responsibility of a football team manager involves the football facility and personnel management. Unless you plan to open your football facility for your youth sports organization, you need to find one you can rent during each of your planned seasons.
Look around for:
- School fields
- Parks
- Open fields
Get in touch with the school or city that manages the field to check in on their activity schedule. See if you can fit in running a full football season alongside their other planned events. Check in on their rental fees and see what facility personnel are available to you during your usage.
Coaching and volunteer selection
Next, you’ll have to decide how to handle recruiting coaches. To maximize practice time, each youth team should have a head coach and 1-2 assistant coaches.
Often, parents volunteer to coach their kids’ teams. However, if you’re looking to run a sports club rather than a volunteer-based team, you might want to consider hiring trained professionals to coach the kids.
Player recruitment and retention
Another league or club management responsibility is player recruitment and retention. Much of this will come in the marketing phase (which we’ll talk about later), but you can’t run a football team without players.
And more than that, you want to ensure your players (and their parents) have a good experience so that they want to continue signing up for your on- and off-season events.
Some retention ideas include:
- Having easy and transparent communication
- Being inclusive
- Facilitating opportunities for players and parents to get together
- Celebrating player achievements
- Offering high-quality services
- Using high-quality facilities
- Investing in the right technology to help streamline processes
Training and practice planning
Another great way to retain players is by offering quality training programs. While many youth players join simply to be active and enjoy a sport, others genuinely want to improve their skills as they may eventually want to play professional football. As a youth sports league, offering a little something for everyone is important.
With that in mind, you’ll want to consider your league’s training mantra. Will you require coaches to undergo training so that they can properly teach their players? Will you hire professional coaches? And how will you have teams structure practices so that every player gets as much out of it as possible?
Having the right training and practice ideology can be a big selling point for your league if parents have options to consider. Keep this in mind as you plan.
Player development
Similarly, how will you facilitate player development throughout the season? Make sure your coaches are well-versed in improving your players' football skills.
They can do this by:
- Demonstrating the skill so players have a clear visual
- Using drills or activities that allow the players to practice the skill over and over again
- Providing feedback so the players can improve
Equipment and uniforms
There will be some equipment that players supply themselves (i.e., shoulder pads, padded pants, cleats), and there will be other equipment that your league should supply the players (i.e., uniforms, matching helmets, balls).
You'll also need to provide necessary equipment for the field, like field goals and paint for the field markings, unless you're renting a facility used for football year-round.
This means you need to set aside enough of your budget so that you're able to provide quality equipment, especially because helmets will need to be replaced upon major impacts and if damaged.
Marketing
Finally, marketing will be a major part of managing a football team. After all, you need to spread the word to increase participation, generate sponsors, and keep your league going year after year.
Some key marketing tactics include:
- Creating a league website (which you can seamlessly do with a tool like Jersey Watch)
- Promoting your league on social media
- Running TV and radio ads
- Buying billboard space
- Building an email list
- Holding fundraising and registration events
Challenges in youth football management
Managing a youth football league, team, or club obviously comes with a lot of responsibilities. That means it, as you can imagine, also comes with its own challenges.
Some of those challenges include:
- Balancing multiple responsibilities: If you’ve taken on a general manager role for your league, you might have many of these responsibilities fall on your shoulders. However, delegating to other team members or bringing in help where you can is always a good idea.
- Staying within budget: You can’t spend money you don’t have. This may mean you aren’t able to rent the best field in the area—at least this season—but it’s important to stay within budget so you don’t run out of money for other important equipment.
- Getting money for the team: Alongside maintaining your budget is raising funds for the team. It’s important to ensure you’re implementing the right fundraising strategies so that you can get the money needed for equipment, facilities, and more.
- Marketing the team: You also need to market your new league. While you might know a lot about football, marketing can be different. However, it’s still important to get the word out about your league to as many kids who want to play football as possible.
Technology in football team management
Yes, managing a football team has challenges. But the right technology can solve many of those challenges.
Jersey Watch is sports management software that offers several features designed to make running a youth sports league as manageable as possible.
Balancing multiple responsibilities? Jersey Watch can help. Struggling with budget management and fundraising? Jersey Watch allows you to accept donations. Need to communicate with your coaches or other staff? You got it—Jersey Watch.
Here are a few ways Jersey Watch makes running a football league easier:
- You can create your own football website to share key details like registration dates, what players and parents can expect, location, and other important information.
- Build out your online registration forms (plus the ability to accept registration fees and additional donations) to easily register new players and store their data online.
- Send out league-wide announcements and communication to ensure all coaches, players, parents, and other personnel are all on the same page.
- Seamlessly create game and other event schedules and share them with all participants. You can even share up-to-date game results for all participants to track.
- Run background checks on all potential volunteers to make sure everyone is properly vetted before they begin working with your players.
Learn even more about how Jersey Watch can be the perfect solution for streamlining your football team management and getting your new league up and running.
Run your football smoothly this season with Jersey Watch
Now you know exactly what it takes to start and run your own youth football league. From getting started with the right administration all the way to marketing, there are a lot of roles and responsibilities involved. But working with the right people—and using the right tools—can be a huge help. Sign up for Jersey Watch to get the right help today.
Football team management FAQ
What is team management in football?
Team management covers all the tasks of running a football team or league. This includes administrative tasks, game and event scheduling, player recruitment, practice planning, and more.
What does a manager of a football team do?
The manager of a football team keeps operations running smoothly. They handle facility rentals and maintenance, game scheduling, team creation, and other key operational tasks.
How do you start a football team?
To start a football team, you need to build a brand around your new team, find coaches and other volunteers, generate interest for your new team, and then start registering players.
What is the best football team management app?
The best football team management app is Jersey Watch. Keep your team running smoothly while Jersey Watch does the heavy lifting.
