The Idea
A couple of weeks ago at a tournament in Arkansas, during some downtime, I was scrolling on Facebook. Naturally, because I’ve got kids that are in or have been in sports, my feed is full of sports stuff. One thing that I kept noticing was the multiple posts by teams looking for players, which is fine—that happens all the time. I kept scrolling because we are happy with our team. But then, I saw several parents looking for teams. It made me think back to when we were looking for different baseball and volleyball teams for our kids. Which is completely normal. But what occurred to me is how we had to look for it. To be honest, it gave me a bit of anxiety.
The Challenge
If you are from Kansas City, like I am—particularly in Lee’s Summit—competitive sports is extremely popular. “The club.” It’s a tremendous commitment for a family to get on a team and quite expensive. But how do you find the right team, the right position, the right level for your child? That’s what gave me anxiety. My kids just wanted to play sports, and that is all they should be concerned with. However, as a parent, the stress of finding the “right team” that has good backing, good coaches, and good parents to be around was a bit challenging and frankly daunting. This is the side that our kids don’t see. They just want to play. I absolutely love that for them, but as a parent, how do you find the right balance? Endlessly scrolling on Facebook groups dedicated to sports? That’s fine, but usually those are filled with a bunch of drama. Some good insight, but a lot of team bashing as well.
The Solution
So as my ADHD brain is looking at all of this, a thought occurred to me: How can we make this easier? How do we make it easier for parents and athletes to find teams to go try out for? And for coaches, how do you get the word out about what your team is looking for? Multiple Facebook posts that usually get lost in the drama of the group? There has to be an easier way.
I’ve been in technology for the last 25 years. I’ve grown up in a lot of different areas of technology. From tinkering with computers in my teens to full-on technology administration in my early years to technology sales, where I have spent the last 14-plus years working for Fortune 100 companies, I’ve seen it all. The one thing that always fascinated me was development and automation, but there are way too many complexities for it to be a full career for me. I love talking about it, and it’s what I’m good at. However, in the last couple of years, development and automation have become so mainstream that I’ve had to learn a fair bit. In today’s world, there are so many tools out there to help build just about anything for any use case, small or massive. This project was pretty small, but it was a good exercise in figuring out what would satisfy the original need: how to find a team for your kid’s sports desires. So literally, from the idea to going live took about a week, working at night and on the weekends. (I do have a full-time job).
The Principles
Here are the principles I wanted to keep throughout this process:
- Keep it simple, no fancy coding or splashy screens.
- Easy to use for parents.
- Easy to use for coaches and teams.
- Notifications for parents when new tryouts are added.
- Free. Sort of. More on this later.
As I thought about this, I didn’t want it to be just for Kansas City. I also didn’t just want it to be for baseball. As I mentioned before, I’ve had kids in many sports, but unless you join dozens of Facebook groups, you are not going to get all of the information you need. I also wanted it to be free, but that just isn’t a reality. Now sure, I could have set up some sort of Google site or freeware site, but that would just cause problems later down the road. No, it had to be modern, mainstream tools, and those had to be paid for in order to get good integrations across all of the different platforms to make this thing work. Now, I’m sure we’ll get someone who chimes in and says you could have done it this way, done this and that, and the other thing. Good, that’s great, I’m sure you could, but this is what I’ve done. Also, I’ve got some experience in digital marketing, social media marketing, and automation. These things all have to work together, and those can’t be gotten by using free tools. This isn’t 2005. Enough about the tech.
The Launch
I’ve launched TryoutZone.com. More specifically, I’ve launched it in Kansas City because that’s where I’m from. Lee’s Summit, to be exact. It’s designed for parents, coaches, and teams. Simple principles: coaches and teams add their tryout event; it automatically gets displayed for anyone to see. Now, here is the other thing: you do have to put your credit card in to register as a coach or a team, but not for parents. Why? I thought you said this was free? Well, it is, at least for the remainder of 2024. Here is why: when looking at all of the postings on the various Facebook groups that are dedicated to sports, baseball in particular, there is a lot of drama. I really can’t stand that stuff. Having run The Lee’s Summit Community Facebook group for the last five years with over 33k members, multiple Facebook Pages like Lee’s Summit Local, I’ve seen way too much drama. Tryout Zone takes the drama out of that equation.
The Cost
Now, why the credit card? I will be straight up with you. This platform costs money. All of the tools I use are not free. But, as the platform is new, it needs to be run through the paces. I need people to use the platform, I need to get the word out. Right now, there is no cost. Next year, there will be a nominal cost, but it will be enough to cover my expenses. Also, if you’ve built countless websites and been a part of any Facebook group, spam is rampant. The chances are less likely that a spammer or a “drama” team puts in their credit card information. Also, we use Stripe in our tech stack, so we know it’s secure. There is a $0 cost to this service when you sign up as a coach or team, for the remainder of 2024. Once the year is up, I will simply remove that product from Stripe and create a new one, so there will be no chance of someone’s card getting “accidentally charged”. We will simply roll out a new Stripe payment and start charging. Simple, easy for you, easy for me.
Notifications and Sports
Another thing I wanted to do was give parents the ability to be notified when a new tryout was scheduled. This is part of the platform. If you want notifications, just sign up, pick the sports you want, and we’ll send you an email when the event is registered. Easy, simple, done. I also wanted to create this platform for all sports, not just baseball. Now, I know we are in the heart of baseball tryout season, so that is what we will start with. Eventually, I will add options for softball, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and more.
Explore Our Comprehensive Tryout Zone Guides
Dive deeper into the capabilities and features of Tryout Zone with our detailed guide and demo series. Each part is designed to help you navigate and utilize our platform effectively, ensuring a seamless experience whether you’re a coach, parent, or athlete. Here’s what you can learn from each guide:
- Tryout Zone Guide Part 1: Introduction to Tryout Zone
- Tryout Zone Guide Part 2: Navigating the Tryout Zone App
- Tryout Zone Guide Part 3: Adding Events to Tryout Zone
- Tryout Zone Guide Part 4: Managing Your Events – Edit and Delete Functions
- Tryout Zone Guide Part 5: Viewing Events and Setting Up Notifications
Each guide includes a video tutorial to enhance your understanding and provide visual support as you explore Tryout Zone. Be sure to check out each part to maximize your use of our platform!
Summary
To sum all of this up, I created Tryout Zone. It’s a platform where coaches and teams can list their tryout events. They can easily add, edit, and delete their events when they want to. Parents can sign up for email notifications (maybe text notifications later) and get notified when a new tryout event is created. Anyone can search or filter by sport, classification (A, AA, AAA, Majors, etc.), season, metro region, or team.
The Future
Some things I want to accomplish in the next year: I want this platform to go broader than just Kansas City. I’d love for us to add a couple of major metro areas in the next year. The platform is built to scale. Right now, it’s just for Kansas City. You are my test bed. Silicon Prairie, if you will. I want to add text messaging to the platform notifications. This will come later, but chances are you will look at your text messaging before your email. However, text messaging is tricky, so email will have to do for now. Like all apps, they need revisions and features to be added. The good news is, I’ve created a feedback mechanism that you can use to provide your feedback, feature requests, and other comments.
Cities in Kansas City Metro
Tryout Zone is designed to serve the entire Kansas City Metro area, including Overland Park, Olathe, Lenexa, Shawnee, Independence, Blue Springs, Liberty, and more. Whether you’re looking for Kansas City sports tryouts, youth sports, baseball tryouts, volleyball tryouts, or any other sports tryout platform, Tryout Zone aims to be your easy sports team finder and low-cost sports registration solution. Check out the current tryout events here!
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