I'm building the team app I actually want

I play beer league hockey. My friend Andy runs four teams in the Mastodons, and a few of us also play tournaments as Cheapasaurus. Keeping all of that going takes BenchApp, group texts, emails, USA Hockey info, Bond Sports info, and whatever else someone started using that season. Who’s in, who’s out, who paid, who’s on beer duty. It gets messy and it’s a lot of work. Sometimes more than overtime.

Most of that work lands on Andy. He has a full-time job, and somehow he’s also the guy reminding everyone to reply, to pay, and to bring the beer. Nobody signed him up for that, it just kind of happened.

Then there’s the schedule. We’ve got a kid on the team who has driven to the wrong rink for a game once or twice. We stopped counting and now just assume he’ll be very late if he isn’t early. I don’t really blame him. The info lives in emails, schedules, a couple of calendars that don’t agree, and some pretty bad websites.

There’s no shortage of apps for this. TeamSnap, BenchApp, SportsEngine, GameChanger, Crossbar, Bond Sports. When I played in California we had a bunch of different ones, and they were all buggy, slow and dated. They each do part of the job, and none of them do all of it without a fight. A friend who manages a team told me his favorite feature in any of them is a row of In, Maybe and Out buttons next to every name. The app he used before made you tap a name and dig through a menu. That’s the bar right now.

So I’m building my own. It doesn’t have a name yet (more on that below), but it does have screens.

Your players don’t need the app

The thing I care about most is that nobody has to download anything or make an account. Players get a text with the next game and reply 1 for in, 2 for out, 3 for maybe. If they want more, they can claim their profile later.

Building the roster works the same way. Snap a photo of last week’s score sheet and it reads the names and numbers. You can also paste a list, pull from your contacts, or bring the team over from another app.

The stuff Andy does by hand

Who’s coming, who owes, and who hasn’t replied, all on one screen. The reminders go out on their own, and one button nudges everyone who still owes money, so Andy doesn’t have to.

Beer duty gets the same treatment. Somebody claims it with one tap, it rotates so it isn’t the same guy every week, and the app reminds whoever’s up. On a kids’ team it’s orange slices and the scorekeeper instead.

Finding a goalie

Andy has a long list of goalies he works through when ours can’t make it. That list should be in the app. Everyone you’ve played with lives in one place, goalies tagged, sorted by who you’ve actually played with the most.

This isn’t my first try at this one. I built a goalie-finding app before, and it died the way a lot of these do: no goalies because no teams, and no teams because no goalies. This time it starts from the other end. Managers like Andy already know their goalies, so it starts with your team, and the bigger network grows from rosters people already have.

Every team gets a real website

Your team gets its own page with photos, highlights, the schedule and the roster, built from the info you’ve already put in. One link, and it’s always right, so nobody has to dig through an email from three weeks ago to find the rink.

Tournaments, eventually

The weekend trips are where it gets expensive. Entries, brackets and hotel blocks can all live in the same place. If you’ve ever been told you have to book a certain hotel to play, you know how that usually goes. I’d like this to be the fair version: show the real price, let everyone book their own room, and send part of it back to the team.

Not just hockey

I’m starting with hockey because it’s what I know, but nothing here is hockey-only. Kids’ teams have the same mess, plus parents. So the youth side gets registration and payment plans, chat with separate channels for announcements, the team and the parents (kids never end up in private messages with adults), and fundraising where local restaurants give a share of a team night back to the team instead of everyone selling candy bars.

The team stuff is free. I’ll make money on the bigger things, like running a whole league or a tournament weekend.

About that name. I’ve checked something like 400 of them, and my wife hasn’t liked any yet. It’ll come.

Want in?

I’m letting a small group of teams try it first. If you run a team, coach one, play on one, or you’re the parent getting all the emails, put your name on the list and tell me what drives you nuts. It’s a short form and takes about a minute, no email app needed.

Get on the early list

Who’s the Andy on your team?

-Matt