The 2020-2021 hockey season has presented a number of new challenges for leagues and associations. With player safety and health being a top priority, Saskatoon Minor Hockey Association (SMHA) made the TeamLinkt team management app a mandatory tool for all teams to use. Although TeamLinkt does offer free tools for online registration, website management, and scheduling, SMHA used a third-party company to handle this for the season.
Although it is ideal to use the entire TeamLinkt suite of league and association management tools, the system is flexible and will work alongside other popular sports management systems.
Here is how TeamLinkt setup Saskatoon Minor Hockey for the Season:
Team Management App
Once players were registered through a third-party online registration system, TeamLinkt onboarding representatives worked with SMHA’s staff to export the data out of their online registration system and import the data into TeamLinkt’s system. This is a service TeamLinkt offers free of charge to help with the setup. This is how teams are formed for the team management app. In the app, teams are able to chat, share photos, set availability, transfer team fees, live video stream, post live-game updates, share lineups, add events, and more.
Health Waivers
SMHA used TeamLinkt’s new Event Health Waiver system to help with contact tracing in the event there was a COVID outbreak. To set it up, SMHA entered in their waiver information questions, set up the waiver to fill out 24 hours before each event and entered the number of spectators allowed at each game. From there, a health waiver was added to every event in each team’s calendar. Prior to each game, teams completed a health waiver declaring they were not presenting COVID symptoms.
As a league, SMHA was able to see exactly who was at every event, who filled in a health waiver, and quickly export information to a spreadsheet. This information includes the contact info of every person at each event to send to health Canada in the event of a COVID exposure.
141,823
Waivers Completed
Between September 30, 2020 and December 15, 2020 there have been 141,823 waiver forms submitted for SMHA.
League Website
Saskatoon Minor Hockey Association uses a third-party system to run their website. TeamLinkt auto-generates a website leagues are able to use, however it is not mandatory with the system.
Already have a website? You can embed TeamLinkt schedule, standings, scores widgets into it!
Online Registration
As mentioned above, Saskatoon Minor Hockey uses a third-party system to do their online registration for the season. If you are able to export your online registration information (like SMHA does), you are still able to set up the TeamLinkt team management app for all of your teams! Although it is easier to use TeamLinkt’s online registration, it is not a mandatory feature in the system. More on TeamLinkt’s Online Registration here: https://teamlinkt.com/league-registration/
Scheduling
Saskatoon Minor Hockey continued to use their third-party system for scheduling their teams games, practices, etc. TeamLinkt was able to sync all team’s calendars with the iCal URL from the other system which keeps each team’s calendar up to date with the latest events. When SMHA makes a change to the schedule, a sync occurs with TeamLinkt and makes any necessary changes for teams.
TeamLinkt also offers a schedule builder tool for games, and allows for importing events from an excel spreadsheet.
Why Join TeamLinkt?
TeamLinkt’s league management software works perfect for leagues and associations of all sizes. Teams also love using the team management app as it is the perfect way to keep your team in the loop and organized during the season. As you can tell by the information above, TeamLinkt’s system is very flexible, and offering the team management app to all teams can be done very easily regardless of how your registration process took place, what you use to power your website, and how you schedule your games. Also, regardless of the size of your organization, TeamLinkt is available for free (here’s why).
If you are looking to set up your league or association with TeamLinkt, create an account here!
