Case Study: Tualatin Valley Youth Football League Cuts Administrative Time in Half

At a Glance

	Challenge: TVYFL needed a centralized league management solution to oversee registration and team rosters. They also needed to ensure that all 2,250 existing coaches and volunteers had completed a background check and the required SafeSport training.
	Solutions: By leveraging SportsEngine’s HQ, TVYFL can oversee rosters and registration while still providing flexibility to member associations to manage payment options or association-specific information. SportsEngine's visibility ensures that every coach and volunteer has the appropriate checks and certifications and that every player has completed all requirements before playing.
	Results:Since implementing SportsEngine, TVYFL has doubled the number of players it serves. Flexible payment options, fluid registration processes, and live streaming are just some of the benefits member associations and players receive with SportsEngine.

Intro:

Tualatin Valley Youth Football League (TVYFL) is a nonprofit that supports thousands of youth football players across the Portland and Salem, Oregon metro areas. It uses SportsEngine as a centralized hub to manage registration and rosters for 60-member associations, 300 teams, and 6,800 players. Since implementing SportsEngine, TVYFL has nearly doubled registration and saved thousands of administrative hours.

Challenge:

Rapid growth leads TVYFL to look for a scalable league administration solution

As a rapidly growing youth football league, and the largest independent youth football league in the nation, TVYFL staff members and volunteers spent an incredible amount of time simply verifying, collecting, and filing paperwork. Dozens of smaller football associations depended on TVYFL for administrative management, but the processes it had in place were time-consuming and inefficient.

TVYFL needed to find a solution to collect basic information like waivers and medical releases sheets for thousands of players, making it easier for coaches and staff to ensure each player met all requirements. It also needed a way to verify team rosters and ensure players were on the correct team and that each team had the correct number of players. Even more importantly, TVYFL needed to ensure that 2,250 coaches and volunteers had completed current background checks and were up-to-date on abuse prevention training.

TVYFL needed a flexible, scalable, and accessible technology solution that was simple enough to smoothly onboard all the member associations and support their needs.

“SportsEngine has made it much easier for us to operate and manage not only the league, but also the member associations underneath.” - Brian Lyles, President

Solution:

TVYFL finds a comprehensive solution with SportsEngine’s HQ

After analyzing competitors, TVYFL found the solution it was looking for with SportsEngine’s software. Every member association had to be moved into SportsEngine, a straightforward process that only took two months. “SportsEngine provided a team of people to support the entire conversion,” said Lyles. “They helped move all our members into SportsEngine and helped them get their registration and websites set up. The process went very smoothly.”

SportsEngine’s HQ and unique technology stack gave TVYFL the tools to centralize and control registration while allowing each member association to adjust additional requirements for individual players. Each association could easily build its own custom website with SportsEngine, simplifying player registrations and payments.

SportsEngine’s background check option gave parents and players the confidence that every person on the sideline had been approved. “You want to make sure that anybody with access to kids has gone through the training and has been background checked,” explained Lyles. With SportsEngine’s services, each approved volunteer or coach was given a card to carry on a lanyard, which could then be scanned to verify their approval was still active.

Results:

Registration doubles with SportsEngine’s suite of services and ease of use

Since partnering with SportsEngine in 2016, TVYFL has nearly doubled the number of associations and teams under its leadership, growing to 60 associations and 6,800 players across the league. This growth wouldn’t have been possible without SportsEngine. “We used to have around 1,100 coaches and volunteers, and now we’re up to over 2,200,” said Lyles. “You can’t scale like that without a set of tools to support the process.”

Despite rapid growth, SportsEngine is still helping TVYFL and its association members save hundreds of hours each year. “We have 238 team books that have to be verified each season,” explained Lyles. “SportsEngine has helped us automate a lot of that process. In the past, the verification process would take eight to ten hours to verify each division. In book verification alone, we’ve seen a 50% time savings with SportsEngine.”

Each association member can set its payment methods, simplifying the registration process for parents and providing flexible options. “Whether a participant is on a payment plan, payment by card, payment by check, direct deposit, or payment by cash, the ability to manage it is all right there in SportsEngine,” said Lyles.

TVYFL has continued adding services from SportsEngine to enhance team management and the services it offers to coaches and players. This year, it began using SportsEngine’s Play to offer streaming services. “With live streaming, grandparents who don’t live locally can still watch the live games,” explained Lyles. “We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback with that.”

Conclusion:

TVYFL grows by 50% and adds new programs using SportsEngine’s solutions

As TVYFL continues its growth, it looks to SportsEngine to provide innovative solutions that simplify league management and ensure the safety of its players. As one of SportsEngine’s beta testers, TVYFL is often one of the first organizations to try out new services. “SportsEngine continues to innovate and grow its tech stack,” said Lyles. “They’re making it not only easier to manage the league but easier to manage the member associations underneath.”

One way TVYFL is growing is by adding a girls’ flag football program to support area high school flag football teams. The program doubled registration from its first season to the second, and Lyles is looking forward to even more growth in the upcoming third season.

“One of the most important things in building a new program is connection and building community,” said Lyles. “If you want to step into something like that, you have to be intentional. We absolutely use SportsEngine for this program.”