E-mailing results

Everyone has a cell phone. Not everyone has a laptop with WiFi. Heck, I don't know of any high school with a wireless internet network. Good luck with that.

 

Have you been to North Dakota? Getting cell phone service or Internet access can be tough.

 

I'd rather have a phone call for basketball and football and an email for non-revenue sports.
If there's some wrestling meet, a phone call is going to take a while while I type in the names of all the winners in a dozen different weight classes. Just email that, then I cut and paste into agate.
The biggest problem I have is with my swim coaches though who fax their results. They all have computerized systems. They are all online thanks to the big ethernet cable they all have in the coaches office. Yet they still print the results off, walk over the the fax machine, fax them, then expect me to spend 45 minutes typing it all up.

 

The fax thing is just weird at this point - At my last place, the two CT tennis teams we covered faxed the results in. I think someone said that the state association required that vs. e-mail, but maybe that was just conjecture.

 

We still take both, but I note that email is preferred for "call-in" results. It's a time saver on our end, and you don't have as many worries with misspelled names and such. I've noticed more and more stat guys losing the traditional stat books and using tablets or some such device, so it's probably easier on their end, too in most cases. I had three volleyball teams this fall where I would interview the coach afterward and they'd grab the tablet and start searching through for stat leaders, before turning to me and say "Why don't I just email you the full stat sheet?" Click a few buttons and I have complete stats in the inbox before I can get out the gym door.

 

E-mail? I still have coaches who prefer to fax. The majority do use e-mail, but it's not that much of a majority. I just did an estimate and I'd say that 40 percent send e-mails, 25 percent still fax and the remaining 35 percent don't do a damn thing. If I told them all "You will do X or I won't put in your results," the percentage of those who don't do what I want (say the faxers if I demand e-mails) will become an additional percentage of those who don't do anything rather than switch over.

Basically, send it however you want to. I'll deal with it. Just send it on time. Don't send me results from a Friday football game on Tuesday afternoon and expect anything to get in.

 

I have a few coaches that email. It's OK but I wouldnt want 100% One soccer guy had his team manager do it and every game was 0-0 tie, no cards were handed out today. Very helpful.

Two thoughts: 1) I like getting things on the phone. You can ask questions, develop a relationship and plant bugs or cultivate feature ideas.

2) So you have some old school coach that's used to calling in, and he/she still calls in. You're going to refuse to print that because its not in email format? Wait what? That's where you're going to run into problems, IMHO.

 

Five or six years ago, I would say the phone tree held some value in building some relationship with coaches, but I'm in the office so little any more I'm usually just checking messages and doing callbacks if needed.

I find most of my interaction has moved to email exchanges and in-person at games/practices. The other advantage I'm finding is that many teachers check their messages often during the day, so I'm able to get a quicker return than I experienced with games of phone tag. If I see an unexpected result or something I'd like to get more on, I'll fire off a quick email saying "call me when you get a break in your day, and we'll talk about your game last night"

 

That's our plan. Would I prefer everything to be entered into our online system? Absolutely. But I also realize that's not going to happen. It'll be a headache, but I'd rather have as much information to sort through as possible.

 

I prefer email because it's easier for us, since we're not always in the office. All but one person on my staff gets email on the smartphone, so it's really the best way to communicate with us.

Problem is, I can't get coaches to contact us period. Email, phone ... they just won't do it at all. I just got an email from a mother with a kid on a second-place soccer team from a piss-poor league complaining they didn't get much coverage this year. And I told her flat out, your coach has been ignoring our request to contact us with game results for four years.

It's very simple: If the coaches email -- even though it's not the same as a phone conversation -- you still have an idea what's going on with that team. If you see they're winning, it plants the idea in your head that you need to get out and see them. But if they won't meet us halfway, then I have no sympathy for them. Our coverage area is too big to be calling every coach after every game. For those of you in true podunks with tiny coverage areas, you probably need to call them and when you talk to them, really lean on them to contact you after games without you having to prompt them.

You make it clear to them how it works, and if they won't follow through, you get the satisfaction that I had this morning: telling the complaining parents, "your coach refuses to meet us halfway."

 

I don't require high school coaches to email results but I do encourage it, especially Saturday wrestling tournaments when a coach may have results on 14 wrestlers. That's a little tough for a phone call or a voicemail.

As for youth team pics, I pretty much insist they be emailed along with the cutline info. Then it's cut and paste. Plus it protects me from some parent bitching about misspelled names.

 

I would support telling folks they need to email in information instead of faxing it.

But if they want to call, you've got to take it.

You can't expect everyone to do your work for you. And it's hard enough getting a call these says (we didn't get home on the bus till 11:30 and I figured it was too late, etc., etc.)

Hell, if they can't find time to make a call from the bus, you think they're doing to file from the bus?