From the article: Youth Sports Profile: Football
When your child joins a sports team for the first time, it's a learning experience for both of you. What have you discovered, the hard way, as a football mom? What advice would you give to parents of kids starting out? Share your tips on everything from half-time snacks to post-game pep talks to dealing with crummy coaches or disappointing games. What do you love—or hate—most about being a football mom? Share Your Tip
Football parent clubs
- Our parents club uses a website called myparentsclub.com. It has lots of useful features like email, text, calendar, etc and its free to use. We found it a lot easier to use than email lists and more private than facebook, and its helped us improve the communications and interactions among our team parents and families.
- —Guest Janet
Tired of Reply-All Email for Volunteers
- I have been using VolunteerSpot.com for over a year to organize football snacks, concession stand volunteers, fundraisers and I also use it at my kids school. It is so easy to quickly setup a signup for food and/or volunteers. You can send emails from VolunteerSpot or create a link and send it through email. Parents simply click on a link and choose the events they can help with.
- —ProudMama4
Get your team orgainized
- With football season about to start, I wanted to show you something that might help with organizing your team volunteers: www.signupgenius.com. This is a free program that can help team moms organize volunteers and events. I think it would be perfect for any volunteer coordinators, team moms, and teachers as well as class moms organizing snacks and events. I am the team mom for my daughter’s cheerleading team and I used it for our Cheerleading 4th of July parade signups and it worked so well, getting more volunteers than we have ever had. It really makes it so much easier than calling and emailing parents individually. I'm going to start using it for all of our events like car washes and parties and stuff. My kid’s school is going to start using it because it has been so difficult for the class moms to get volunteers.
- —helenalala
Enjoy it While You Can
- At times, the schedule might be over-whelming and you might want to complain about how much of your time it takes for your child to be involved in any sport, but take my advice and try to enjoy every minute of it... All too soon your child will be grown and done playing and you will miss it! ;)
- —FamilyCrafts
Bleacher cheerleader
- Don't care more about the outcome of the game than your kid does! For most kids, youth sports is a chance to run around and have fun with friends - and having parents scream themselves into a ref-bashing frenzy in the bleachers doesn't go with that! Youth sports is such a great way to develop character, as well as physical skills. Emphasize the positive, cheer for your kid's great play and the great plays made by everyone else - teammates AND opponents.
- —Guest Jackie
