Three Main Features

I want Rec Team Captain to be narrowly focused and do what it does well. I'm not trying to recreate Google Calendar or replace Facebook. In that vein, I'm focusing on three main features: notify players about upcoming games, track who is playing and who is not playing, and notify reserves if necessary.

Notify Players

Rec Team Captain wouldn't be useful at all if it didn't notify players about upcoming games. The first go round I'm sticking to email to keep it simple. If in the future other forms of notification become important, then I'll implement those, but emailing players seems to be the simplest and most popular way to notify players.

For this feature to work, all the captain has to do is enter the schedule and players' email addresses and the system will take care of notification.

Track Who Is Playing

Second on the list is keeping track of who is and is not playing. Again, the simplest path has been taken by providing links in the notification emails the players can click on. Depending on which link the player clicks, that player is registered as playing or not playing in the game the notification email is for.

Once the player clicks the link, he or she is taken to a page on which he or she can change her status just in case he or she accidentally clicked the wrong link.

Reserve Players

The last feature is contacting reserves. When the captain enters players' information, she can indicate if the player is a reserver or not. Reserves are not sent game notification emails unless a regular player indicates he or she is not playing. Once a player chooses not playing, a reserve is sent a notification email, and the reserve player can indicate playing or not playing. This will continue until the roster is out of reserves.

The only difference between a reserve and regular player is that a regular player is send game notification emails, and a reserve is not unless a regular player responds as not playing

Summary

There you have it. Three simple features that help team captains manage players and games. Feel free to post your ideas for future features in the comments.

Softball Training

Here's a short article on softball training. Nothing revolutionary, but it might motivate you to get out there and get ready:

In order for practice to be beneficial it has to be taken seriously.  You play like you train and work on the little things.  The first step of any training session is to have a plan.

Softball News Source

I've found a source for all kinds of softball news from rules and history to leagues and tournaments:

Created on Thanksgiving Day in 1887 as an ad hoc game of indoor baseball, softball has grown immensely over the past 120 years. Today it’s one of the most popular team sports in the United States, with more than 15 million Americans participating every year. We’ve compiled our favorite Web sites to help you learn about the game, follow competitive softball, and play the game yourself.

 Check it out at here.

A lot of the links seem to be broken, but the site itself contains a lot of good information on the sport. Enjoy.

Women Get Better Results from Soccer than Running

Science Daily has an article that talks about women getting better fitness results from soccer than running:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2009) — New research shows that women benefit more from playing recreational soccer than from running when it comes to overall fitness. And that's not all: women playing soccer experience a higher degree of motivation when it comes to sticking to their sport, and they increase their ability to bridge and create new acquaintances. Video and photos available from the project website.

Full Article

The Beginning

Rec Team Captain is a culmination of ideas I had back in 1990. I was playing on a mens softball team, and every Saturday night the captain would call me to make sure I was going to be there. I knew he was calling everybody on the team and then calling more people to find subs for the people who said they weren't going to play.

After I moved to Spokane, I started playing on a co-ed soccer team. This time, at some point during the week, I would get an email from the captain to see if I was playing. She wanted to know "right away" so she could find subs. More emailing or calling.

I knew there had to be an easier and better way. After all, it was 2009. The web can do anything, right? That's when my ideas from 1990 coalesced into what has become Rec Team Captain.

It's very simple really. Allow the captain to enter the team's schedule and add players' email addresses. Then have the system email the players and track who is and is not playing. Sort of a set it and forget it for recreational team management.

So Rec Team Captain was born and is available now at http://recteamcaptain.com

Enjoy and I hope you find it useful.