Expert Advice for Preseason Sports Management

Preseason Precision: supercharging league management success

Whether your true preseason preparation starts weeks or months in advance, this is another time period crucial to your season’s success. Take charge of every aspect of your league management planning with the below advice, all before that first whistle blows.

We’ll cover some important topics like running successful tryouts, rostering and team creation, scheduling, and communication with your teams and coaches. These tips will set the stage for a season of growth.

Registration is the first important entry point for your new athletes, but the next step for athletes typically involves tryouts. Running successful tryouts is another foundation for running a competitive and balanced program.

Here are a few key tips to help you run successful tryouts in 2024.

To read the rest of this guide - check out our guide on running the best tryouts for athletes, coaches, and administrators.

8 Tips To Help You Run Successful Tryouts in 2024

We also launched an in-depth video guide on the topic with Jim Dahline, Director of Youth Development at the MN Blades hockey organization.

There’s a good chance that your integrated registration tool is the same tool you use for assigning teams and rostering your athletes. Look for a tool that allows you to add organization members during your registration and then easily copy their information to specific divisions or teams within that division.


When it comes to on-field strategies for creating fair and balanced rosters, there are a couple of factors to consider.

Rely on your coaches for accurate player assessment and evaluation during tryouts

Distribute players with balanced skill levels

Have your coaches consider different player preferences (positions, roles, families)


On TeamSnap for Business, we make rostering easy for administrators. We’ve created spreadsheet templates for both your division/full organization rosters and team-specific rosters. Those templates can be used to directly important rosters into your platform.

Once your program is initially set up, it’s also easy to invite current or former team members directly to your new roster using the import from another team tool.

Team creation is a step that goes hand-in-hand with rostering. Much of your preseason preparation will involve defining the different seasons, divisions, and teams within your leagues. This should also be a factor to look for in your registration tool. Ensure your registration process is set up with easy season and division creation, allowing your teams to easily be imported once the registration process is complete.

After your coaches are signed up, organization administrators can assign team owner status to any coach - handing off those management responsibilities such as adding team managers as well as the team schedule and roster members if allowed by the organization's settings.

Unlock the full Play 4: Expert Advice for Preseason Sports Management

Unlock the full playbook by downloading at the link below. You can also learn how:

To efficiently set up youth sports schedules

To master communication between administrators and coaches

Running Successful Tryouts

Youth Sports Rostering Hacks

Youth Sports Team Creation