How to increase enrolment

It's always a challenge to attract new players to our girls fast pitch league. We have tried things like BOGO promotions, free helmets, newspaper adverts, road side signs, shopping mall sign up tables, discounts to get players that have left the sport to come back, and free winter clinics.
We are looking for new ways to attract players. Does anyone have any ideas that have been successful?
Thanking you all in advance for your help.

One thing that we are working on in our area is to make the game as fun as possible for the girls that are currently playing.

We are a new coaching staff to a small high school what had a program that was in need of a jump start to say the least. So we came up with a few things to try and bring some excitement to the program.

1) Brought in a former major league player to talk to the players and parents.
2) Had a former state championship coach discuss what is needed to improve programs.
3) Visited a D1 program for the day. Was given behind the scenes access and was allowed in the locker room for pregame prep.

I know this is different from a league but maybe you could do some similar things to add excitement. Word of mouth is the best advertisement for any program.

Ban parents from the ballpark.

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Print flyers out and take them to the local schools for PE teacher to hand out.

1. Put something on Facebook and encourage people to share the post with their friends. A couple of people can help get your message to a lot of people.

2. Have a "jersey day" when you ask current players to wear their jerseys to school so they can drum up publicity at school. Parents will see kids at pick-up and hopefully start asking questions.

3. Ask some coaches to do a free no-commitment off-season clinic at the fields (something that can be done without buying any new equipment). Advertise at the schools and on Facebook, make sure that on the day of the clinic you have flyers about your league with sign-up information and a registration discount for clinic attendees. (Bonus points if you can get some coupons from a local sporting goods store to hand out as well.)

4. Start a referral program. Tell parents that if they sign up X number of new families they can get free registration, or a break from mandatory volunteer hours, or some other incentive. (Or you can have various levels of awards for signing up new families. Sign up one family, get $10 credit at the snack bar; 3 families means you get credit for one volunteer shift. Five families, free registration.)

5. If there are community events (street fairs, annual holiday parades, etc.), have your league participate. (A local chamber of commerce can help with this.) Pick some girls to march in the parade. Have a booth at the street fair. Make sure you have flyers so that parents can find more information. Have an email sign up sheet so that you can add people to your mailing list and remind them when it's time to register.

6. If any schools or parks or libraries sell advertising space on fences, then see how much it would it would cost to print up a banner and hang it there. Banners aren't too expensive.

7. Ask if a local sporting goods store or batting cage would allow you to leave some flyers for girls who might be interested.

We are having the same problem, getting kids to play when there are so many other sports and activities going at the same time. Something I would like to see is distributing a flyer at the elementary schools that advertises the league (in our case, LL softball) and how to sign up.

When my daughter was in second or third grade I went through the school directory and emailed the parents of every girl in her grade and got about a dozen girls to come out and play little league for the first time. Essentially, I just said my DD is doing this, she did it last year and it was fun, come have your DD play with my DD, here is the link to register.

All those things you've tried are ways to get parents to want to sign their kids up, but if the kids aren't interested, a BOGO offer isn't gonna change their mind.

You have to make playing the cool, fun thing to do. You have to make it so they feel like they're missing out if they don't play. And you have to make it clear that prior experience isn't necessary (it helps to have some decent coaches who can make the brand new player at least competent enough to feel like part of the team so she comes back year after year).

Two years ago was the first year our school had a team, and we had 8 players until about a week before our first of two games. This year 26 of the 130 girls in our high school are playing (with 28 varsity games on the schedule), we have a 13U team, and we are starting a 10U team. We got 24 girls from the school to sign up for our 10U team (not all are going to actually play, but that many showed interest). The league the 10U plays in only got 9 individual signups despite doing some of those outreach tactics you described.

These girls are playing because we made sure that first group had fun. We recruited around the school. We talked to the other athletes and asked (ok, begged) them to play. We told girls to get their friends to play (sometimes they stick with it, sometimes not, but they don't know until they try).

The key, though, is that for all my many flaws as a coach, the one thing I absolutely know for a fact I can do is get a girl who is hesitant to sign up, especially a decent athlete, to enjoy her experience and want to come back next year. You absolutely must find coaches who can do this. They don't have to be the best at teaching the skills of the game (but they can't be terrible at that either). They don't have to have a 30-year track record of state titles. They just need to show that they care and they need to make it more fun than whatever else the kid might do instead.

dc73nova said:

Print flyers out and take them to the local schools for PE teacher to hand out.

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I've tried doing this for the 16U team/league I manage/participate in, and surprisingly it's had about 50% success. Some PE teachers are the ADs and don't give two flying ****s about it because it may endanger their varsity teams/JV teams, some PE teachers are just plain lazy and don't care in the slightest since they're not getting paid extra to promote it. Some ADs are nice and pass along the information to their softball coaches, and then it falls to a new level of "they choose whatever they want to do".