An Idea for Coaches

[KSsoftballdad]

Coaches,

My daughter plays for a 16-under team in Kansas. Her coach used to complain about the time it took to call and email all the players and parents with team news or any other little detail that needed to be told. He was looking for a more efficient way to communicate with them.

What he found was a company called MSGNTXT Mobile Services. They are a broadcasting company out of Oklahoma. What we had to do as parents and players was simply send a text with a codeword and a keyword to a certain number. This allowed us to subscribe to the coach's broadcast. Anytime he sends out a message to the team, we all receive it on our cell phones. A lot less time for our coach and a better chance that we are going to get the message because we all carry our phones with us, but we all don't check our email everyday.

If anyone is interested you should check them out, at msgntxt.com. I asked our coach about the cost and other charges and all he told me was it was one flat rate and unlimited messages and subscriptions. Sounded pretty good to me.


KSsoftballdad

 

[Coach-n-Dad]

Why not just set up a "group" in contacts that he can send a text to? If a player or parent doesn't have a phone, an email can be entered for the text to go to.

It's a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring someone to do what you can do yourself.

DD's pitching coach has a group set up for all of his students and sends reminders/suggestions/messages all of the time!

 

[KSsoftballdad]

I think our coach types faster than he can text. I also think his phone will not let him text everyone at once (maybe 10 at a time), and then he has to go back in and forward his first message a few times to reach every player and parent. I understand what you are saying Coach-n-Dad, but I guess for our coach, it makes things easier for him. When he was telling me about it, I thought it was pretty cool.

 

[SnocatzDad]

the whole point of Twitter is essentially to automate group texting. You set up the account then can text to one location from your phone and all people that signup to your twitter get a text. It's free and can greatly cut down on your texting bill for the month.

We used texting for field/time/team updates all last year at 14U and it worked great. Every kid had a phone with texting and kids check their text messages about .01 secs after they arrive, calling a parents cell phone isn't even close to as fast a way to get the word out. Just ask how many parents have called their kid and been ignored, but then text their kid and get a reply in 5 seconds. Plus it puts the responsibility on the kid which is where it belongs to communicate to the parents what needs to happen for the team.

 

[Coach-n-Dad]

In addition, I am pretty sure that phones with texting capabilities can be texted from an email account. For instance, I can email a text to a verizon phone by entering XXXXXXXXXX@vtext.com

Just thinking...