About three years ago, the superintendent of instruction and technology for the Bethpage Union Free School District (BUFSD) in New York met with the athletic director to discuss a new communication app that was generating buzz at other schools in the county. After thoroughly evaluating the sportsYou app, they decided it was the right fit for their sports teams.

“I’ve been exposed to a lot of different apps that have these types of programs and procedures and hadn’t signed on to any of them because they had fallen short, in my view as a coach, in a couple of the areas that I needed fulfilled,” said David Schneider, the former superintendent of instruction and technology and current superintendent of the district.

sportsYou was the first app that truly convinced David to establish an app as the main vehicle for coaches in his district to communicate with players and their family. David also uses the sportsYou app as a coach for the Syosset Soccer Club.‍

“It was the most comprehensive app”‍

BUFSD heavily utilizes Google services in their district, so sportsYou’s integration with Google sign-in and its ability to attach documents was a major selling point. There was no easy way to upload links and documents with the other apps.

Schneider uses sportsYou to have parents fill out Google surveys, which are then directly imported into his Google drive. He also likes the connection between the sportsYou calendar and his personal iPhone calendar.

“It was the most comprehensive app,” he said. “There would just always seem to be plenty of holes in each of the other apps that I was exposed to prior.”

Before smartphones and apps were commonplace, coaches communicated with their teams via email. But the obvious drawback with email is that people don’t always check their inbox.

“It’s so much easier than using email because with email you don’t have push notifications”

“It’s so much easier than using email because with email you don’t have push notifications,” said Schneider. “The expectation on response time is now far longer for email than it is for any sort of text message.”

He added that having different ways to manage notifications when he posts on the feed and sends chat messages allows for very consistent communication back and forth.

Schneider likes that sportsYou as a company is open and responsive to feedback. The R&D team was quick to listen to his needs and work toward improving the app.

“In our first season they assisted entering in the scheduling of all of the games and that eased the perceived burden,” he said. “It’s really easy to use but everybody was afraid of how much work it was going to be, and these are volunteers that are doing this work.” Quickly Schneider and his teams found that it was easy and that the sportsYou app became a natural compliment to their team communication and management workflows.