Getting Started

For LeagueAthletics.com to work to its fullest, you'll need to enter information about your members, your leagues/divisions, teams, facilities where they play, and their game schedules. For most, the steps below will provide a good outline for setup, however you can setup your site in any order you would like.

Logging in
To login as an administrator of the site, click on the login tab in the top right corner of your site and enter your email and password. Your password is the password you entered when you first created your trial website.

See Security: Admin Roles for information on setting up additional administrators with access to your site.

1. Build a Registration program
   Admin > Members > Registration System

   The registration system will allow you to capture data for your members through your website. Once you have collected this member data and registration has closed, you can begin to assign players to teams.

   Online class: Online Registration 101

2. Create a Season to contain your Teams
   Admin > Teams > Seasons

   A season defines the dates during which your teams exist. Each season contains a new set of teams. Define a season by entering a name, start date and end date.

   Typically, your seasons will be something like "2013" with a start and end date of 1/1/2013 and 12/31/2013. However, if you have multiple seasons throughout the year, your seasons might be "Fall 2013" and "Winter 2013" with respective start and end dates.

3. Create a League structure
   Admin > Teams > Divisions & Teams > Add new League/Division

   This can be anything from a simple two-league, House/Travel structure, to multiple, hierarchically nested leagues. These leagues will become the "parents" for all the teams you define in your website.

   Within the division/league settings, you can also define how standings are tracked.

4. Create your Teams
   Admin > Teams > Divisions & Teams > Add a new team

   Enter information about each team, such as name, "parent" division, and the season. Note that each team you create is only used for the current season. Next season you'll create new teams and assign members again. Previous seasons' team will exist separately as an archive so your organization's history (rosters, game results, etc.) can be preserved.

   As you add new seasons to your site, you can also copy the teams from the previous season so you won't have to re-enter them year after year.

   Linking to a parent league

   If your club belongs to a larger LeagueAthletics.com hosted "Parent" organization, you will be able to take advantage of exclusive scheduling and scoring features that will allow your club's website to be connected to the "Parent" site. Schedules (and optionally Standings) entered on the "Parent" site will automatically be distributed to team pages on your club site. Scores entered on your club's site for those games will automatically be brought up to the "Parent" site. Team management information will also be brought up to the "Parent" site as well.

   1. Select your "Parent" league. Admin > Configuration > General Settings > Organization.
   2. Link your teams. Admin > Teams > Divisions & Teams. From the Divisions & Teams page, click on a team name and adjust the "Outside League" drop-down.

   
   

   Once your teams are connected to the league, they will automatically inherit schedules from the league in real-time. If events do not populate for your teams right away, you may need to verify with the league that they have released schedules for the current season.

5. Add playing Facilities
   Admin > Facilities > Add a Facility

   Here you can enter the names and descriptions of each facility along with it's location, driving direction, and event a map, which will be invaluable to new members. Adding addresses to your facilities will also integrate with Google Maps for members to access directions quickly.

   Heads-up! Facilities, leagues, and teams must be set up first, before games can be entered. Members can be entered at any time; but teams must be entered before rosters can be created.

6. Add game and practice Schedules
   Admin > Scheduling > Add Game or Practice

   Once teams are created and facilities are defined, you can start entering schedules. You can enter single events using "Add Game or Practice." You can choose the date, time, teams, and location for each event. Events entered will be added to your organization's Master Schedule and also broken out into schedules for each team automatically. You can also use the "Recurring Games" option to generate events that occur on a regular basis.

   At first, the schedules will only be visible to those who have access to this area. This will allow you to make additions, changes, and revisions without notifying your members. Once your schedule is finalized, publish it by specifying the date that you want the schedule to end. This gives you control over what the public sees regarding the schedule and when they see it. Once the schedule is published, you can set the schedules to "Live" which will cause future changes, revisions, and cancellations to generate email notifications for all affected team members and their guardians. This will keep everyone as up to date as possible.

7. Assign Rosters
   Admin > Teams > Assign Rosters

   Once the teams are defined and the member data is collected, you can create rosters by assigning members using the Assign Roster tool.