The holy grail of all grass roots team is being able to keep everyone involved happy, especially the parents. The truth is no matter what you do not everyone will be happy with the way things are run in your club or team. However, over the next few paragraphs I will be sharing with you some tips I use myself to ensure stakeholders within your team are satisfied with the way things are run.
Communication
This one seems simple enough, keeping players and parents informed of events such as training and matches that the team will be involved with seems like an obvious one. This can have its stumbling blocks, with social media everywhere and so easy to use it seems like the most obvious way of contacting those involved, but not all will have access to this media. Cover all bases, I myself have created a WhatsApp group and Facebook page for the parents and players of my own team, but along with this I send text messages and for some go really old school and call them up. This never takes long to send a couple of messages on different formats and it ensures everyone knows what is happening.
Organisation
For me this is absolutely key. To know what is happening, when, where and how with your team and club is paramount to the above point. I should know, in the past I have been very unorganised and missed important meetings and events that have left me ill-informed and parents very upset that their child has missed out on something. Now I keep a diary, both paper and electronic on my phone. As well as this, all of the coaches with in the club are in a WhatsApp group so we can all remind each other can keep tabs on what is going on.
Consistency
Know what you want and when you and stick to it. When things start changing people do not like it. If you allow things to change often and for no reason then parents and players will begin to be upset, believe it or not they may have a life and other interests outside of football unlike us who devote our lives to it. Children have other clubs and sports that they may play so it is important when setting times, dates and venues for training and matches to keep it consistent. Try and keep to the same days, venues and times so parents and players know where they should be and when.
Going above and beyond
I have recently experienced an example of this myself. The club had announced that my Under 7s team were to train midweek 6:30pm-7:30pm. When I announced this to the parents there were a few complaints. The main one being that it was too late for children of that age, which is understandable. Another being that they already had commitments on that day. I decided to see what the club could offer me in terms of a different day for training but only Saturdays were available. Of course when I put this back to the parents most were happy but only 1 child could not make Saturday training and could only make Tuesday training. This would mean only having one child training on a Tuesday. After some too and fro with the club I managed to get the Tuesday session put back an hour to 5:30 – 6:30. When I told the parents about this they were very happy. Even though this meant me giving up more of my free time, the parents could see I had gone above and beyond for their children and this pleased them.
So while at times it may seem keeping everyone happy can be a lot of work but believe me you will have a happy team when those involved with the club know how you work and how the club works. It is then up to them to accommodate for you.
