Team Recruitment

Posted On: 01-14-2020

As many coaches flipped calendars to 2020, their thoughts leaped to recruitment and team publicity for the competition season.  With many teams starting to hold practices when the snow is still flying, encouraging young athletes to join in January or February is tough.  More often, you receive inquiries after you have already been working with your new athletes for several weeks. To address this problem, many teams have turned to social media to help spread the word about their organization.

Having a presence on social media platforms is key to reaching potential athletes earlier – let them see you on their computer or smart device before that spring day when they see you at your home range.  Facebook and other social network platforms are a great way to gain interest in your team.  Ask current members to follow and “like” your page to help with the networking.  Posting competition results, new member meeting announcements and fundraiser events will help get the word out to previous members and establish new interest via social networking.  Use caution however – you do not want your team to “go viral” for the wrong reasons.  Limit those that can directly post to your page and monitor it closely.   Also be considerate of the fact that you are posting information about minors.  Check with parents before posting pictures, including last names, etc.  Adding a line to your team documents asking for permission to post pictures protects you and your young athletes.  Use caution when writing any post that lets everyone know that members of the team will be out of town over a certain time period.  Unfortunately we must consider the possibility that those following the posts are also looking for an opportunity to take advantage of vacant homes that have a probability of holding firearms. 

Link a team specific email address to your page.  This way the address can be handed down as administrators and coaches change positions or retire from the team.  A generic email can be a great source of team archeology – holding all of the email addresses of previous members in one place.  Getting ready for the team fundraiser – send out an email to all of your contact addresses.  With little effort, you may get a few more people participating or donating to the cause.

-Jennifer Laurent