I probably shouldn’t be sharing this information given the damage that could be done with it by hostile governments or various other terrorist cells, but I have identified a piece of infrastructure that is absolutely crucial for the day-to-day existence of a wide swath of the population.
Any disruption of this particular service would cause the lives of millions of goal-oriented citizens across Canada and around the world to descend into panicked confusion and chaos. There’d be mass hysteria, jammed phone lines, and many children would be left without snacks.
Oh yes, I’m talking about TeamSnap.
What is TeamSnap, you ask? That question itself is ludicrous to the millions of sports families who rely on it to run their lives. Asking those families “what is TeamSnap” is like asking a helicopter “what is a rotor.” It’s absolutely essential, and if it falls apart, things are about to get messy.
TeamSnap is a sports team organizing app that was founded in 2009 by a youth lacrosse coach and a rec soccer player who, according to the company, suffered from CSUATWFS (Constantly Showing Up At The Wrong Field Syndrome). They decided there had to be a better way of organizing sports activities than what was happening at the time, which often relied heavily on long email chains or shoddy websites.
Back when I was a kid in the 1980s and ’90s, things were even trickier. You got a printed out schedule at the beginning of the season, and God help you if anything changed on the schedule. What did they do? Did the coach tell the kids to change the schedule, and then the kids were just supposed to … remember that and tell their parents? OMG, the ’80s were wild.
Things got better with email and online schedules, but it was still pretty messy until TeamSnap came along to put everything – schedules, contact lists, payments, score updates, snacks, Jesse forgot his jacket again – all into one easy-to-use app.
As a father and coach with two sports-mad tween/pre-teen boys – that’s prime sportsing age – TeamSnap is making me aware of how crazy our lives have become thanks to the non-stop barrage of athletic activities. Each team that they are on – and boy, they are on a lot of them – has its own schedule on TeamSnap. And then, if you really want to get your heart racing, you can click on the “All Team Schedule” to see every event planned for every sport for every athlete or coach in the family.
Spring is the worst scheduling nightmare for many Lower Mainland sports families, as the winter seasons of soccer, hockey and basketball try to elbow their way into the annual grind that is youth spring baseball.
This past Saturday and Sunday, my boys, between the two of them, had 10 events on the schedule. Ten gigs in two days?! Who are they, Trooper?!
And on top of all that, three of the events got cancelled by the rain. Through the magic of TeamSnap though, we learned that info instantaneously.
I can’t even fathom how those cancellations would have been handled in the ’80s. Did they put it on the radio? Did they light the Beacons of Gondor? Did they, God forbid, have to phone everyone and actually talk to them? Gross.
And that’s the beauty, and sheer terror, of TeamSnap. It’s a constant reminder that my life is just a constant sprint from one field to another. But it’s essential for getting us all there on time and with the proper number of Gatorades and granola bars.
If something happened to TeamSnap, you’d find me and all the other parents driving from field to field in a frantic rage, screaming into our cellphones: “What colour jerseys are we wearing today?! Who is bringing the oranges!?! Where the hell is Jesse’s jacket?!?! Why is life so hard!?!!?”
Then we’d all proceed to drive straight off the nearest bridge.
TeamSnap is important for many families, is what I’m saying. If all that schedule information were to go away, I’d have a moment of relief followed immediately by every cell in my body dissolving in the cold North Shore spring rain.
I don’t want that to happen though, and thankfully it won’t. It’s not on the schedule.
Andy Prest is the acting editor of the North Shore News. His lifestyle/humour column runs biweekly.
