Multiple teams and multiple season best practices

hi Cesare

This is AN AMAZING idea. Maybe we should compile the most common issues?

Since I’ve been working with this for so long, I don’t see many issues that first time users have.

So I’m sure you guys can give us some input on what your biggest questions are and we can turn them into docs.

Thanks!

Ok, let’s try.
I think many users that begin to use the plugin need to realize how to manage how seasons, leagues, teams and players are related to each other, especially thinking to the future and to shift from one season to the next one.

So, first things first.
Step one and two
It should be to create a Season (step 1) and one or more leageus (step 2). It’s easy but also you should know there’s no relationship between those two. Once it is done, you can setup the default league and season of your website (Sportpress>Settings>General). You’ll need to change this setting when you move from one season to the next one because somewhere around you can setup a “current season” that I guess takes from here the current one.

Step three
Now it’s time to create Clubs.
At the beginning I thought it would be enough to name the club with its name. Gonna explain this. I’m trying to manage not only a team but a bunch of teams and leagues where my children play for. Then I found it’s not enough for me. I have two children who play for the same club but different age (so different teams and leagues). If you call them with the same name you will not be able to say which one is the right one (you can tell from the slug, but not always it is visible). So my suggestion is to name the teams with something that let you identify clearly.
My best option was to call each team with the year of birth of the team members, so I have a “MyTeam- 2005” and a “MyTeam- 2009”. Then I found out that I can have all teams under a parent team, which I decided to do, so in my structure I have a “MyTeam” which is the parent for my two teams “MyTeam- 2005” and “MyTeam- 2009”. Unfortunately (but maybe I’m wrong) I couldn’t find any advantage in doing this (having a parent team), I tought the two child teams would inherited things not defined from the parent (logo, ground, url, short name, etc). That should not be too difficult to do (hint!). Right now tho, it’s not working this way, so if somebody has found a reason in using parent and child on teams, please go ahead.

Step four
Well, here it depends on how deep you wanna go. Teams, matches, players, staff, grounds and officials are options you might don’t even need.
If your aim is to show the existance of a team, you can just add players to each of your team and you are all set. When a new season will begin you might not even need to create a new season. You’ll just add/remove team members and update the league the team is playing.

Adding a player.
The easy way is to import player from a csv file. You can download a sample file and edit that. Filds available are: Number, Name, Positions, Teams, Leagues, Seasons, Nationality, DoB (date of birth).
Fill the file (spreadsheet is fine, than save it as csv file). Don’t need to fill all the information, but just what you need. Be careful to the DoB, will be the import date if it’s blank (for as far as I know it is displayed in the player profile but only used in the birthday widget plugin – and this could be a problem having all the players born in the same day…). So if you don’t use the birthday widget just disable the visibility of the DoB (Sportpress>Settings>players: uncheck both show DoB and age).
Be carefull to same names. I’ve made a little mess with some players having same lastname (in Italy is pretty easy, since there are typical last names in each area), even if playing in diffent teams.
Obviously you can add players one by one. Much longer, still easy.

If you like to play with the software you might decide to add other teams (that bring us to create a calendar of matches). Next steps, in the future… as soon as I have time.
Please add your experience and comments.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by cesarewp.

Hi @cesarewp ,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience with community! ??
The idea the child teams to inherit “data” from the parent teams is a great one. Would you mind to pass it to our Ideaboard for further discussion and upvoting?

Thanks,
Savvas

done.

Hi there!

That’s quite an amazing roadmap! I agree with most of it, and it looks like you’ve found your way around it very easily.

Did you face any issues with the SportsPress > Configure section? Did you change anything there?

Quite often that’s the hardest part to change, IMHO.

Thanks!

Right now I haven’t done much in that area, just a little.
I’ve added some statistics (minutes played and average minutes played per match) that I think would useful to have.
I think, mostly for young teams, would be better to have metrics linked to a season, or better have an history with data and metrics, so I could have an idea of how a kid is growing and maybe have graphics of it.
Maybe those function are present in the pro version… don’t know, but as a team leader I would like to have pages (with views only for coaches) of those data.
I’m not sure to add “marks” to statistics of players of each match. Maybe something more like stars where 1 is below average, 2 average and 3 above average, would be less disturbing. But don’t know yet. Too much staff could be bothering.
I would add something more for goalkeepers. I would like to know how many goals each had, right now that’s not available. It deals with the time played and eventually with the substition time. Would be easy to add it as new value, but think the input area would too crowded and should be not difficult to do automatically…
I’ve added two values to have icons and time of subs (one for the player who is leaving the field and one for the player who is entering the field). I followed someone suggestion in doing thatm, with no problem. I think also this should be automatic, since already sportpress ask who enters and when… but I really missed it, so I could not wait to have it right away.

What really doesn’t work, is the missing link between leagues/seasons. I didn’t figure it out right away and my solution is to name each league with the season year. But not sure what’s happening with this choice in the future.
I would chose the pay version just for this feature but doesn’t seems to be available neither in the pro version.

I haven’t had problems in configuring, even if I think other things should be changed. For example, if I manage a whole team, with all age sub teams I have different rules about how long a match is, but this settings belongs not to a league but to the whole sportpress. Than I see I can change it for every match. I would put that in the league rules.

too much?!
??

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by cesarewp.