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How We Work: Jason Vogel, Kent City High School

04/12/2016

No roof? No problem. Since becoming AD at Kent City High School after a storm deposited a sizeable portion of the gym roof in front of the school entrance, Jason Vogel’s created a powerful wind of his own, building one of our strongest athletic communities by connecting his English and journalism background with a love of sports and school history.
as told to Romy Glazer

Kent City Eagles Mascot High School Jason Vogel

Of all the bus routes our 360 students take to get to Kent City High School, only two of them aren’t on gravel roads. If you can’t picture it – think of a big apple orchard; lots of our families are in the apple farming business, about 20 miles north of Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s Eagle Country — we’re a small rural farming community.

I’ve been here four years so far, starting out as the Dean of Students in both the Middle School and High School back in 2012. I was promoted to Assistant Principal in 2013. And in 2014, after Spring Break, I took over as athletic director. It’s a funny story. At the time, I was on vacation with my family at Disney enjoying the sun when a big storm came through back at home. It was so strong, it blew the roof off the gym! A day or two later, the current athletic director resigned, and I came back from vacation as the new athletic director of a gym without a roof.

We started working with VNN back in 2013, when I was the assistant principal. Before then, we had a link to schedules on our school website, but that was about it save for a Weebly site I set up for the football team when I was head coach. The old AD had a good idea of where things were going, but our VNN site never quite took off until that following Fall when I took over and we got all the coaches in a room to talk about it. My background is in writing, and taught English for ten years, so I knew the power of journalism and coverage to rally people around a common cause. The coaches on the other hand, didn’t see it straight away. But I needed their help and made game recaps mandatory. The funny thing is, they weren’t dragging their feet because of the extra work — they just didn’t want to post when they lost! As a guy who coached before, I knew that even an article about losing was good because it would not just motivate the team to win more, but was a good way to force my coaches to review the games, keep people accountable, and think about their future strategy win or lose. At the end of the day though, what coach doesn’t want to promote their programs? That was what this was all about – if you weren’t into coaching to be a champion for your student-athletes, you probably don’t want to be a coach for us.

I had to keep on them at first. After 24-hours, if I didn’t see an article about last night’s game, I’d write them a note. Honestly, to me, the only thing more frustrating than not having a website is having a one that is not kept up-to-date, so having that constant flow of information is important. Your community needs to know what’s going on and that they can count on you for information. And they’re the real readers of our site— I’ve found that more often than not, it isn’t the kids. Sure they appreciate it, seeing their names and photos pop-up, and getting the motivation to do better because they’re being featured, but our main audience is those that support them – the parents and alumni. They’re the ones driving 30,000 hits in a month for us.

The impact of our site on the community started hitting me this Winter, when I began to notice the attendance at our basketball games growing. It’s always been pretty steady – I’d consider basketball to be one of our most popular sports, but this year, I was looking around, and saw more community members there who didn’t actually have an athlete on the team. Now that people have a storyline behind the games, they get more excited to see what happens. They’re truly invested – and that’s great. It’s also had an impact on our student section — our wrestling team has won the District Championship five years in a row, and we announced that if they went undefeated at the season opener versus Big Rapids and Kenowa Hills High Schools, Coach Kik would dance the Cupid Shuffle with the students. He was a great sport — and of course, when it happened, we posted the video online. He’s still got the moves – and the student section kept showing up, even having a holiday sweater party in the stands later on in the season. Another great example of getting the students out was Varsity Volleyball’s CSAA clinching victory over Morley Stanwood High School in late October. The last time we had won a conference title in volleyball, the majority of the current team was just learning to walk — it was packed! In the future, I’d like to make our technology platform more of a learning experience. We’re looking into how we could best involve students into being guest content creators. Their point of view is what we’re missing right now, and it would help and take what we already have to the next level.

Our state’s sports governing association, the MHSAA, are big Eagle fans too. This Winter, Katelyn Geers from our Girls Basketball team made the game winning shot versus Muskegon. After that game, and in part, our coverage of it, the MHSAA made Katelyn their inaugural featured athlete of the week – interviewing her, us, and putting a cherry on top of a great senior season. What’s more, that wasn’t the only game-winning shot she made this year. The other was against Shelby High School in the Regional Semi-Finals and it’s something that people here will remember for a long time.

I think the thing I didn’t expect was just how interested everyone else outside of our community would be about us. Last year, we left our conference, the Ottawa-Kent Conference, and with it, coverage of the region’s major newspaper, the Grand Rapids Press. It kept me up at night for a while — but even after moving to our new home, the Central State Activities Association, the excitement in the media hasn’t slowed. I think we might be actually getting more coverage in our new local paper, the Muskegon Chronicle, than we ever did before – I’ll always link our articles to writers and tell them if there’s anything you want, pictures, dates, names, use them. There have been times where they’ve lifted right from our site! It’s great for our kids. We want them in the newspaper and want to get them as much exposure as we can.

MLive, (owner of eight newspapers in Michigan) called me the other week and asked, “what are you guys doing up there?” They have these game of the week, best place to see a game, best school quizzes occasionally on their website, and the guy was joking about how upset he was that we always win them. The secret is, we share them like mad around here. We don’t have a ton of people, and we’re up against all these Class A schools with four-five times our enrollment, but our website, text messages, and social media drives all that voting. We’ve built a good community up here – and it’s been because of technology that we’ve been able to reach them all. Each day I am able to congratulate student-athletes in grades 6-12 for games or performances that I may or may not have seen the night before, I can help increase interest in contests that would have been lost and or forgotten in the past, I can make sure our entire community knows everything that is happening in our athletic program, and I can help shine a spotlight on sports that don’t always get the attention they deserve.

Want to learn more about the Eagles of Kent City? Check out their website at kentcityathletics.com or follow them on Facebook and Twitter. Interested in taking your high school sports community to the next level like Jason? Learn about all the athletic department communication tools we offer at VNN by scheduling a free demo with us at varsitynewsnetwork.com/schedule-demo

Inside VNN: Registration

04/05/2016

With the launch of VNN Digital Registration today, we sat down with Austin Morris, Tony Ellison, Josh Walker, and Cory Harter from our product development team to talk about the app, how it came to be, and what they were most excited for in the future.
As told to Romy Glazer

Playing sports is fun, but signing up is irritating. It isn’t the kids that have to do it. Parents are busy, and now they’ve got to remember all these dates, and pieces of paper. It’s one more thing to do. And when you look at all the forms, it always starts with name, address, all those things. With what we’re doing, once you set yourself up the first time, it’s already taken care of for all the sports that student’s going to play all year. And the next. 10 minutes and it’s done for you. You can update any information at any time, but it’s effortless. You’re registered, and when your kid makes the team, you’re automatically subscribed to text message updates from the coach. Easy.

There’s a big trend in the market of coaches not being in the classroom anymore like they used to. These are people that aren’t teachers, they’ve got full-time jobs in addition to wanting to help out at the school and they have all these administrative things to do before they even get to doing what they actually want to do. Why drive all the way to the school when you can just approve it from your phone? This app will keep them coordinated and organized wherever they are.

We knew that a missing piece of our platform was registering for sports, but when we first started looking into building it, we had some trouble. None of us realize how much it varied; region to region, state to state, even sometimes school to school across towns, everyone had their own way of signing up for sports. It was a big challenge— where did VNN fit in? How could we make something simple that worked for as many people as possible? That was the goal.

There are companies who that’s all they do. Registering people for things in high school is their whole business; FamilyID, RegisterMyAthlete, who are friends of ours in the industry, and we’ve even heard our competitors like BigTeams are working on similar products. We decided at the beginning that we’d take advantage of what we already have at VNN – all the other apps and the website. Everyone else was going to have all their own features, but they wouldn’t have all the connected communication between things that we would. All the other features baked in would be a bonus.

Our products are getting better and easier to make because we have so many schools. Before it was like – how do you find out what people need? Who do you call? Some stranger and hope they’ll talk to you. “Hi – how do you sign people up for sports?” It’s weird. Now, we can survey them. With 1,500 schools across 40 states – odds are we’ve got most of the use cases covered, and can learn from what our current customers are already doing.

The survey process also gives them a chance to speak up to us and influence how the product is made. They’re in our network now. Did you know that over 50% of parents in schools with pay-to-play still have to walk a paper check or cash to the athletic office? Us either – it really opened our eyes to the potential and just how important a feature like online payments from your phone could be.

I mean, it’s so easy to process payments online – the software we’re using for this is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m on an eight person rec-basketball team right now, and I literally don’t think we’ve gotten one person to pay who they’re supposed to yet. And we’re adults! Finance knows what kind of an epic mess it is to collect money from people; I speak for all of us when I say that we’re just excited to launch a feature that’s like ‘Hey! Now I can click a button and know that it’s all paid up? That’s awesome.” It’s the fastest easiest way for money to go into a school’s bank account. Got pay-to-play at your school? Our Registration app will make it much easier for you to deal with it.

In my opinion, the best feature isn’t actually in the app. It’s what the coaches can do after — once someone’s registered, they appear in the coach’s team manager, and when they’re added to a team, those records end up on the school’s roster page. That integration is what makes Registration a part of a bigger system. It not only makes the school’s job easier, but will also make it more fun for people in the community to follow as we build on the whole platform.

One of our senior guys, Kris Wilson did what an entire team should take 2 months in a couple weeks. Documents, payments, eSignatures – he was a machine. It’s weird, I feel like I never see him. ::laughs::

VNN Product Team 2016 - Registration Launch

We can’t wait to get the fundraising feature up. It’s the one thing that didn’t make the launch but we’re so excited to get it out there. The plan is to give the option for people to donate money to different things when they cash out. It’ll really give parents a sense of community and investment in the school, and makes it easy for schools to reach their goals. A couple days, and there’s new uniforms. I don’t think anyone’s done that before. No more car washes.

My pro tip? Make sure to put in a photo. It makes everything look better.

VNN Registration launches today, April 5. For more product information and a chance to make signing up for sports at your high school paperless check out the product page at varsitynewsnetwork.com/products/registration

Advertising through VNN: Learn the Benefits

01/25/2016

Classic Cleaners, the largest Eco-friendly dry cleaner in central Indiana, shed some light on the benefits of online advertising. Shawna O’Brien, part of the marketing and communications team at Classic Cleaners, relays her journey through online advertising.
As told to Erika Arora

Classic Cleaners, a full-service, locally owned dry cleaner, offers odor-free cleaning to the Indianapolis and surrounding communities. Being active in and supporting of our community has been a priority since starting the business 31 years ago.
We choose to advertise locally in a variety of ways to inform our community of the many cleaning services we offer to help them maintain their garments and household investments in like-new condition. We’re a relationship based company and we value the connections we make with our customers in the community. Our customers patronize our stores because our managers and customer service representatives give them the friendly, personalized service they would expect doing business with a good friend. Our store representatives remember their names, their kid’s activities, their pets and their hobbies. Advertising where they spend much of their time is another way to show we care and value them as customers.
One of our tag lines is, “We’re in your neighborhood”, because our 19 locations are adjacent to residential neighborhoods and many local high schools. We chose to advertise on Varsity News Network school’s websites because many of our customers are busy parents of children involved in the athletic programs. Not only does our advertising remind our customers of our convenient locations, it allows us to support our customers by investing in the athletic programs in which their children are involved.

My husband and I were Classic Cleaners free home pick-up and delivery route customers before I began marketing for the company. As a customer, I appreciated the business model and the quality of the service I was receiving with the convenient twice a week route service to our home. Four years ago, a friend of mine, who was a district manager at Classic at the time, shared with me the marketing opportunity with the company and I’ve been assisting their marketing efforts ever since.
I enjoy marketing because I enjoy sharing with our customers and our community the many ways we can help them with their wardrobe and household cleaning needs. I believe we offer value with our quality cleaning services as well as on-going limited time offers. We encourage communication via our Facebook and Twitter pages and we have fun creating Pinterest boards we feel image conscious individuals would enjoy following.
With marketing, it’s important to be accessible to your customers in the manner they choose to obtain information. We incorporated advertising online, locally, because we are aware that most individuals are online via a smart phone, tablet, or desktop during a large portion of their daily activities. Another reason we like to advertise online is it’s easily track-able. We can review the analytics and measure our efforts. We still advertise in print and on billboards, but we want to be at the top of our customers minds when they are on their mobile devices and online.

I learned of the opportunity to advertise with VNN when a sales individual reached out to Classic Cleaners a few years ago. I recognized his name and learned he went to High School with my Husband. As a relationship based business, and a strong advocate for doing business with local companies, Classic Cleaners decided advertising with VNN would be a great fit for the company.
Many Classic Cleaners employees are parents and understand how involved one becomes in a child’s athletic activities. We know parents in our community are going online to look at rosters, schedules, scores, rankings, and activities related to their children’s teams. After reviewing the statistics VNN provided us regarding how many of our customers and potential customers would view our advertisement, we believed this was an excellent advertising investment. We know our customers are already visiting these sites regularly and we’re going to get their attention when they’re online. The high schools we sponsor are Cathedral, Guerin, Westfield, and Park Tudor, all located in Indiana.
If your ideal customer is someone who has children involved in school programs, and are using online resources to stay up to date with those programs, online advertising is going to be your path of least resistance to reach those customers.
Interested in advertising with VNN? Follow the link for information: VNN Advertising.

Calling all Parents: Enrich Your Child's Athletic Experience Through Technology

01/20/2016

Varsity News Network’s CEO, Ryan Vaughn, created an article discussing the ideal ways that parents can help refurbish their child’s athletic department. As parents of high school athletes, you can learn how to win over the crowds and use technology to advance your school’s athletic department.

Remember the 1991 classic “Hook”? A key part of that story is Peter’s relationship with his son. Peter is constantly missing his son’s baseball games because his ridiculous ’90s cellphone is always ringing with demands from work. No one wants to be that parent.
While we now have smarter, less dorky phones, our schedules are no less demanding. Balancing work, family time, and extracurricular activities can be overwhelming, and simply staying informed about everyone’s schedule is half the battle.
The good news is that as new technology has given us better phones, it’s also allowed for the development of tools that make keeping your school’s community of athletes, parents, fans, and administrators connected much easier.

Changing a department is no simple task, but with the tools and information provided in the article, you’re sure to get a great head start upgrading your school’s athletic department.

You can read the full article here.

Where K-12 Sports Technology is Headed in 2016

01/15/2016

The K-12 athletic market is as fragmented as its loyalties. You can drive five miles from Cougar Country and suddenly find yourself in the Cardinal Coop. And the people who cheer for these creatures don’t often care about what’s happening down the road (unless, of course, the playoffs are looming).
Within these walled gardens, the sports technology being used isn’t anything special. The average high school can’t come close to affording the athletic technological tools being used at the college and professional levels. Yet the way these technological tools can be combined to connect a community through youth sports is inspiring.
Whether your daughter is the star of her middle school soccer team or you have no idea if the local high school supports the Wildcats or the Hurricanes, the way athletic technology will impact the fabric of our local communities in 2016 will be something worth watching.
Here are six ways that’s going to happen:
1. Sabermetrics
Statistics and big data are huge in pro sports, and the way they’re used in baseball is already trickling down to the high school level. Tools like GameChanger are making analytics more accessible to coaches and giving them a competitive edge.
Knowing a player has hit 21 home runs off left-handed pitchers in the ninth inning helps coaches determine the best times to play that individual to win more games.
2. Drones
In the past, high school coaches recorded video of practices and games from the stands or a press box with a single camera. But the explosion of cheap drone technology will bring the use we’re seeing in the pros to the K-12 scene.
Now coaches will get the same vantage point many people enjoy while playing “Madden NFL.” While there are laws limiting their use for professional practice sessions, there’s currently no federal regulation at the high school level.
3. Wearable Technology
Wearable tech will play a big role in analyzing the performance of athletes down to the microsecond. Shirts that measure things like how fast a player runs will help determine a player’s potential as an athlete. Wearable tech will also provide instant feedback. Golf shirts or accessories will ping when the wearer’s form is bad, or a shirt will be stiffer in particular areas based on an individual’s swing.
Technology, apps, and wearables will also help improve reaction times. Even a small decrease in reaction time can make players safer. Devices like the Linx IAS can help coaches and athletes monitor and prevent brain injuries. That’s why Juniper Research is predicting that by 2018, the wearable device market will be a $19 billion industry.

4. Narrative Science
Narrative Science is a company that founded the ability for computers to analyze data, extract and organize important information and insights, and create complex articles in plainspoken English. While nothing will ever replace quality journalism covering unique topics like players, sport culture, and traditions, Narrative Science will allow more sports to be covered quickly and extend the reach for all sports.
People will be able to find information about whatever sports they’re interested in, reported in a way that isn’t just a box score. This development in apps like GameChanger is currently in beta, but soon coaches will be able to produce AP Style-type articles about a game with the click of a button.
5. Virtual Reality
Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, and Eon Sports’ SIDEKIQ are proof that the technology for high-quality virtual reality is available and affordable enough for mass consumption. Right now, VR is being treated as a hobby in the K-12 sports space, but with Facebook’s purchase of Oculus in 2014, it might be taken more seriously as a tool in the near future.
VR is already being used in recruitment efforts for Iowa State football. At their Virtual Reality Applications Center, recruits can experience what it would be like to play for the Cyclones in a virtual Jack Trice Stadium. When players of any age get “experiences” like this, it makes them want the real thing even more.
6. Streamlined Information
Although it’s surprising, to learn what games are being played at many high schools, you still need you to call the athletics office and listen to a voicemail message detailing that day’s sports schedule. Other schools have sports schedules online, but as PDFs that requires a download.
Several companies have been working in this athletic space, including Varsity News Network, BigTeams, 8to18, and in the club sports arena, Sport Ngin. They are working toward simply giving parents, fans, and athletes one place online to go for information. This next year, we’ll start to see that information not just live on websites, but also delivered to the right person at the right time, similar to how ESPN’s Sportscaster app delivers final scores to subscribers (and to how Facebook curates a specialized newsfeed depending on who’s logging in).
As these tools become increasingly accessible, the need for complex communications throughout a community and the common interest of athletics will drive people to maximize their resources. The K-12 sports scene may not be the tech innovation focal point of the country, but you still might see some amazing ideas coming out of it in 2016.

It's Game Day for the Millington Cardinals!

12/22/2015

Millington (MI) plays their arch rival, Vassar, tomorrow in a girls boys varsity doubleheader. The towns are separated by only 7 miles on M-15 in Tuscola County, so the competition will be intense.

6a9098939a5caa76-12322577_10153349894532426_3797967963905392670_o The Millington boys defeated Vassar twice last year. Once in the regular season and a one point victory in the district final. Millington would move on to win a regional championship and lose in the quarter finals. Interestingly, both teams are coached by fathers of kids on he team. Both teams are 3-1 entering the contest.

The Vassar girls team is currently 1-4 and the Millington squad is 4-1. Millington does not have any seniors on the team and are hungry for their first district championship since 2008. They are led in scoring by junior Haley Trickey and rebounding by sophomore Elizabeth Selich. This is a team they may very well face in district and would like to get a decisive victory. Millington is coached by Aaron Chamberlain and Vassar by Brandon Baker.

The girls tipoff at 6pm with the boys to follow. Millington does a Detroit Piston style introduction of the starting lineups (lights off, spotlights, and music), so the atmosphere will be electric.

Want to get your school featured? Write us on Twitter – @varsitynewsnetwork

How investing in athletics can help you attract more funding.

12/15/2015

_{Last week, Varsity News Network’s co-founder and CEO, Ryan Vaughn, published an guest article on SportTechie, a sports and technology news site, on how schools can attract more students and funding by investing outside the classroom, and in athletics. Below is an excerpt from that article – read the rest on their site: here}

Balancing a school’s budget might be one of the most depressing ways to spend time. In too many districts, money always seems to be tighter than the year before and administrators are faced with laundry lists of services too valuable to cut. Every aspect of education is important, but school officials have to devise strategies that make the most of limited resources and that stretch the few dollars in their coffers to do the most good.
Because budgets are largely based on enrollment, attracting more students can be the key to gaining more funding, and a strong athletics program can make a school more desirable than an academically superior institution that lacks those extracurricular activities.
However, it’s not getting any cheaper or easier to run an athletic department, so it can be tough to invest in the future of a department in order to attract additional students. But schools increasingly leverage a secret weapon in solving this chicken-and-egg problem: technology.
Read the full article here.

How I Work: Bob Matz, Lower Richland High School

11/30/2015

As the Dean of Students, canteen manager, and Athletic Director at Lower Richland High School, Coach Matz has a lot on his plate. He’s always on the move, but with his sharp sense for prioritizing and staying a season ahead of where he needs to be, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
as told to Romy Glazer

I’m always multitasking. When I started out, I was always the one you could count on to drop in and help. That’s how I ended up where I am now – athletic director, dean of students, and managing the canteen with our student activities department. I guess I’m the kind of person who likes to jump in to a lot of projects! It’s also how I got my start in athletic directing.
At the time, I had been coaching for 25 years, and naturally, I kind of got involved in all the other sports too, by helping the AD at the time with activities at my old school in Iowa. Then, in 2007, I moved back to South Carolina. A good friend of mine was Spring Valley’s AD, and while I worked there for the next couple years, I was unofficially his assistant AD. I was untitled, and didn’t get paid, but it was something I wanted to do to learn the ropes. I got my opportunity to take over back at Lower Richland, where I had started my career in 2012.

7am comes early. But I need to get to school around then to cover all my bases. The early down time lets me get my athletic director duties wrapped up before I need to supervise the students at 8 o’clock in my Dean of Students role. After that, it’s finding a balance with what I need to do to make sure facilities are ready for games, and making sure I have enough time for discipline.
I’ve learned that having a good sense of what to prioritize is one of the most important traits I need to keep sharp. Without it, it would be easy to become overwhelmed. I judge by the situation. What’s the one task that needs to be done first or the wheels will come off? Can I put that other thing second? I don’t have a secretary. So lots of times it is a judgement call. Make sure you have people to help you. This department isn’t a one-person show. It’s the good people around me that help things run smoothly.

You need to have a vision of what you’re doing first and foremost. Sure, you’ve got restraints based on budget, what level you’re working on, but if you set goals and prioritize, you can really get things done. This year we got our baseball field redone, the softball facility is happening soon, and we’re at a point where the basketball arena is partially done. I’ve got to always look at the next year and the next season. That’s where vision starts. I’ll start with seeing consultants if it’s a large project, then I talk to my coaches, set a budget, and hit it. If it’s something small like equipment, I can move fast. Right now I’m thinking about baseball and softball, hence the refurbishing plan. I try to stay a season ahead of what’s coming.

I really love the community here. I think this is an area that’s going to expand and be even more special than it already is soon. I’ve had a lot of years here, really enjoy working here, and have been working hard to build a strong athletics program.

For more information and to see photos of Coach Matz’s teams at Lower Richland Athletics, check out their website: http://lrathletics.org
For more tips on how to build a department of your own, with month-by-month steps to keep you organized, download the free Essential Athletic Director Checklist: http://varsitynewsnetwork.com/EssentialADChecklist

Improving Your Athletic Ability Through Technology

11/20/2015

How can technology help you get the most out of sports? Technology and sports don’t exactly go hand in hand, or do they?

When it comes to training for a sport, Youtube and CoachUp are your new best friends.
Youtube isn’t just for watching funny animals and music videos. Type in a workout and join trainers who can walk you through every exercise throughout the video, or watch a video of Michael Jordan’s footwork to improve your own.
CoachUp is an online service that connects athletes to 1-on-1 coaching in over 30 sports. You will be matched up with local trainers, just by answering a few basic questions. This convenient service is available in many different price ranges as well.

Communication is a key component to athletics. Every parent dreads the day their work meeting is scheduled during their child’s game. Fortunately, there are a few tech tools out there to ease the mind of these parents, and help them stay in-tune with their child’s game and scores.
The Cube is perfect for handling this situation. It allows family and friends to watch high school games and events live online from anywhere in the world! On top of all that, it’s completely free to use.
GameChanger is a tool that is available both online and as a mobile app. It allows coaches and players to record scores in real time, and share them throughout the internet. This enables you to check the scores between meetings, even if you’re across the world. The basic package is free, but you can upgrade to a Premium Fan Access account for $7.99 a month.
Digital Scout provides numerous applications to keep you informed on your child’s progress so you can check on them without being at the game. Just like The Cube, this service is also free.

To avoid scheduling conflicts between families and games, there are two tools we love that can greatly reduce stress, and keep everyone in the family organized.
Google’s free calendar tool, Google Calendar, is a great resource for organization. Have your child share a calendar with all their practices, game times, and post-game activities with you. By syncing your calendars together, you’ll know at a glance when you’re double-booked.
Our webapp, VNN Alerts, allows coaches to get in touch with athletes and parents in a safe and secure fashion without the need to share phone numbers. The app gives parents, athletes, and fans the ability to subscribe to specific teams to receive alerts from. Your coach may be one of the thousands who already use it, and yes, it’s free.

Interested in reaching beyond your love for sports and trying for a scholarship? NCSA and BeRecruited are two services that can assist you in this area.
NCSA’s tools help high schoolers set up game plans through their recruiting education curriculum. High schoolers have access to free basic tools needed to build a recruiting game plan.
BeRecruited is an online network that showcases a player’s online ‘sports resume’. This includes accomplishments, statistics, game footage, service experiences, and honors that can be shared to over 25,000 NCAA coaches who use the service to find their next recruiting class. Both platforms are free, but include add-on premium tools and connections that come at a price.

The connection between technology and sports is strong, and you can drastically improve your skills by utilizing the tools listed.
Interested in signing up for VNN Alerts?
Click to learn more:

The future of communication in K-12 sports

11/12/2015

Last week, our co-founder and CEO, Ryan Vaughn published an article in partnership with SportTechie on the future of communication in K-12 sports. Below is an except from that article – read the rest on their site here.
Screen Shot 2015-11-06 at 11.32.28 AM
Ryan-Vaughn_avatar_1446049431-60x60 “The Future Of Communication In K-12 Sports” by Ryan H. Vaughn
Whether on the field, in the locker room, or at stadium turnstiles, communication has always been key in sports. It’s even more important in a school environment, where coaches and athletic directors need to communicate not only with students but also with their parents.
We’re all passionate about youth sporting endeavors, and we want to know how the games are going. We feel bad when we can’t attend and wish there were some way to still follow the score. In a world where anyone can get up-to-the-minute pictures of their friends’ lunches and dinners, it seems unbelievable that so many parents feel out of touch with their children’s school sporting achievements.
That’s why the best new technology will allow for proactive, two-way communication originating from many angles. Read the full article here.

VNN Scheduler, Roster Management, and everything on a single Dashboard.

11/10/2015

When we started the company three years ago, athletic directors were navigating the jump from paper to online, and our SportsHub website helped them do it. As we’ve grown with our partners, from the first schools here in Michigan to the over 1,250 schools across 38 states we now work with, we’ve learned that a website is not enough, and like in all things, time is valuable.
Today’s launch of the VNN Scheduler, Roster Management features, and a single Dashboard to access it is more than just a product launch for us. Adding these pieces alongside Pressbox and Alerts effectively takes us from being a website company to a fully-featured communications platform, powered by apps that athletic directors use to manage the tasks they already do every day. Everything works together to get that information out to school sports communities everywhere automatically.
Here’s a look at each:
Scheduler

Athletic Directors can add events, edit matches, and get them on the calendar, on a VNN website, and out to parents in less time than ever before. They can upload a CSV to pull in schedules from other vendors or off their computer, but best of all, everything happens without constantly going from screen to screen, the biggest pain point we heard during user testing. We built Scheduler to be the fastest, easiest way to pull a season together.

Roster Management

Roster management finally brings athletes into the VNN ecosystem. Now, coaches will be able to feature their players on the website, push urgent updates to those players through SMS and email with Alerts, and set all of them up in seconds though Teammate.
Our friends at Denton High in Texas have already started to use it – here’s what a fully updated roster looks like:

Dashboard

There’s so many apps, and so many ways to access them. We’ve been building a one-stop shop for parents to get the information they need from a school online, but until now, had athletic directors go to multiple places to set it up. That all changes with the VNN Dashboard – log-in in one place, and an AD is connected to everything they need to do in a day. From Dashboard, they can send alerts, jump to social media pages, edit teams, visit their site or anything else.

This launch takes us into the next phase of our mission at Varsity News Network, and we’re leading the pack with new innovations that help make an ADs job easier and bring local communities together through sports. For more information on our products or company, don’t hesitate to email us – support@varsitynewsnetwork.com
Not a VNN school yet and want to get a demo? We’d love to have you.

Launching a new business? Don't count out in-person sales.

11/04/2015

Yesterday, our co-founder and CEO, Ryan Vaughn published an article in partnership with Forbes and the YEC about how to scale using in-person sales. Below is an excerpt from that article – read the rest on their site here.

“Scale Quickly with a Field-Sales Approach” by Ryan H. Vaughn
When we launched VNN in 2011, we didn’t plan on building a national sales team. We intended to bring schools onto the nation’s largest high school sports network using landing pages, conversion funnels, email, and phone calls.
That strategy didn’t work for us. We got a few bites, but generally, we weren’t making sales quickly enough. So we got out of the office, into our cars, and off to meet our prospects in person.
What we learned in the early days can be applied to other industries, too. If you’re in a market where potential clients are late adopters (or they’re not quite convinced your innovative, new product will help them), a field sales approach might work for you. Here’s how to do it.
Full article here.

Articles

How can technology help you get the most out of sports? Technology and sports don’t exactly go hand in hand, or do they?

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