Tips to drive youth football registration

By Kristine Arnold | Posted 4/18/2018

With the arrival of spring, and summer not far away, youth football leagues are already preparing for next season.

Along with updating waivers, rules and general league policies, commissioners look for ways to draw new athletes into their leagues. Traditional methods include putting up flyers and signs, and utilizing websites. Some commissioners use other avenues to spread the word about registration.

“We’ve done several different things,” said Dave Callaway, commissioner of the West Central Youth Football League in Warrensburg, Missouri. “We’ll put flyers out in the school district, advertise on the radio and put it in the newspaper. Pretty much everybody does that. In my town, we’ve hooked up with our local sporting goods store, and they're going to allow us to put our sign-ups in there for the month of July.”

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Callaway said having a central location where parents and kids can sign up at any time – such as a popular local sports store – has helped the league considerably.

“They get a whole month of July and they can go in and sign up anytime,” Callaway said. “It’s worked better than having specific days. Some of the towns still (have single-day signups), but we do it the way we do it because it gives people an opportunity to go in when their schedule allows.”

The store offers a 10 percent in-store discount for anyone who signs up, which helps get customers inside.

The Central Loudoun Youth Football League in Leesburg, Virginia., couples its sign-up drives with health and safety initiatives.

“One of the big things that we’ve been working on for the past five years is our safety program,” CLYFL president Matt Schenk said. “Our involvement with USA Football and the Heads Up Football program has become a part of that, but we’ve partnered with the sports medicine department at George Mason University, and they’ve been an integral part of our season. They bring athletic trainers who are graduate students – certified trainers – in the sports medicine department.”

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With the help of the university, the CLYFL has a trainer at the majority of its games, who tracks injuries later reviewed after the season is complete. Schenk said the partnership is extremely beneficial.

“I think parents can see that safety is a big priority and that their kids are being watched out for,” he said. “It’s really been an asset from that perspective. That is definitely something we promote to our league, and it's something that alleviates what I think is probably the major concern that parents have with regard to signing their kids up for tackle.”

The Gem City Youth Conference in Englewood, Ohio, serves some low-income areas, so league leaders have to think outside of the box sometimes to be successful.

“We had to find a different way to get kids to play,” said Matt Rohling, president of the Northmont Wee Bolts. “We started allowing kids and their parents to earn their registration fees. We also created an online payment program, and that is where we really saw the biggest spike. It jumped us up about 10 percent in one year, which is good by us.”

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As a member of the GCYC, Rohling’s Wee Bolts cater to one school district, which helps distribute information.

“We send everything home through the schools,” Rohling said. “Every kid gets a flyer. We use the One Call system now. We use email and Facebook, but I think the flyers going home with the kids are how most people find out.”

All of these organizations use different strategies to accomplish the same goal. It’s up to each league to decide what works best.

This is an updated version of a blog that originally published April 15, 2016.

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