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How to Add Athletes to Your Club

Athletes Page

There are three ways athletes get into your club: the Add Athlete flow on the Members menu, a spreadsheet import, and a family's own page. The first is the one to reach for normally, because it creates the family, its guardians, and the athlete together.

Adding an athlete​

Open Members, use the Actions menu and choose Add Athlete. The menu also offers Add Guardian, Add Family, and Unsent Invitations.

Adding an athlete takes three steps, and the header tells you where you are — "Add Athlete to Family", "Step 1 of 3". The stepper reads Family, Athlete, Review.

Step 1 — Family​

Choose New Family, which asks for a family name right there on the card, or Existing Family, which adds this person to a family your club already has. Then Continue.

Step 2 — Add Athlete​

This step is a set of Family Members cards, headed "at least one guardian required". Each card has a Role control offering Guardian or Athlete, and one person can be both — tick both and the card says "This person is both a guardian and an athlete", which is how you enter a parent who also plays.

First name and last name are marked required on every card. An athlete card then opens an Athlete Information section for date of birth, gender, and cohort.

Step 3 — Review​

The review opens with a one-line summary of what is about to happen — "Creating new family with 1 guardian invitation and 1 athlete" — then lists the family and each member with their roles as pills: Invitation, Guardian, Family Admin, Athlete. An athlete's line shows the date of birth, gender, and cohort you gave. Finish with the Add Athlete button.

Everyone you add here is a family administrator​

There is no Family Administrator checkbox in this flow, and that is not an oversight: every guardian added this way is created as a family administrator, so there is nothing to choose. You can see it on the Review step — a guardian you were never asked about carries a Family Admin pill.

A family administrator can manage the family's members and settings — change its details, add and remove people, manage emergency contacts, and change its photo.

What it does not include is adding an athlete. Only club staff can do that, which is why this guide is for admins.

To change who has it afterwards, use the family's own page rather than this flow.

Adding a guardian, or a whole family​

Add Guardian on the same menu runs the same three steps, with the middle one titled Add Guardian. Add Family skips the family-selection step: it goes straight to Family Members, then Review, and finishes with Create Family.

Working on a family that already exists​

Go to Members → Families and open a family.

+ Add Athlete offers Create new athlete, which opens the same form, or Add existing athlete, which links an athlete already in your club to this family.

+ Add Guardian offers two things, and only one of them lets you set the Family Administrator flag at the time:

  • Invite new guardian ("Send an email invitation") runs a two-step form headed "Add Guardian to <family>". It has no Family Administrator checkbox — it says "Guardians can manage family members and receive notifications" instead.
  • Add existing guardian ("Link a guardian already in the club") lets you search your club, and the confirmation — "Add Guardian to Family", asking "Add <name> to this family?" — carries an unticked Family Administrator checkbox reading "Can manage family members and settings".

So if you invite somebody new and want them to be an administrator, make them one afterwards: open the ... menu on their row and choose Make family admin. An administrator shows a Family Admin pill under Role, and their menu offers Remove admin instead.

Importing athletes from a spreadsheet​

For bulk imports, go to Club Settings and choose Import Data from the list down the left. Pick Members from a spreadsheet: it takes a CSV, TSV, or JSON file, and it brings in athletes, guardians, and families together rather than athletes on their own. A Members from SportsEngine importer sits beside it.

You get a preview of everything found before anything is saved. Which importers you see depends on what your club has switched on, so the list is not the same for every club.

Cohorts and divisions​

A cohort is your club's own name for a birth-year group. A division is where an athlete actually plays. The two are linked per season, not permanently, and that is the part this page used to get wrong.

Pick a cohort on the Athletes step and the athlete lands in the division that cohort is linked to for your club's current season. Three things follow:

  • If the cohort is not linked to a division for this season, the athlete has no division yet. This is the commonest reason an athlete looks correctly set up but never appears in a division.
  • If the cohort is linked to more than one division this season, the athlete goes into one of them, and which one is not something you choose. Move them by hand if it is the wrong one.
  • A division you set by hand outranks the cohort, and it deliberately outlives the season you set it in.
tip

Set up your cohorts and link them to this season's divisions before you add athletes. Create cohorts that match your age groups or skill levels, for example "U10 Boys", "Varsity", or "JV".

What happens next​

Athletes appear in your club's athlete list straight away, can be added to team rosters, and their guardians can see schedules and submit RSVPs for them.

Guardian invitations are the exception, and the timing matters:

  • If your club is live, each guardian is emailed an invitation when you submit. They have to accept it before they can sign in. The Review step says this too, in its closing line.

    note

    That closing line says the invitation will be sent whatever state your club is in. During setup it is held instead — see below.

  • If your club is still in Setup Mode, the invitations are created and held. Nothing is emailed to families or coaches at all while Setup Mode is on. New clubs start in Setup Mode, so this is the normal case while you are building out your first rosters.

Setup Mode lives on Club Settings → General. When you turn it off, if any invitations are still waiting the app asks you Send pending invitations?, and you can Send now or Don't send and leave them queued. To see which are still unsent before then, open the actions menu on Members → Families and choose Unsent Invitations.