This Week’s Playbook. The families a program loses are rarely the ones who complain. They are the twelve-year-old who misses travel and finds one line about rec on your website, the parent who asks for a call because their kid wants off the travel team, and the family that hears nothing about where their kid stands until the season is over. This week is about those three, and none of it asks you to run more, only to give each of them an answer before they go looking for one.

“When a family’s values line up with the program’s, they generally don’t leave. That’s your best retention. And your best marketing is the kids who love being there.”

— Chad Henry, Signature Locker | Read more →

Your winter registration page is going up, and the travel section is the most detailed thing on it.

Rec, the town program, and clinics share a sentence and a link below it.

The family of a twelve-year-old who just missed a roster reads that space as the program's opinion of their kid, right at the age when kids, on average, stop playing a sport.

Here is the question every family below travel is asking, and how to answer it on the page before it goes live.

— Chad Henry

More from The Game Plan:

A parent asks for a call because their 13-year-old wants off the travel team next season.

The kid still likes the sport and the friends, and the parent is braced for you to be disappointed.

Underneath the apologies is one question: whether stepping off travel means stepping out of the sport for good.

Here is how to answer it with a plan before the call ends.

— Maddie Soviero

More from The Human Factor:

Your coaches leave every tournament knowing exactly how each player did.

By the postseason review, most of that detail is gone, and families have filled the gap with their own explanations.

The fix happens on the drive home, while the observations are still fresh.

Here are the 3 things every coach should record for each player, and how to get them to families within 48 hours.

— Ricky Reyes

More from The Toolkit:

Have a great sports week,

Chad Henry and the Signature Locker Team

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