If your league isn’t using some type of league management software because you just aren’t that big or don’t feel it’s worth the cost, there’s a cool new possibility available to you that is free. Google Docs, which we just talked about using for surveys, can also handle your player registration online. Using the steps outlined in our survey article, you can create a registration form that prompts parents for all the necessary registration information and stores it in a spreadsheet for you to use later. You can email the registration form out and embed it in your website, making it simple to publish.

Now to be fair this is a VERY simple registration system. There is no data validation, you can’t ensure parents will enter the same family info for multiple children, and so on. Our league management software is very complex and helps automate a number of administrative tasks each season – I couldn’t live without it. But we have over 1000 players each year. If you have a smaller league that is using only paper or emailed forms right now and wish your parents could just fill a form out online and get the data into a spreadsheet, then using Google Docs certainly could work for you. It’s something to consider.