AYHA WEBSITE UPDATES
Starting in Fall 2024, the AYHA is now utilizing Crossbar for our online presence. Crossbar is a St. Louis based company that provides a one-stop shop specifically for youth sports organizations to have a website, communicate with a specialized phone app, and register players for teams, camps, and clinics.
Please note that the AYHA is actively adding content to the website, and all webpage links will be fully functional by December 31, 2024.
why the change?
Since 2009, the AYHA website design has been hosted by a Canadian provider, SportsHeadz, which provided very basic text-based website hosting, team creation, and scheduling tools.
In 2017 the AYHA saw the need to move to online registration, as it was becoming challenging for the association registrars to carry money pouches around Bird Ice Arena throughout the season and keep track of all the different cash and check payments from families. As SportsHeadz did not provide online registration services, the Association entered a separate contract with ActiveWorks, which most AYHA families are familiar with.
AYHA website from 2009 to 2019.
During this time, the use of free mobile communication apps for sports teams became widely available, but each AYHA team would use a different product each season, which made it challenging for the Association to communicate with each of its members and be aware of game schedules.
While SportsHeadz upgraded their services in 2019 to include more modern graphic website design options, the back-of-house architecture was still very much a 2009 vintage, and they did not yet offer registration services or communication services. Furthermore, ActiveWorks increased the percentage of fees required for each individual registration and all credit card transactions without warning, which they were able to do under the terms of service in the AYHA contract. ActiveWorks also was unwilling to provide additional registration services such as clinics and tournaments without additional fees, and they required multi-year contracts where costs could continue to rise.
Due to the increasing expense of utilizing SprotsHeadz and ActiveWorks and their relatively limited features, the AYHA Board of Directors began looking for alternatives to provide better service at the same or even lesser cost.
CROSSBAR
Over the past several years, Crossbar has made inroads in the youth sports community by providing a service that combines not only website hosting, but also registration for teams, camps, clinics, and tournaments at one price. For the same price, Crossbar also provides scheduling software for practices and games, a forthcoming referee scheduling module, an integrated communication app for smartphones, and financial tracking tools.
After researching Crossbar for over a year and communicating with the BTHL and other Ohio hockey organizations already utilizing the platform, the AYHA Board of Directors recognized Crossbar could provide the services from SportsHeadz and ActiveWorks, plus provide many additional benefits and services at no additional cost. And unlike ActiveWorks, Crossbar also does not lock the AYHA into multi-year contracts designed to make leaving their services difficult for the AYHA in the future if necessary.
WHAT's NEXT
Development of the AYHA website is just the first phase of implementing Crossbar, and website migration was chosen as the first phase as the webhosting contract with SportsHeadz expired October 31. 2024. SportsHeadz also generously agreed to transfer ownership of the domain, athenshockey.com, to the AYHA at no cost.
In 2025, the AYHA will begin to utilize Crossbar for team registrations (some team registrations will need to remain with ActiveWorks in 2025 to satisfy the final year of AYHA's contract with that vendor) and scheduling. Our Fall 2025 tournaments will also be able to have online registration, and the AYHA hopes to work with the Ohio University D1 team to provide pre-season/post-season camps and clinics when Bird Ice Arena opens and still has good ice in August, September, March, and April due to the insulation improvements in the roof.
Also in Fall 2025, all parents will also be able to utilize the Crossbar phone app for team communication and to see personalized schedules for team practices and games, and even be able to filter the calendar by siblings on different teams. The best part for families is that there will only need to be a single login to access all of the tools Crossbar provides.
As the AYHA rolls out these features, announcements and tutorials on how to make best use of Crossbar will be provided.
OTHER VENDORS
Crossbar is not the only vendor now providing comprehensive youth sports team services, and the AYHA Board of Directors researched other options. For example, SportsHeadz is now beginning to provide similar services across Canada. However, even though the AYHA has been with them since 2009, the Board of Directors felt it was important to have registration services with a USA company, especially for any questions that might arise between exchange rates, deposits, and refunds with whatever Canadian banking company SportsHeadz utilizes.
Similarly, ActiveWorks is also now beginning to offer comprehensive services, but their mandatory multi-year contracts were not desirable (i.e., auto-renewing contracts unless a full year's cancellation notice is provided), and their tiered levels of service for the features the AYHA needs would quickly make them a more expensive option.
SportsEngine was also investigated, but their costs were more than double that of Crossbar for fewer features.