Buffalo Youth Hockey Success Story
Buffalo Youth Hockey Board Members Save 40+ Hours at Tryouts
Buffalo, Minnesota
25+ Teams
400+ Players
The Challenge
As Buffalo Youth Hockey started to grow, typing scores into the macro filled spreadsheet quickly became a time-consuming headache for Board Members each year.
The Outcome
They now use TeamGenius to collect scores at each day of tryouts and automatically compile critical data to make better, faster, more informed roster decisions.
A Growing Association Looking for a Player Evaluation Solution
Buffalo, Minnesota is a booming community outside of the Twin Cities. Scott Winter, Tryout Director for the association, is responsible for the critical and often contentious event to kick off the season – tryouts. During his first year at the helm, entering scores for 400 kids into a spreadsheet was not getting the job done quickly and efficiently for everyone involved. This included multiple late nights for him and fellow board members during the two week stretch of tryouts each October.
"If you can pull 40 hours of work out of that two week [tryout] window, that's a lot of time that you have and now we can avoid getting to bed at 2:00 AM"
- Scott Winter, Tryout Coordinator
Making the Switch to Digital Evaluations
Going from scoring on paper to evaluating through a mobile app might appear to be a daunting task. To ease into the transition, Scott trained all of the evaluators on how to use the TeamGenius mobile app at the annual pre-tryout coaches meeting.
“We set up a test run [in the mobile app] and had coaches sign in, so they know what they will see on day 1, day 2, etc. We made sure everybody understood the process and the technology part seemed pretty easy,” said Scott. They also had coaches that were not able to show up to the meeting, use the mobile app as evaluators.
“There were a couple of folks that couldn’t make it to the training classes that stepped in. The people that did make the training classes were able to teach the new evaluators.”
On the first day of tryouts, and throughout the entire process, coaches evaluated players in the mobile app without any issues.
“We set up a test run [in the mobile app] and had coaches sign in, so they know what they will see on day 1, day 2, etc. We made sure everybody understood the process and the technology part seemed pretty easy,” said Scott. They also had coaches that were not able to show up to the meeting, use the mobile app as evaluators.
“There were a couple of folks that couldn’t make it to the training classes that stepped in. The people that did make the training classes were able to teach the new evaluators.”
On the first day of tryouts, and throughout the entire process, coaches evaluated players in the mobile app without any issues.
Leaving Buffalo Youth Hockey In a Better Place
Scott, being the problem solver that he is, wanted to leave a positive mark on the association when his 2-year commitment of being the tryout coordinator is over.
“After I took over the tryout coordinator position and ran tryouts with paper & spreadsheets, I knew right away that we wouldn’t be doing that again [next year],” said Scott. “We needed something that I could easily pass along to the next guy. I wanted the technology to be invisible and not hold us back because we needed to focus on the scores.”
Tryouts are an essential event for every youth hockey association, and this is a headache that Scott knows board members will be able to avoid for years to come.
“After I took over the tryout coordinator position and ran tryouts with paper & spreadsheets, I knew right away that we wouldn’t be doing that again [next year],” said Scott. “We needed something that I could easily pass along to the next guy. I wanted the technology to be invisible and not hold us back because we needed to focus on the scores.”
Tryouts are an essential event for every youth hockey association, and this is a headache that Scott knows board members will be able to avoid for years to come.
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