Sports Fixtures Management with SOCS sports
The intersection of sports and technology has seen rapid development and growth over the past 10 years with many applications now available for both player and team management. At Scotch in 2018 it was determined that it was time to overhaul the existing analogue way of managing our teams and change to a new system which would:
- Provide a website that contains all fixtured events
- Utilise a mobile-friendly interface
- Create a record of boys attached to each game for all fixtured games
- Allow boys to be notified of the teams they are in each week
- Ensure a history of games is kept and easily accessible
- Digitally display teams and results across the College
With this list of requirements, we looked at resources from around the world and found that the solution was available from a company in the United Kingdom where many similar schools and competitions have existed for much longer than our own in Western Australia. Below is an explanation of how we use the SOCS system in our College to support sports management and fixtures. To see the live site check out sport.scotch.wa.edu.au
Teachers
Originally, sport coaches had to send their team lists to the Head of Sport to be collated and distributed to the correct boards around the school. SOCS provides a simple interface for sport coaches to add team lists for their respective teams and allows that information to be instantly relayed to boys including email notifications of any venue changes or cancellations. Another feature SOCS provided sport coaches with is the ability to upload the results of their match straight from their mobile phone. This provides parents with an easy and up-to-date way to access the results of their son’s team.
Students
SOCS has been a great addition to the digital signage that is located throughout the campus. The digital signage can now display fixtures for the upcoming week along with training information. This means that wherever a boy is around the school, it is easier to find information regarding their sporting commitments. This also alleviates any confusion that can occur at the start of a new sporting season as training times are now easily visible to students.
Parents
With the implementation of SOCS, parents ease of access to sporting information has been greatly improved. Parents now have a user-friendly site where they can see upcoming events, training and fixtures. It also provides parents with a centralised list of team managers. This was something that the previous system was lacking, which resulted in parents sending all queries and updates to the Head of Sport. With the new site, parents can easily find their son’s team manager and direct any queries to them.
Technical Aspects
The back end of SOCS provides the user with a simple and sleek user interface (UI) that makes importing fixtures and teams simple. The system is cloud based hosted out of the United Kingdom. Students do not have a login to the system, however, staff do and this is done through SAML authentication. Staff minimum data is entered and used as match on data for the SAML authentication which unfortunately is a manual process. For team sheets, the way that managers add student details to a specific team, the system imports all students via a secure view we provide to SOCS which is also manual sync. Sports administrators can run this sync themselves via the admin panel. On the public website student names are presented as FirstName last name initial or you can decide to fully protect the team sheet with a generic password. Alternatively you can also display the full name of the student but this is not recommended.
The system also allows for a big screen digital signage display via a unique URL which can be shown across the College via any digital signage platform. This automatically displays any up coming fixtures team along with names. It also scrolls the results of the previous week at the bottom.
One other large benefit of the system is that you can select to share fixtures with other schools. What this means is that if we enter a fixture and select another school that also has SOCS then that fixture automatically populates their system. This can potentially save significant time at the beginning of a season if all fixtures are ready.
Summary
Overall the system allows for the College to present a view of the fixtures and teams in a format that is easily accessible for students and parents. The reality is that the system display is much better on a mobile phone and essentially parents and students use this form of device on the fly when heading to or arriving at locations, so the choice is a logical one. The images below illustrate how our new system works across the College and its usage.
Check out the site yourself by heading to sport.scotch.wa.edu.au
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