Why Are There So Many Freaking Apps for Sports?

Scottie Durrett  0:00  
welcome to the momplex Podcast. I am your host. Scottie Durrett, my passion and purpose is to help other moms just like me rediscover their joy and step into their confidence as their kids grow up. Join me as I share my own experiences, my own mistakes and aha moments as I navigate this incredible journey of motherhood while trying not to lose my identity. If you are a modern day mama who is ready to live for herself, not just for her kids, and knows that is the best possible gift you could give, then you are in the right place. This is momplex. You all right, mamas, I've got a bone to pick. Welcome back to momplex. My name is Scotty, and I have a bone to pick. Why are there so many freaking apps for our kids sports like seriously, at this point, I need three people helping me and the NBA just to figure out if my kid is supposed to wear white socks or black socks on Saturday. And spoiler alert, I'm definitely gonna send him in the wrong color. It doesn't really matter. So last Friday, I dropped my son off at basketball practice. It's Friday evening, and he just casually says, Oh, mom, coach needs you to go onto the app and mark my availability for the season in tournaments. Okay, sure, but what? Excuse me, my little dude, I don't even know what we're having for dinner tonight, and you're asking me to forecast your attendance for a tournament in Sacramento in the middle of October, during flu season. Like, do I look like I have a crystal ball in my mom purse? I mean, honestly, we all know how life works. I'm just gonna say no, but Okay, fine. I love you and I'll play along. So I drop them off at basketball. I go back home, I plop down on the sofa, I whip out my phone, I scroll over to page five, where all the sports apps live, and I click on Team snap, but no basketball team on Team snap. Okay, what? So then I try game changer. Nope, sports you not there. Finally. Sports engine, ding, ding. Finally on sports engine, which, by the way, is like one of the worst of them all the user face of sports engine. I do not like it, so I go through and I click all of his availability, which isn't even super user friendly and intuitive, and I'm sitting here and I'm like, why are there so many sports apps? Can't all the coaches just get together, take a vote and agree on one so we don't spiral into a meltdown every season, or just forget we don't even know that we're supposed to be clicking on it. So I'm sitting on the sofa, I'm taking some deep calming breaths, because I know the anxiety is building. And one thing that really helps me is deep breathing. I breathe in through my nose, and I just exhale a bunch of shit out of my mouth, just like I'm gonna breathe in calm and I'm gonna breathe out frustration, I do this. And of course, I go through the sports Engine app and I click Yes to everything, because why not just easier? And yeah, he'll be there. Sure. Yep, sounds great. We'll drive three hours to Sacramento on a Sunday morning for my 13 year olds basketball. Yep. Meanwhile, on another sports app, I've already committed to a baseball game that exact same day. But of course, I don't remember it. I'm double booked. I know I'm double booked. I just know it. I don't even have to check. I just know I'm double booked, and I'm staring at this tiny screen like, who invented this chaos? Where did all these apps come from? And do I really need to manage seven logins just so my kid can play middle school sports? Okay? This is going to be one of those, like, oh my gosh, my kids will roll their eyes if they ever listen to this podcast, because they hate it when we say things. Well, when I was a kid, but back when I was a kid, you showed up. If you didn't guess what, they figured it out. No app, no RSVP, no poll about sock color, just bodies on the field, done. Now it's like, download this shiny new app because you don't have enough of them. It's so easy. Easy for who it's not easy for me, and it's this is like me trying to do middle school math level, not easy with my kid. Don't even get me started on the group chats. I love the mamas of the kids my son with whom my kids play sports, but the text chains for every team, for every season, and the WhatsApp groups, I can barely answer my own personal text messages. And then you throw me into a group chain where every time you open your phone, there's like a 63 message long debate about socks, snacks, sunscreen. Whether orange slices are organic enough, you know exactly what I mean, and you miss one comment and boom, you're fucked. You're the only parent who sends their kid in the wrong uniform. This happened to me last week. My son, in addition to playing basketball, he's playing baseball. And the super nice mom that I adore created a text chain. So helpful, but for some reason, on my phone, it's showing up as two separate text chains. So not only are there two text chains going on, I don't even know which one is right. So I thought I was answering in the right one, but I missed a comment that the boys were supposed to wear their black jerseys, not their practice jerseys. I didn't see that. So of course, I'm the only parent who sends their kid in the practice jersey. And then, of course, my poor kid, he feels like I've ruined their entire athletic career. I'm sorry, babe. Mom was just trying to feed actual humans dinner and not get into a car accident as I was racing you to the field. But here's the thing, moms, we are the real project managers of youth sports. I've seen it happen on my club teams. I've seen it happen in my school's middle school teams. These programs would fucking fall through the cracks if it weren't for the mamas we are the project managers of youth sports. We're running fortune 500 companies out of our freaking cars, out of our back pocket, where our phone is, but instead of quarterly reports and having a say in which app is working and which one's not, we've just got like, who's the sack mom? Where's the field today? Do we need chairs, or will there be bleachers? Do they need to bring both of their uniforms and with our compensations nothing, maybe you get a team hat or a team t shirt. Maybe you get a beer at that random baseball field that just happens to also serve liquor. Just thank you so much for those baseball fields that serve chicken nuggets for the kids and a cold brew for the mamas. Oh, and don't forget, what we're actually given is the sign up sheet for snacks for dinners, that says you are responsible for snacks for your team, which is going to cost you above and beyond what you already paid to join the team. And you not only have to feed your team, you have to feed the visiting team, the coaches, the refs, probably the mascot too, the guy working the scoreboard, which, by the way, I'm so thankful for all those people. Let me just say one caveat, I fucking love sports. I love my kids. I love that they're playing sports. I love it all.

Scottie Durrett  7:35  
It's just, I'm just getting used to the modern day way to run it. And by the way, when you're signing up for the snacks, it better not be a little delivery from Little Caesars Taryn, because you better step up your game. It better be homemade muffins or organic burritos or bust. So here, you know, one of the biggest things that has helped me as a mom and just as a human being, there's always gonna be shit happening in your life, with your kids, with your family, with work, with current day events, with news, everything, stuff in your environment that you have literally no control over, but you are being asked to learn how to deal with it, right? So here's what I have learned, we can't change some of the shit going on around us, but we can absolutely fucking change how we are thinking about it, how we're showing up to it, and how we are managing it, so that we take radical responsibility for our own health and wellness. So here are some things that I'm doing that have helped me tremendously. This is how keeping my sanity. Number one, the wall calendar. Yep, I went old school, one of those giant white erase boards I got off of Amazon. I ordered a packet of Expo pens, and I've color coded it by kid, by sport, by life. Everyone's crap goes on that wall in that one spot. If it's not on the wall, it doesn't exist, period. And my daughter helped me draw the calendar before she left for college. I'm not slaving over this by myself, but at the beginning of each month, I grab my phone, I grab their calendars, and I put everything on that master calendar. That way everybody sees it. It's in the same place. We don't have to go scrambling to find it, and everybody's shit is on that wall calendar number two text chain management and detox. I stopped replying to every group chat. It's just too much. Plus, I'll see those parents literally this weekend, starting from sunrise all the way to sunset at the tournaments. Anyway, we can catch up in person over stale coffee for that delicious beer. And that's way more calming for my nerves, right? Number three, I gave some of this shit to my kids. Talk about the example of radical responsibility, right? I handed some of this back to them. You want to know the practice times, Ask your coach. Write it on the calendar. You want to know what socks to wear, ask your teammates, let. Out your uniform the night before. If you were old enough to play sports and run an Instagram account, you can absolutely manage your team's expectations, right? Absolutely I did it. I mean, I really, I know I'm going back to an old school, but I played volleyball, soccer and track in high school. I played soccer in college. None of that had a cell phone or an app involved, and I never missed a game. And here's what my coach said, I expect you to show up at the games. It's either going to be uniform a or uniform B. So guess what? I threw everything in a backpack that way. I always had it. And the days that I couldn't make it, I went to my coach ahead of time, in person, said, I'm not going to make the game this weekend. It was beautiful, and somehow, we still were fed, we still played the game, we still showed up in the right uniform. I'm just saying there's something about simplifying it to calm down your nervous system, and when these things are literally helping restore my energy and my sanity and keeping my nerves at bay. And that calm I get to loan to my kids. My kids get to borrow my calm, and it is contagious. If you were feeling frantic about their schedules and the text change and the responsibilities, notice that and then do something about it. You'll get to trickle that beautifulness onto your kids. So, yeah, I think the apps are insane, but maybe this is a wake up call. I don't know. We don't have to carry it all. That's that's the lesson. You don't have to carry it all. Let your kids take some ownerships and wild bog, get your partner to download one of those apps. I know, shocking, revolutionary. You don't have to do it all, and you'll get the information when you need it. So if you're drowning in sports apps, just know you're not alone. We're all in this digital stew together. And if you have a magical hack that I don't know about, please DM me immediately, because right now, there are moms whose nervous systems are basically organized chaos, and we're surviving on iced coffee and Costco blueberry scones. And we want to help each other. This is how we help each other, and this is how we take care of ourselves. But anyway, I just had to rant. I mean, if I showed you my phone right now, it's unbelievable, but I know you're just like me stop at nothing to help our kids have a lot of fun. So make sure you subscribe to momplex, because I'm gonna lose my mind over seven sports apps. At least we can lap through it together and share this with another mama and leave a review with a tip that helps you manage the chaos and share this with another mama who needs it, because maybe, just maybe, if we all unite, then we can convince those coaches to put it all on one fucking app. Love you, Mom. Hey Mama, thank you so much for listening before you dive back into the beautiful chaos of your life, please take this with you. You're doing better than you think. You are not alone, and you do not have to do this on autopilot. If this episode helped you in any way, please share with a mom who needs to hear it, because we grow faster when we do it together, and if you have a second, leaving a five star review helps momplex reach more mamas who need this kind of real talk and support. If you want more support and guidance or just someone in your corner, be sure to visit scottydirt.com to learn more. Get in touch with me or dive deeper into this work until next time. Mom, Trust yourself, trust your gut. You already know what to do, and you are exactly the mama your kids need. I love you. I'll see you next time you.