Sport
Rebuilding Team Spirit: Why Spond is the best free app for sports team communication
Most sports team management apps will give you the ability to manage memberships, organise events, control your calendar and collect money, but none are as feature-rich as Spond when it comes to sports team communication, engagement and interaction. Fundamentally, grassroots sports is about how you choose to spend your leisure time and having fun, so effective communication should be about much more than just basic messaging. In fact, since the pandemic, it has become a vital tool for maintaining team spirit off the pitch and keeping members talking beyond the dressing room.
Spond stands out in the sports app market because it offers a refreshingly different approach to grassroots player engagement, and to communication with all your members. Instead of a simple messaging function, the whole Spond app is designed to encourage interaction between members, which means it empowers every user to do more than just the bare minimum on the app.
Every aspect of the Spond platform is GDPR-compliant and designed with safeguarding in mind, giving the admin oversight over all member activities, the ability to control who gets access to what, set age limits, etc. It also gives parents of younger sports club members the power to monitor and control the access of their offspring, giving total peace of mind.
By taking a different course from its main rivals, offering multiple interactive features while remaining simple and intuitive to navigate, Spond is on a mission to be the best sports team management app for the 2020s. Within this safe and supportive environment, members are encouraged to get involved with their team's online activities, uploading images, commenting on other people's posts, and participating in polls on topical questions like where the next club social should take place.
As one of the main issues facing grassroots sports teams over the past couple of years has been maintaining communications and engagement, the power and significance of Spond's interactive app design should not be underestimated. In fact, it has been cited by many club organisers as a key factor in keeping their teams together since the beginning of the pandemic.
As one Spond user and sports team coach, Hayley Mackellar of Bedfordshire Netball, told us: "Covid obviously stopped all netball. We weren't allowed on court, we weren't allowed to meet up, but we managed it and the girls got the communication and guidance for training they needed at home with a coach through Spond."
For coaches like this one, access to a sports team management app like Spond has been a godsend, providing a lifeline to help them keep in touch with their team through more than simple emails or text messages. Now, as things begin to open up, Spond is once again coming into its own as a fully-featured team management platform, increasing engagement by giving team players and grassroots club members a place to vent their enthusiasm as real-life sporting activities restart.
Spond has lots of features that other team apps do not, including enhanced sports team management tools and a commitment to helping clubs and teams back on their feet financially after the pandemic, but it is the design of the app and its communications capabilities that really set it apart. When it comes to online interaction and effective team communication, which together form the lifeblood of any modern grassroots club, no other sports team management app comes close to what Spond can offer.