There are a lot of apps out there aimed at youth sports parents. These are five we think everyone should have to make their lives easier! (FYI We haven’t included any of the sports team management apps in this list.)
By Alex Flanagan
5 Apps Every Sports Parent Should Have
Collect money for the team gift or the year-end pizza party; split up the costs of groceries, dinner or the hotel bill from an out of town tournament without all the hassle. This app takes the awkwardness and hassle out of asking people to pay up. Venmo links to your bank account or debit card and takes funds out or deposits them into your checking or savings account. Venmo will send emails notifying recipients how much to pay you and they transfer the money from their account to yours. I use this with my siblings when we buy family gifts for each other or our parents. It makes collecting money simple.
If you travel out of town to tournaments, this App will change your life. No need to find the local Costco or hit the grocery store when you arrive. Now you can do all of your shopping online and instacart sends out one of their personal shoppers to pick everything up and deliver it to your front door or hotel room. Order from multiple stores. Need a case of water, nuts, juice boxes and licorice from Costco and fruit and sandwich stuff from Whole Foods? – your instacart shopper has it covered. Delivery charges range from $3.99 to $5.99 depending on how much shopping you need.
Real-time traffic updates. Waze will give you the fastest route to your location and help you avoid traffic jams and accidents. Awesome for navigating cities with lots of traffic. Waze is only useful for driving. Stick to Google maps for other modes of transportation. (FYI: Google owns Waze.)
Can’t make it to one of your kid’s games? You can still keep up in real time with this app. A favorite of ILTWYP sports parents. Gamechanger provides live play-by-play, in-game alerts and recaps of your childs’s baseball, softball and basketball games.
This is an app that allows you to send group messages to your contacts across multiple platforms. Good if you are the coach or team mom. Great for reminding parents about practices, game times, etc. Allows you to communicate with anyone you want in the group you have set up. Simplifies group text messaging. Also good for fantasy football groups, your book club group, families, etc.
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Alex Flanagan co-founded I love to watch you play in 2015. She was flying home from an NFL work assignment when a learning specialist, who was sitting next to her, shared 5 reasons she shouldn’t feel guilty missing her son’s game. She shared their conversation on her own website alexflanagan.com and the response was so overwhelming it inspired her to create ILTWYP to help parents like herself navigate youth sports.