TeamSnap All-Stars: SAA Rams Wrestling – Team dad uses TeamSnap to get more parents involved with the wrestling squad

When Harrison Trahan decided to pick up wrestling last year, his dad Jesse jumped in head first, taking an active role as coach and confidant. The Rams encourage parent and family involvement in many capacities. Despite not having any previous wrestling background, Jesse was delighted to join many other fathers as a volunteer coach. Over the summer, the Ram’s president invited Jesse to join the board and he gladly accepted.

What was his first order of business? Getting the team signed up for TeamSnap’s team website. Jesse knew that there had to be a better way to organize and communicate with all 67 wrestlers and their families so he went seeking such a tool on that funny little thing called the Internet. “I looked at a number of team sports websites and decided to go with TeamSnap because of the clean design and simple interface. It’s not crammed with pictures and text making it accessible to the manager and team users.”

What is the Rams story?

The SAA Rams are a youth wrestling program for boys as young as five years old up through 8th grade. It was started in 1984 by Don Scarborough, who is still an active coach and practice participant. The Rams are the main feeder program into the local high school wresting team.

We really encourage family participation and TeamSnap has been very effective in getting even more involvement. Parents interact regularly with the site and use it to send me positive feedback and concerns. Because of TeamSnap’s team communication tools, I have assumed the role of “parent advocate” and I’m able to relay the feedback anonymously to the board.

What is your favorite feature?

Besides the interface, I really like the diversity of features available and the control that you have over them. The ability to not include features on the site is great because I don’t want to confuse parents with extraneous information.

There were also some unexpected benefits along with the obvious things, such as the schedule links to Google Maps. Some of the matches can be two hours away and being new to the area this was a huge help to me and other first time parents.

Wrestling is a hard sport, how do you encourage the kids to have fun?

The parents are each involved in their own capacities but ultimately we just want the kids to learn and enjoy themselves. We offer positive encouragement and reward the effort rather than focusing on wins and losses. Wrestling breeds some very formative and character building experiences and these will stick with the boys long after they have stopped wrestling.

Bet you didn’t know?
Former SAA Ram, Chance Marsteller, is currently #3 in the country as a freshman and ranked #1 in the State at 152 pounds. He has even been referred to as the “Lebron James in wrestling.”

Sure sounds like the Rams are doing something right!

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