How do I add a coach to my team?

Depending on your situation, there are multiple options available for creating coach accounts. Choose the one below that fits your scenario.

>>Note: There are only two affiliations in SwimTopia at this time - Athlete (by age group) and Parent. No matter which option you choose below, they will have one or the other as a label on their profile, which is not removable.

Covered in this Article:

• Coach has an existing "Parent" or "Athlete" account in your system
• Coach does not have an account, and does not have athletes competing
• Coach has an athlete to register (or doesn't, but you need a form filled out)

➧ Coach has an existing "Parent" or "Athlete" account in your system

Is this an Athlete?

If they are an existing athlete but not competing, after affiliating them to the new season, you can mark them as non-competitive in their profile (Edit - "Does not compete in meets") and they will not show up for meet entries. The Age Group label will only be cosmetic at that point.

➞ See our help center article on Managing People. 

Or if you would rather not use their existing athlete account, you can click the red Remove button to unaffiliate them to the current season (if they are already) and just create a New Parent account for them (Remeber, we only have Parent and Athlete type of accounts).

>>Note: If they are competing, it's best to wait until the parent registers, so their affiliation to the team can be through this registration form. Then you can proceed with step 2 below.

Steps to Affiliate an Existing Account to a New Season

Step 1:

Find their profile in your previous season on the People screen. If they are not yet affilated with the current season, click to affilate them within their profile.

Step 2:

Create a "Coach" and/or "Assistant Coach" Role(s) with applicable admin privelages to assign them to.

➞ See our help center article on Defining Roles and Assigning Volunteers to Roles.

>>Note: If you edit an account for older coaches (born before 1995), their birth year may be saved as 2001. Contact SwimTopia Customer Happiness for assitance in manually correcting this date.

➧ Coach does not have an account, and does not have athletes competing

If the Coach or Assistant Coach does not have athletes to register, and you do not need a registration form filled out, the quickest option would be for you to manually create their accounts with name/email and create a Coach Role for communications. Use the New Parent button (bottom of page) on the People section to create their account. 

An activation email will be sent immediately so they can set their password to access their account. If they do not see this email pretty quickly, they should check their spam folder.

>>Note: Even if they are not a "parent"', OR they are a 16yr old coach, you use the New Parent option, which is considered “an adult with zero or more children.” As mentioned above, a "Parent" label will display next to their name. This is purely an aesthetic issue. The label is not removable.

>>Tip: We recommend creating a Coach and/or Assistant Coach role to assign these people to, so you see this "role label" on your People list. If the head coach wanted to send a communication out to their team, they could do that in the Communications tab by just typing the role name in the Send To box ➞ See our help center article on Communications: Emails and Alerts.

Did you receive an error such as "This email has already been taken"?

This is due to the email already being used either in a previous season on your site, or on another SwimTopia site. In this case, here is what to do:

• If it's possible the coach could have an account on your site in a different season, search for them using the Season pull-down first. If found, you can affilite them to the current season on their profile page.
• If you are sure the coach has never had an account on your site, go ahead and create the account but leave the email blank. 
• Submit a Support Ticket including the name/email and we will link the accounts behind the scenes.

➧ Coach has an athlete to register (or doesn't, but you need a form filled out)

If they pay the same as everyone else, then they can go through the same form as everyone else. If you don't charge your coach for their athlete(s), or want to provide some discount, here are two options below. 

Option A: Copy your registration form, name it something like "Coach Registration", and make it Private (checkbox on main registration page) with a fee $0. Then you would open it and send this link via email to whomever needs to register ➞ See our help center article on the Main Registration Section, which covers this topic.

>>Note: Since it is private, it will not be visible on your website, but must still be in an Open state for people to access it.

Option B: Create a Discount Code on the existing registration form or a separate form (Payment Section), and provide this code to your coaches to use at checkout. See our help center article on Discount Codes.

>>Note: They will have to enter an athlete with both of these options. If they don't have one, they can enter some "name" (maybe "Coach" to be easy to find) and you can select that they are "non-competitive" in the Edit screen of the Athlete profile.