For the San Francisco Riptide Lacrosse Club, a non-profit, volunteer-led organization teaching the sport of lacrosse, it’s very important that they get all the “Littles’ things right.
For the leadership of the Riptide, that means placing the highest priority on the quality of the instruction and skill development for its youngest club members, the participants in the ‘Kindercrosse’ division. The club is so committed to this philosophy that it annually assigns some of its best coaches to its youngest members.
“Several years ago, when I first joined the leadership board, we realized that if we wanted to grow the club we needed to create a great onboarding experience into the sport, and that really meant at the Kinder (U6) and U8 levels,” said club president Matt Eccleston. “We made decisions to basically put some of our really good coaches, the ones that loved working with the kids, towards these younger slots.”
Without pulling resources away from the older age divisions (U10, U12, U14), the club allocated more budget for teaching its youngest boys and girls. They also gave significant thought to the practice and competition formats for their “Littles”, ranging from the organization of practice to the actual meeting days, places, and times.
“The goal is to have kids associate lacrosse with fun,” Eccleston said. “The most impactful thing we did was to reset our focus on the younger ages.”
While experienced coaches run the practices, parents are strongly encouraged to remain present. Time spent with other parents has helped with community building.
“We started to get really positive feedback and word of mouth really started to spread,” Eccleston said. “Our year over year enrollment has reflected our growing participation numbers. Most of the growth is that really healthy growth at those younger ages.”
As a USA Lacrosse member program, the Riptide anticipate having over 500 boys and girls across all age divisions this spring, served by approximately 40 coaches. The U6 and U8 participants play within the Riptides’ in-house program, while the older divisions participate as members of the West Bay Lacrosse League. A commitment to smaller roster sizes has helped to provide kids on all teams with more playing time in recent seasons.
An emphasis on good communication with families and support with equipment for those who need assistance are among the club’s key strategies. The Riptides try to simplify the experience for parents as much as possible.
“If you want to get kids into the sport, you have to make it easy for parents at those young ages to do it,” Eccleston said. “Having dedicated people to deal with our communications and making sure that we were consistently pushing out our dates and practice schedules and those types of things is really important. And the equipment rental program has been very successful and very convenient for parents.”
Another successful strategy that Eccleston highlighted is the use of parent ambassadors to help with the recruiting of new players. Parents basically volunteer to help promote the Riptide program within their school community, via newsletters, social media, and other communication vehicles.
“It’s kind of a lightweight task for parents to do but I think it really helps us with some soft recruiting,” he said. “We're finding that it's harder to break into brand new schools, but we've had a lot of success growing penetration within the schools where we’ve already got players. The parents are a big part of our success.”
Positive feedback from families tells Eccleston and the other club leaders that they are on the right path.
“We’re all aligned on having the right approach, and we think we have a good thing going right now,” he said. “I think we’re focused on just setting a better standard for what the youth sports experience should be like. Our mindset is to make youth sports great and to keep improving what we are doing.”
