Why Player Evals for your Evaluation System?

Recently, I was talking with a new potential customer who was in the weeds reviewing a bunch of evaluation systems for his large scale youth soccer company. He seemed frustrated and pretty much sick of dealing with finding the right evaluation system.

In an attempt to vet me out, he first asked: “What do you think separates Player Evals from all the other evaluation systems in this very competitive space?”

I had to be honest with him, so I told him that I don’t really know anything about our competitors or any other evaluation systems.

So, I called up one of our clients, Trilogy Lacrosse, to ask them. Trilogy had gone through the same process as this new client and they would be able to give me the exact perspective I needed. Their feedback was invaluable.

Why Choose Player Evals for Online Evaluations

1. Easiest to Implement

When building Player Evals it was imperative that we did not disrupt the current business process our clients already had in place, we pride ourselves on being an easy button. Running sports organization is complex as is, so we provide a few ways to input data into the system. Our clients can manually add coaches and players into the system, upload multiple players into the system via CSV, and we have done custom solutions where players are automatically added via direct connection to a companies payment platform.

2. Competitive Pricing

Our pricing is fair and simple, we don’t want you thinking about a complex pricing scheme. Your job is to make kids better at your respective sport, not constantly evaluate the cost effectiveness of an evaluation system.

Most of our clients opt for some sort of custom aspect to be added to their instance of Player Evals. In these cases, we provide a clear cost on the development work and also finance these costs for our customers.

3. Not part of something else that is expensive

This was one that we didn’t expect. We really appreciate that Trilogy Lacrosse took the time to explain this to us. During their online evaluation tool investigation, Trilogy found a few systems that seemed great and affordable, but were part of a bigger and more expensive software suite that they did not need or want. This is a huge deal breaker for many companies. You are looking for an evaluation system, not interested in replacing your whole credit card processing software!

4. Ability to add custom aspects

We are developers, you will talk with a developer when you first inquire to us about Player Evals. We believe in allowing the customer and developer to interact so you don’t have some random project manager trying to relay your needs to a developer. Our goal is to have Player Evals work seamlessly with your company.

One of our customers has a completely custom import process, they are using Thriva (now CCM) to manage their camp lists and collect payments. We have worked closely with Active Network to automatically import players after they purchase a camp or clinic.

Another client wanted to import combine data along with their camper lists. So, we implemented an easy to manage system for them to import combine stats (i.e. 40 yd dash time). They simply include the results in their CVS that they use to import player names and emails.

5. Most organized system (and we were the most organized developers)

Yet, another surprise to us. The guys at Trilogy said that our interface was the simplest and most organized of all that they demoed. This is very important when you take into account that some staff filling out evaluations will be jr. counselors who want to go spend the money they just earned working the camp instead of filling out evaluations! We make sure to simplify the interface for users who only have access to filling out the evaluations. Only administrators see the administrative tools.

Trilogy also buttered us up a bit, they said that Scott and I were the most organized people that they dealt with when evaluating a system. One of the things we 100% understand is how busy you are. You being the person making a decision on an evaluation system. From experience, I know how many responsibilities are on your plate, so we make sure to respect that during the whole process. We really strive to be an easy button for you both delivering you a premium evaluation system and willingness to push meetings when your plate is too full.

6. Ability to review evaluations before they go out

Using paper evaluations and most of our competitors’ software does not give you a chance to review evaluations before they are sent to a player’s parent. This was an extremely important aspect for Trilogy. They said that they quality checking all of their evaluations before they are sent and make minor changes to about 80% of them!

The difference between off-the-rack clothes and tailored clothes is unbelievable. And the training you provide to your campers is the equivalent of a custom-tailored suit. You work hard to get high-quality instructors and perfect your curriculum and drills.

But all of your hard work and attention to detail is lost if it isn’t communicated to your customers, the parents. Providing high-quality feedback about their campers’ progress, strengths, and weaknesses is critical to maintaining your brand and reputation. This is a case where generic one-size-fits-all forms make you look like everyone else, which is why we designed PlayerEvals to be tailored to your specific needs.

Our system was designed from the ground up to provide custom evaluation forms to our users. We didn’t create a generic soccer form, a generic baseball form, and a generic football form and force you to fit your business to our system. Our system adapts to meet your distinct needs.

This process starts with importing new campers by uploading simple comma separated value (CSV) files. Each camper is a row, and each column provides some information about that camper:

But what if you want to provide additional information about a camper? Most systems have a fixed set of columns, and adding new values requires custom modifications (which requires time and money). The PlayerEvals system process for adding custom data is simple: add new columns.

For example, say you have 40 yard dash times for your campers and want to provide them as part of your evaluations. Simply add a new column to your import spreadsheet:

Import the sheet, and that information is now attached to each of your campers. It’s possible to re-import as often as you like, the system will update the data without affecting any other information your coaches might have entered. You decide what information to track about your campers, and how to present it to their parents.

Player Evals: If you are writing evaluations for your players in a team environment, you should consider having a follow up meeting with each of your players to review their evaluation.

If you are writing evaluations for your players in a team environment, you should consider having a follow up meeting with each of your players to review their evaluation.

Playing college hockey was 4 years of development. Yes, the goal in college hockey is to win, but coaches have 4 years to develop players. My collegiate coaches made it a point to meet with players monthly. This helped to give the coaches and players a good understanding of what the other was thinking and how to keep developing.

In no way, do I suggest that using playerevals.com for evaluations can replace this face to face meeting. In a team environment, I suggest coaches fill out a monthly evaluation for their players. These evaluations should be prose style and give the player a glimpse into coaches thoughts about their performance. This allows the player has time to digest this information before the face to face meeting.

The benefits of this are huge, going into the meeting there will be no suprizes. Surprizes can railroad a meeting, players get emotional and heated due to negative feedback they were not expecting. Then, the rest of the meeting is useless because the player will not be able to effecitively analyize thier performance.

If the player takes time to digest the coaches feedback beforehand, they can remove any emotions and have an effecitive meeting with the coach.

This concept of allowing the one to digest the information before a meeting is a successful tatic that many companies use (Amazon 6 Pagers).