Which account type to choose

The signup form asks I am a... and offers these.

Family Account (Parents & Players)

For a parent registering children. You add players to your family, register them for programs, pay balances, sign waivers and see the schedules and messages for their teams. This is the right answer for most people who receive a registration link.

Adult League Participant (Self-Registration)

For an adult signing themselves up rather than a child. The difference that matters: this is the only account type that asks for your date of birth at signup, because adult programs can carry age restrictions and the system needs a birthday to check eligibility against.

Coach / Team Manager Account

For somebody running a team. This account type can create organizations, which makes it the right choice for a single coach setting up one team as well as for an assistant joining a club that already exists.

Volunteer / Staff Account

For somebody helping out without running anything: the scorekeeper, the concessions organizer, the parent who drives. It cannot create an organization.

Organization Admin / League Director

For whoever runs the club. This account type can also create organizations, and it is the natural choice if you are starting a league rather than coaching a team inside one.

Creating an organization is restricted to the Coach and Organization Admin account types. Sign up as a Family or Volunteer account and there is no Create Organization button anywhere to find, because the whole Management section of the sidebar does not appear at all.

It does not present itself as a permissions error. The option simply is not there, which is a slower thing to diagnose than a message would be.

If nobody has an organization yet and you picked wrong, the practical answer is a fresh account with the right type. Worth getting right the first time.

Plenty of people overthink this, so it is worth being clear about what the account type has no bearing on.

• What you are on a particular team. That is a separate thing set per roster, so a coach account can be a parent on their own child's team and a Family account can be made a team manager.
• Whether you can volunteer. Any account can apply to be an organization's volunteer and be approved.
• Registering your own children. A coach account can still add players and register them, which is what most coaches need.

So the question is narrower than it looks. It is really only asking whether you will ever need to create an organization.

Name, email, cell phone number and a password are all required. Two further sections are worth a moment.

Opportunities has checkboxes for being interested in volunteering and in coaching. These flag your interest rather than granting anything, so ticking coaching does not make you a coach.

Communication Preferences controls email updates, on by default, and there is a separate consent box beside the phone field for text messages. Text consent is genuinely optional and the form says so.

If you are setting up a club, carry on to setting up your first season.

If you are a parent who arrived from a registration link, signing in takes you straight back to the form you were sent. See sharing your registration link for how that works from the other side.