How to create a youth sports registration form

Question Label is what the parent reads. Answer Type decides the kind of input. Answer Choices appears underneath for the three types that need a list.

There are seven, and they are worth choosing deliberately.

Short Text

One line. Good for a jersey name, a school, an emergency contact. If the answer is longer than a few words, this is the wrong type and the parent will run out of room.

Paragraph / Long Text

A box that grows. Use it for medical notes, allergies, or anything where you would rather have too much detail than too little. Bear in mind that free text cannot be filtered or counted later, so do not use it for something you will want to sort by.

Date Picker

A calendar. Use it for a physical exam date or an insurance expiry, not for the child's birthday, which Playbook Logix already holds on the player profile.

Dropdown Options

A fixed list in a menu. Reach for this whenever the answer has a known set of possibilities and the list is long enough that showing every choice would clutter the form. Shirt sizes, divisions, how the family heard about you.

Radio Buttons (Select One)

The same idea as a dropdown, but every choice is visible at once and the parent picks one. Better than a dropdown when there are only three or four choices and you want people to actually read them, which is why a question like position preference belongs here.

Checkboxes (Select Multiple)

A list where more than one answer can be true. Which practice nights you can make, which volunteer jobs you would consider, which sessions of a camp you want.

Agreement Checkbox

A single box the parent ticks. Use it for an acknowledgment, a code of conduct, or a photo permission.

An agreement checkbox is not a signed waiver. If you need a real signature on a release, use the waivers feature instead, which records who signed, when, and against which document.

For a dropdown, radio buttons or checkboxes, the Answer Choices box appears. Type one choice per row and click Add Another Option for each extra one.

Keep choices short and keep them consistent. Youth S, Youth M, Youth L, Adult S, Adult M sorts and counts cleanly. small, Small, S, sm does not, and you will be fixing it by hand in a spreadsheet in March.

Charging for a choice

Next to each choice there is a price box. Leave it empty, or put a zero in it, and the choice is free. Put a number in it and picking that choice adds that amount to the family's total: a sleepover week that costs more than a day camp, a jersey in a size you have to order specially, a second practice shirt.

The pattern worth stealing is a plain yes or no question where yes costs something. A dropdown called "Cancellation Protection" with Yes at $50 and No at $0 reads to a parent as a decision rather than a sales pitch, and you end up with a clean column telling you exactly who took it.

This is worth knowing about because it saves you from a common mess. The alternative is a separate add on plus a form question asking the same thing, which gives you two records of one decision and no guarantee they agree.

Pricing on choices is a premium feature. If your plan does not include it the box is not there, and the choices are simply free.

Spreadsheet Alias is optional and is the short column heading used in the Master Grid and in exports. "Jersey Size" is a better column heading than "What size shirt does your player wear?", and it is the difference between an export you can work with and one you spend an hour reformatting.

The Live Preview shows the alias under each question, so you can see what your spreadsheet will look like before anybody fills the form in.

Leave it on only when a registration is genuinely incomplete without an answer. Every required field is another reason for a parent to abandon the form on a phone in a parking lot.

A useful test: if a parent left this blank, would you chase them for it? If the honest answer is no, it should not be required, and possibly should not be on the form at all.

When the form is finished, click Done Building Form.