Not a week goes by where we don’t hear about some security issue affecting our finances, our livelihoods, or our privacy. Even our personal safety.
Formerly sacred facets of everyday life, such as youth sports, are not immune.
For too long, tired volunteer parents pulling double-duty – coach meets dues collector – had the dreaded responsibility of team and funds management, and the opportunity for malfeasance which that access provided. Worse, without proper vetting, teams and athletes could be exposed to potential physical threats.
SportsEngine was developed in 2008 to help address some of those concerns, but a recent acquisition by the company – that of background screening provider National Center for Safety Initiatives – gives the NBC Sports-owned, but self-operated platform, the ability to offer a 360-degree service to address youth athlete safety and protection.
“It seems like whenever I read an article about something happening, a physical attack, a financial issue – it almost always seems like the scenario goes, ‘so-and-so is a great person, a model citizen, you can’t believe it happened,’” said Jim Dahline, the director of marketing for the Minneapolis-based SportsEngine. “In communities, it seems to be a surprise to people, until it happens. If there are opportunities for things to happen, the longer the opportunity is available, the larger the likelihood it would happen.”
Created during the digital revolution in youth sports, SportsEngine helped move athletes’, parents’ and coaches’ sensitive personal material from pen-and-paper to the online world. Gone are the days of team schedules posted on bulletin boards for the world to see. SportsEngine’s full-suite platform was created to offer organizational tools for a league, club, team or parent, from beginning registration and processing to scheduling and finance management.
SportsEngine streamlines a league, club, or team’s registration and onboarding process, provides access to sensitive information only to those deemed necessary and who are approved, provides messaging and contact software to manage communications and allows for financial record-keeping and secure fund-collecting.
With its 2017 acquisition of NCSI, one of the most thorough background screening providers in the country, SportsEngine now has both the past and present accounted for.
“One of the biggest indicators of change is what people are talking about,” said Trish Sylvia, who co-founded NCSI in the mid-2000s. “Back in 2004, there was a real reluctance to talk about the idea that harm could occur in an organization. We want to believe we know these people, these are our neighbors, these are our friends. A decade later, the conversation isn’t why should I do screening, or why should I have protective strategies, the conversation today is how do I best do this?”
NCSI “really began to mobilize in 2004,” Sylvia said, two years after a call-to-action from organizations and community leaders about the need to protect against the potential of predators accessing the information in youth organizations. In partnership with the National Council of Youth Sports, which represents more than 60 million participants through member organizations and initially authored recommended guidelines in 2004, NCSI began working with national organizations in 2005.
The topic of athlete safety and vetting is becoming increasingly important.
“I would love to see parents have more tools to be engaged, and I think sometimes maybe they don’t know what questions to ask,” Sylvia said. “Until something goes wrong, they take for granted that their organization is doing it right. I don’t want to categorize it as a blind trust, because parents want the best for their kids, but from cyber safety to physical safety to cases of egregious misconduct, people don’t always know how to engage. Having a tool like SportsEngine that speaks directly to a parent is a great platform for helping them.”
Dahline stressed the importance of parental peace-of-mind from the very beginning of participation.
“It’s about taking the steps of ‘safety, risk management, and security’ out of the hands of volunteers and giving them the right tools to run their own risk management program,” Dahline said. “What’s happened over time is so much of this data is not only collected online – personal information about families and young people – but now it usually includes payments, too. ”
Dahline, who as a youth hockey coach has gone through the NCSI background system and helps run his team on the SportsEngine platform, as well, said the key to prevention is proactive management, and Sylvia echoed his sentiment.
“In today’s world, we’re all very sensitive about our information and how it is used,” she said. “We do our best in being transparent about the protections we have in place, and we’re very excited about the expertise that SportsEngine has from a tech standpoint. The other side of the issue is always, what’s the risk of not doing it? When you’re thinking about the safety of a young person, that’s a very compelling conversation.”