Parent Volunteer Signup

DREAM Team is grateful for our parent volunteers!

In any season and with any team, there are a lot of moving parts that help make the TEAM experience a success for our players!

For each game, we must have a bookkeeper (scorekeeper), GameChanger scorekeeper & live stream setup, Team Mom (for our Coach Pitch teams primarily), and Assistant Coaches in order to cover all of the bases (pun intended) 😀!

Most of these duties require very little time and yet they contribute greatly to our players' experience on the field & in the dugout; in short, a volunteer's contribution is so valuable to our families and to our program and we want to invite you to invest in our kids by volunteering this Spring season.

Here are the 3 Specific VIP Volunteer Roles:

• Game Coordinator: Oversees Team GameChanger Scoring, Live Stream, & Bookkeeper
• Family Coordinator: Oversees Social events & fundraising (1 in-season social event minimum, 1 postseason party & coordinated Saturday restaurant lunches if possible) (DT provides two fundraisers but teams can do their own)
• Assistant (Base) Coach (doesn't apply to 14U): Oversees Assisting Head Coach with Coaching on the Field (primarily at games, but possibly also at practices)

Here's some more information on each specific role:

Game Coordinator: How To...

GAMECHANGER UNIVERSITY YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: GAMECHANGER YOUTUBE PLAYLIST

GameChanger Scoring: You must be assigned by DREAM Team Baseball Office as "Team Staff" in GameChanger. This means you can Score the game in GC. The best "how to" video on how to score in GameChanger is found here on Youtube: 

GameChanger Live Streaming: Any parent and any current device (iPhone or Android) can be used to live stream the game! It's easy to set up and DREAM Team will provide a fence mount to attach the device to the field fence. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that your device must be connected to cellular service or WiFi/MiFi and have enough bandwidth to stream the game. There are some video resolution settings that you can "dial down" to 480p (instead of 1080p) that will help "crunch the data" when it takes the video and pushes it out through the live stream which will help make it all work when the bandwidth is a weak signal. Here's a "how to" on how to live stream in GameChanger:

Bookkeeper: Any parent can keep the books & this is a great help to the head coach as the paper scorebook is the official method of scorekeeping (GameChanger is important too, but it's unofficial). All you need is a pencil, an eraser, and you must primarily keep watch for a) balls and strikes and runs (an umpire may ask you to check the count), b) batting lineup (alert the head coach if someone on the other team is out of the batting order), c) hits and errors (do your best to judge an error by whether the play could have been made by the fielder), and d) keep the pitch count if the head coach asks for that statistic. Here's a "how to" on keeping the book:

Family Coordinator: How To...

This position is basically what has been called a Team Mom position; however, we wanted to open this up to any mom or dad that would like to help! For our Coach Pitch Teams, we definitely need a Family Coordinator/Team Mom for each game as it requires magical powers as you are in charge of the dugout and making sure players are ready to go, ha! Seriously though, the main things to know in this role is that on gameday you must be at the field early and help organize the dugout pregame, assist the Head Coach as needed, and then keep things in order during the flow of the game (and obviously make sure the dugout gets picked up postgame).

For the dugout duties, here are some tips from Rachael Faulkner (She is a Pro!):

• She has designed a bucket system that she sets up pregame under the bench for each player. These are basically (jersey numbered, as pictured above) Dollar Tree buckets that go under each player's seat on the bench and it will hold their gloves, drinks, & hats for quick access (their bats always go in the bat rack) and then Rachael has the players hang baseball bags above bucket.
• She lines up the buckets and seating on the bench by the exact batting order and that way the players know who they bat after and then she has a system when batting: she puts the "in the hole" hitter on the dugout pole and announces the batting order one by one to ensure that all players are ready to bat in the right batting order.
• She helps suit up the catcher to the knee (lets the catcher buckle at the thigh) and ensures that the catcher is set to go out on defense each inning.
• She lists the snacks that are to be brought for each postgame celebration in GameChanger Notes.

If the team does not have a Dugout Mom (for 9U and up), that doesn't mean there's not ways to help the head coach pregame! There are a lot of moving parts with coaching a game so coming early to make sure the head coach has it all together is a huge help! 

For team social events, we'd like for the Team Coordinator to help coordinate a social event that could range from a bowling party to a trip to Alley Cats to a trip to Epic (whatever sounds fun which will give all of the players a chance to hang out and for the families to bond altogether). This is so important for team chemistry, it helps keep the families connected and really make for a positive team atmosphere. DREAM Team will help support however we can in the planning of the social events, but we'd like for the Family Coordinator to help oversee the planning. For teams playing in tournaments, we'd like for a Saturday restaurant meetup to be planned from time to time where the whole team gets invited; again, this makes the whole tournament team experience a blast for the kids! And, the kids are what this is all about. For the postseason party, DREAM Team can host each team (if desired by the Family Coordinator) and the team party can happen at our facility assuming the team can provide the food, drinks, setup, and cleanup. Please book this date by emailing our Baseball Office. 

Assistant (Base) Coach: How To...

Assistant Coaches are so vital to the success of the team! Head coaches can attest to this, it means so much to have a dependable Assistant Coach. Generally, this means that you're coaching 1st Base and the things to remember there are: 1) Know the coaching signs (keep top secret, ha!) and communicate in-game with the head coach who is generally the 3rd base coach 2) Help when our team's baserunners are on 1st base to get a good primary lead off and yell "Back" if the pitcher makes a pickoff attempt (if advised to do so by the head coach) 3) Take a clipboard and keep a tally of balls and strikes and the score, this is vital as the head coach may be preoccupied with the lineup and getting players into position so to have you on the field and keeping track of these things is huge! Your head coach may have other ideas or duties here so check in with him, but in general this is an important role.