Month: May 2022

Is conditioning important in youth sports? Studies show that daily conditioning and exercise is crucial for healthy development for kids and all aspects of their lives–physical development, social skills, mental skills, etc.

Naturally, throughout the practice, kids will be conditioning and learning to coordinate their awkward little bodies through the sport. Us adults have a pretty solid grip on jogging, sprinting, jumping, catching, skipping, etc., but these are still pretty new to younger kids, or even older kids! We should never judge whether or not a child can perform these activities like professional athletes would. Kids develop at different rates; some will quickly catch on to things while others may not get it down for awhile. Patience is key here.

When talking about conditioning in practice, we normally mean the scheduled 5-10 minutes before/after practices that focus purely on things like running sprints, suicides (we should probably change the name of that if we haven’t yet), jumping, etc. Are these too tough for kids, or should they be done in every practice? The answer is, yes, they should be done in every practice, but they need to be done correctly.

If you need some tips on how to better execute conditioning in your youth sports team, read our blog post about it! We go over how to make conditioning fun for your athletes, how to make it exciting and challenging without it being a negative experience, and why YOU should get involved during conditioning segments!

Helping your kids enjoy exercise and conditioning

When it comes to conditioning and overall training the human body, it’s important to take the age of each child considerably. This will help you determine the right kind of activities to do in or outside of the sport. Kidshealth.org has some thoughts on how and why kids should take conditioning seriously:

“Keep in mind your child’s age and developmental level, natural abilities, and interests. Kids 6 to 8 years old are sharpening basic physical skills like jumping, throwing, kicking, and catching. Some enjoy doing this in organized sports teams, but non-competitive leagues are best for younger kids. Show your support by coaching your child’s team or cheering from the stands on game days. Kids 9 to 12 years old are refining, improving, and coordinating skills. Some become even more committed to a sport while others drop out as competition heats up and level of play improves.”

In this modern day in which staying at home, watching TV, playing video games (none of which are terrible things, but it easier to do these things) than going outside, it’s crucial to have your child and the kids on your sports team be sure to do some sort of conditioning every day. Another quote from Kidshealth.org:

“Kids who enjoy sports and exercise tend to stay active throughout their lives. And staying fit can improve how kids do at school, build self-esteem, prevent obesity, and decrease the risk of serious illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease later in life.”

Why conditioning will help your players

• Conditioning allows players to work together while also working individually. Some kids will naturally be faster or stronger than their teammates. This makes conditioning “easier” for them in that they feel they are not being as challenged as the other kids. Have your kids who finish quicker go back and help their teammates finish the sprint or do their pushups. This can help create a unity in your team and help the less popular kids feel like they belong as well.
• Conditioning can encourage your team to take care of their bodies and and off the field. Helping them learn to better take care of their bodies through exercise, diet, and resting will help build strong habits that they will benefit from for the rest of their lives.
• Kids have a wild amount of energy. Doing conditioning is a great way to help them get their energy out in a great way.
• Conditioning, when done correctly, can help your athletes play better individually and as a whole. Sports require an impressive amount of grace, coordination, and technique. Practicing these with your team during conditioning is a great way to strengthen and train them. Talk about a win win!

You know how your mom used to get you to do something that you didn’t like doing? For me, it was cleaning my room. I hated that as a kid… I don’t know why. Naturally, messy rooms aren’t great to live in, and my mom knew that. How did she get me to clean it? She tricked me by making it a game. She would get make it a game to see who could clean the section of the room the fastest. She knew I was a competitive young sprout, and she played that to her advantage. It worked like a charm for years.

Moral of the story? Sometimes kids just don’t wanna do something until YOU make it fun.

If I went around and interviewed 100 7-year-olds on what they think about the idea of “conditioning”, they would probably boo me out of recess. Not many kids are going to line up and jump up and down with excitement at the notion of running sprints and doing a big jog around the baseball field. What they will get excited for is being tricked into conditioning by making a game out of it. Here are some ideas you can do with your team, regardless of age. Heck, high schoolers would even want to do this!

Tips for conditioning

• Play some sort of game that they normally don’t. Things like dodgeball, capture the flag, relay races, etc. I would imagine most kids on a sports team would go nuts for any of these games and run harder and longer than they will at practice.
• Bring out your neighbors dog, give that dog a stick or something they love, they have the kids chase after the dog. Dogs love them a game of keep away, especially when they do the keeping. Dogs can run for a long time and they’re pretty elusive. The youth might have to come up with a game plan and strategize!
• Get you and the other coaches involved! Make it a game of coaches vs. players. It was always really cool whenever the coaches showed their fun side. Most youth coaches I had were intimidating to me, whether or not they meant to be. The thing that broke that barrier was them playing with us.
• Never use running as a punishment, especially in youth sports. This teaches kids that doing sprints is a negative, dreadful experience. Sprints, when done the right way, can be challenging but exciting.
• Remember that these little athletes are kids. They’re not trained to be like professional athletes. They’re not fully developed. They are not being paid to play a sport. Pushing kids too hard will discourage them from playing a sport, make them afraid of you, and may take away the simple joy that youth sports should be.
• Don’t be afraid to make it fun. We trick ourselves into thinking, “Well, conditioning for me as a kid was miserable and I hated every minute of it, especially when Coach Pete would yell at us and make us all feel terrible. Yeah… I should do the same to my kids!” Let us be the new age of helping kids fall in love with sports and training their bodies by making it fun. Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean it can’t be challenging! Find that balance and do your best to maintain it.

In my humble opinion, the emphasis of youth sports shouldn’t be winning championships or destroying your crosstown rivals. These are fun perks, but we adults tend to get waaayyyy too caught up in sports in general, let alone youth sports with 6-year-olds playing soccer. The best coaches are the ones who help their kids love sports, to enjoy exercising and to help them get more coordinated and talented as well as improve as individuals and as a team. If conditioning doesn’t accomplish the latter, then it’s being taken too seriously, and you need to take it back a little bit. Conditioning should be fun, natural, and exciting!

Keep it simple and you’ll do great, coach.

Should the arts be left out of fundraising efforts? Absolutely not. Flex Fundraising is proud to be tied to many competitive sports, and we’re proud to sponsor the arts as well. When it comes to dancing, it’s an art and a sport!

Let’s take a look into Jazz’n Place Dance Studio in Lehi, Utah. Jazz’n Place teaches and directs all sorts of different dance styles, from jazz, hip-hop, contemporary, lyrical, tumbling, and technique classes. Much like sports, dance requires an incredible amount of practice, dedication, and a competitive spirit to improve and perform better. Instead of having a game to go to every Saturday at 10:00am, dance depends on local and national competitions for dancers to perform and compete in. These programs take time to plan, lots of hands to execute, and money from each participating group to be allowed to perform.

As we all know, money isn’t something that just falls out of the sky.

Jazz’n Place Dance Studio and Flex Fundraising

Jazz’n Place has been working their dancing legs off and has found a way to ultimately show off what their students can do: compete for a national title at the NRG Dance Project Convention and Competition in Anaheim, California. With many awesome students coming from different backgrounds, Flex Fundraising wants to ease the expenses that Jazz’n Place will have to spend in order to make their students’ dreams come true.

How is Flex Fundraising making a difference? We’re wanting to help Jazz’n Place raise as much money and more than ever before through our program. With the resources we process and the simplicity of fundraising through us, we’re doing the tough work for them while they are able to share and post about their fundraiser. It’s easy to do and it yields high results. Not to brag, but, it’s true.

From their donation page, “By donating to each dancer you will be helping to expand their dance education by providing them the opportunity to learn from some of the most sought-after choreographers in the industry, train with dancers across the country, all while encouraging them to give back with acts of kindness.”

We love reading being a part of these programs. We’re proud to sponsor fundraisers that will help anyone (especially kids) be able to experience life and be part of things that are bigger than themselves. Participating in such events as a child has massive health benefits, as well.

Why your kids should get into dancing

We truly believe that kids are incredible and that they should do everything they can to discover future talents and hobbies. Although we naturally write and produce much of our content about soccer, football, basketball and baseball, we love to be involved with all sports, clubs, teams, groups, and anyone in between who needs some help with fundraising. One things that keeps us up at night is the worry that kids won’t be able to experience something new due to a lack of funds for the programing. We have designed our entire model with that in mind, doing everything we can to help programs that normally aren’t able to receive the money they need to operate.

Why should your kids try dancing? From the Washington Parent, “From balancing on their toes to raising their arms, dance utilizes the entire body and all of its muscle groups. Dance improves flexibility, coordination, balance, range of motion, stamina, muscle tone, strength and posture. But physical fitness is just one of many benefits of dance that can enhance your child’s life in so many ways.

Dance helps children develop emotionally, socially and cognitively, and the dedication, discipline and focus children must learn and practice are important life skills that will transfer over to school, work and other aspects of their lives.

Committing to a dance class involves showing up on time, every time, fully prepared, with hair fixed and in proper clothing, and instills great habits and accountability. Children learn that their actions not only affect themselves, but others as well. The dedication involved in showing up for rehearsals also shows kids that being committed to something can bring many positives into their lives.”

Kids are incredible. They’re brave, they’re adventurous, and they want nothing more than to explore the world and see what’s out there. I’m surrounded by tons of nieces and nephews and it’s been awesome to see them get excited about new activities and things to try. I’m not child psychologist, but I would bet big money that most kids simply love to try all sorts of different activities. It’s only when we become adults that we start tricking ourselves into thinking that we can’t create new hobbies or find new passions. What a silly thing that is.

You might be thinking to yourself, “Look man, I know what you’re getting at, and believe you me, my child is not the athletic type and will not enjoy any organized sport, this I swear.” I understand that you might believe your child was not born to be an NFL player because they can’t yet catch a football at the precious age of 5. There are wayyyy too many stories about professional athletics not even being introduced to the sport until much later in life, and then making a profession out of it, like Ziggy Ansah.

You might be writing off your kid for an awesome experience much too early.

The reason I believe every kid should try a ton of different sports (regardless of skill level) comes from an experience I had with a coworker in a softball league. I had an old job where we all played in a local softball league. Not too competitive, mainly good times, but enough of a challenge to make anyone who hasn’t really played a softball like sport pretty nervous. We had been inviting our coworker for weeks. We knew he wasn’t athletic, but we wanted him to join for the good chill time that every game was. We finally convinced him.

He went 0-3 and stumbled on a couple of catches and didn’t really know what he was doing.

The next day, I talked to him thinking that he would never want to play again. To my surprise, he excitedly asked when the next game was. He talked about the great time that he had, how he enjoyed being outside and hanging out with some friends/coworkers and got to try something he hadn’t before. I was shocked and delighted! And shocked. I was sure that he wouldn’t want to play, and when he did, I was sure he wouldn’t want to play again. I was quite a fool.

I’ve thought about this little story a bunch since it’s happened. Just because someone hasn’t tried a sport yet and you personally think they’ll hate it doesn’t mean that they will. You have to allow them the opportunity to grow and be excited about it. My nephew was terrified of baseball and couldn’t imagine being good at it. The first couple practices were scary, he cried when his dad would drop him off, but now he’s in love with the sport and can’t get enough of it.

Some kids need to get over the initial fear stage before they unlock the potential they have for something. Some kids are ready to dive head first into a new activity. Some might need the encouragement of mom/dad coaches or their friends to get out of their comfort zone. And guess what? They might not even like whatever they’re trying! Once they’ve given it a true shot, you can both feel proud that they tried something new, stuck with it for a bit, and discovered a little more about themselves.

Little league coaches are underrated. Think about the time, the effort, sometimes even the PERSONAL cash coaches put into their little league teams. It’s incredible. And why, exactly, do they do it? They could be doing it for the simple love of the game, or the fact that their child is on the team and they want to spend more time with them. In between coaching and organizing and running a team, coaches are often helpless when it comes to fundraising.

Why exactly do little league coaches need to fundraising? There could be a few reasons.

• Raising money for new uniforms. Kids normally won’t complain too much about what they’re wearing for games, but it is certainly nice to have some nicer uniforms. Makes getting them dirty all the more fun!
• If the team is invited to a local or distant tournament, they may need some money to participate, travel, hotels, etc.
• Teams are often responsible for raising some money to pay the league so that the league can keep their fields nice, get new equipment when needed, pay umpires or onsite workers, etc.
• Teams want their fans to be able to dress with the team! Raising money for fundraisers can get proud parents, siblings and friends some shirts with the team name, logo, and their name on the back!

Take all of these points and try to understand how tough it is for a coach to balance all of these things. Not only are they running a team out of their own good will for no pay, they’re spending this time outside of their normal work and personal life schedules. Pretty incredible. When you need to add fundraising to the already complex equation of everything else coaches need to do, it often gets put to the bottom of the “to do” list. It’s likely the last thing that coaches want to worry about. They’re busy helping a team learn to play the sport and compete!

The kids that make up the team and simply want to play the sport might not be super enthusiastic about the idea of fundraising. When I was a kid, I had to stand in front of a Kroger’s and sell these crappy chocolate bars for $5 a piece. Some kids might be a little more into sales at the tender age of 8, but I and most of my teammates were not one of them. It’s pretty intimidating to stop strangers in their tracks and bother them with mediocre chocolate covered nougat.

We at Flex Fundraising want to help alleviate the pain of fundraising for these coaches that are already donating so much of their time and effort to a team who needs him/her.

If you are currently running a little league team or know someone who is, be sure to point them in our direction. At Flex Fundraising, we do everything we can to take away all of the stress that comes when running a fundraiser. Our platform makes it simple to get biggest return as you’ll do the least amount of work ever before in a fundraiser. Come see how we can help you out today!

Do you remember your elementary school teachers? We have lots of respect for the teachers of the world here at Flex Fundraising. Teaching is certainly not an easy profession–spending time with some high energy kiddos can quickly become exhausting! When I think back on my days of elementary school, I marvel at how Mrs. Church and many others were able to keep up with all of their kids. Not only are they balancing their careers that revolve around kids, but they have their home lives and health to balance as well. 

With the respect that we have for teachers, we at Flex Fundraising want to ensure that we can simplify an aspect of their careers. Our model of fundraising is designed to help out those that have tons of work in their everyday life. 

Let’s look into the fundraising that an elementary school in Sandy, Utah was running. Crescent Elementary was able to raise over $14,000 in their fundraiser with Flex Fundraising. We couldn’t be more excited to see the incredible results of a great campaign ran by the school. The magic of our work is that it makes fundraising simple, exciting, and accessible by nearly everyone. Crescent Elementary did many things well in their campaign, and I see three of those that would be great to highlight in this post. 

• Use great incentives to motivate entire classrooms 

What’s better than motivating one kid? Motivating an entire class! You might think that it’s tough to get an entire group of kids excited about something, but you’d be surprised to see the simple and awesome incentives that Crescent Elementary created for their school. First off, they used incentives that rewarded an entire class for their work. The “leading class” for a certain chunk of the donation would receive the incentive. This created many chances for classrooms to get excited about receiving the incentive! Genius, I say, genius! 

Some of the incentives include: dance parties, pie-ing teachers in the face, allowing the class to do the hair and makeup for their teacher, and having one specific teacher sleeping on the roof for one night! 

• • Have many donation options 

Having one option for donors? Fine. Two options? Better. Five categories with dozens of options?? Incredible. Doing this lessens the pressure for your donors and makes it so much more enjoyable for them to contribute towards something they find interesting. Crescent Elementary had options for beach days, dress up days, hat days, change your name for a day, face painting, sidewalk chalk, cotton candy, picnic lunch, snow cones, kickball tournaments, race a teacher, and water relay races, JUST to name a few. Asking for cash is fine, but giving your donors nearly 50 options is awesome.

• Keep their website up to date, interesting and competitive

Not only did they keep their Flex Fundraising page up to date with the donation totals and progress bars, but they also had interesting content on their own website. Having content lets the community know what you’ve been up to, future plans with the organization, and helps you look more up to date. Doing so will give anyone who stumbles on your website a reason to stick around, which will naturally help your donation chances. Trying to be the top class is always motivating as well!

Check out their full fundraiser: https://flexfundraising.com/crescent-carnival/

 

Think about something that you worked hard for. Was it training for a marathon? Getting a promotion at your job? Picking up an instrument and learning to play? Beating your personal challenge of making ten free throws in a row? When people are working towards something, they’re putting time, effort, and emotion towards a massive goal that will change their lives, typically for the better. 

Why, then, is it so difficult to work on things that’ll benefit us? Oftentimes, we get burnt out. We’re excited to work towards something new at the beginning, but when the first challenge comes along, we quickly negotiate with ourselves on how badly we really want this. We often lose this battle, and we’re back to square one. This happens all the time in fundraising. 

How can you keep yourself and your teammates from getting burnt out as you work towards your fundraising goal? One major tip: incentives. Follow the quick four tips below to ensure your future fundraiser goes better than the last by sprinkling in rewards. 

• Understand how incentives work

The use of incentives, in general, has mixed reviews, especially in the workplace where they’re often thrown around to motivate individuals. According to Forbes, the use of incentives can help lead engagement and performance when used correctly. In order to use them correctly, your incentives need to help your teammates feel motivated towards a goal. Especially with kids, incentives can be the ultimate weapon that will keep them engaged and excited about the work they’ll need to be doing. 

• Know what motivates your team 

Just because it’s something YOU think is awesome doesn’t mean everyone else will. If I were to personally want an incentive for something, it would be different from what others may want. Handpicking incentives that are interesting for everyone is really easy on a football team and really tough on a football team. Do whatever you can to appeal to the masses with incentives. If it means doing more incentives to cover a wide range of prizes, great. If it means scaling back and doing a few large ones, awesome. You know your team best–make it about them! 

• Be specific, avoid ambiguity

You ever see A Christmas Story? The one with Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun? Ralphie, throughout the movie, is working towards a goal: to uncode the super secret message from Little Orphan Annie. He’s getting little things here and there towards his goal–a decoder, announcement messages, etc. He has no idea what the secret message is, but he is sure, without a doubt, that it’s worth his time and effort. When the time comes for him to finally decode the message, he learns that this awesome, super secret code was simply an advertisement for Ovaltine. 

Moral of the story? Don’t do what Ovaltine did to Ralphie. Give your team a clear incentive that they’ll be happy to work towards. Having the incentive being something like a “super cool prize that everyone will definitely love!” is something that is bound to create some disappointment in its unveiling. 

Keep your incentives specific. Make sure they know exactly what they’re working towards. Things like, “Something fun at the end of practice” is ambiguous. Instead, replace it with an unmistakable reward that cannot be confusing. “We will play dodgeball instead of conditioning on Thursday” “The top seller from this date to that date will get to pie coach Jones in the face”. These are specific, thrilling, and will allow your team to work hard and have some bonding moments once the incentive hits. Your teammates can then visualize their reward as they’re working for it!

• Sprinkle them in early and often

Let your team know that you’ll be rewarding them often throughout the process. Sprinkle in these incentives as early as you can to set the tone for the entire fundraiser. This will give your team a clear vision on how the fundraiser will operate. Make sure your first incentive is particularly interesting so that you can peak interest right off the start. 

What do you do if they fail to hit their goals and they don’t get the incentive? You can certainly go with the “tough love” option, meaning that they simply do not get to experience the incentive. You can allow those that did reach to the goal to experience the incentive. Or, you can secretly stack the incentive for a later time, perhaps doubling up with another incentive to create another opportunity for the team to succeed! Check this post to see how to use one major reward instead of incentives if you feel that would be better for your team. 

I would be surprised if anyone gets super excited about fundraising. All the times I was essentially forced to fundraise throughout sports, school events, scouting programs, etc. led me to believe that there was nothing cool about fundraising. What I’ve learned, however, is that many of these fundraising events made it really tough to feel enthusiastic about because they failed to do something that would have made it much better: provide some incentives. 

Incentives, I feel, should become more and more of a thing in general. With everything that everyone needs to balance in this world, it’s hard to remain ultimately focused on one sole thing. Having incentives allows people to get excited about what they’re working towards. Incentives remind us that the work we are doing is beneficial and that, while everyone is working towards a good cause, there’s something in it for them as well. 

When it comes to raising funds, incentives can be your best tool to keep your students happy, engaged, and thrilled about the journey they’re on. Let’s face it–raising funds is tough. It requires marketing, networking, advertising, sales, and nowadays, digital media knowledge. That’s a lot to ask for someone to dive into! Having prizes, either for the individual or the team, is exactly what will help a younger audience be excited about fundraising. We’ll quickly mention one school who knocked their incentive out of the park through a major grand prize. 

One Major Reward

The All In. All or Nothing. The Big Cheese. This is the ultimate grand prize. THIS is what people will be talking about for years and years. Can you imagine what it would be like to win THE grand prize? This is a great route to take if your students would feel more motivated by the competitional aspect of winning it all, rather than receiving smaller prizes along the way. 

Friendly competition can be a useful ally in the spirit of fundraising. 

Take Durango High School out in Las Vegas. You wanna know what they did? They have their grand prize be a $400 pair of Jordans. Let’s go over why this was a beautifully hand-picked prize for this group. 

• It speaks to the group. The grand prize here was something that every player would want. What basketball player doesn’t want an insanely expensive pair of shoes? 
• It was a huge reward. Not only was it a nice pair of shoes, but it was a pair of shoes that players likely wouldn’t be able to get with their own cash. Being able to incentivize through an expensive prize is highly motivating. 
• It gave them something to look at. There was no mysterious “grand prize”. It was THIS prize. Showing the students right off the bat what it would be they were competing for left away any thoughts on whether or not this “grand prize” would truly be grand at all. 
• The $400 Jordans probably got some traffic towards the fundraiser that wouldn’t have come otherwise. The news of a grand prize can quickly get whispered around the hallways of the school, and it’s no wonder that the overall donation total was incredible because of it. 

Durango figured out how to use their grand prize to their advantage. It catered to the team and to the individual, was exciting, and was worth the extra effort students were giving. It gave those players a reason to be fiercely competitive. It gave them something to cheer for. Do whatever you need to in order to create this same drive for your group!