Play Dates

By: Rich Kane

It must be overwhelming being the parent of an athletically inclined kid—particularly in the Cincinnati area, where there’s a dizzying assortment of more than 1,200 youth sports organizations to pick from, an exhaustive number that’s enough to make you tell your budding Peyton Manning that if he wants to play football, he’ll just have to settle for Madden NFL.

But that’s where Youthletic comes in. Launched in April, it’s a website start-up from Scripps that exclusively serves (for now) the media group’s Cincinnati hub. The goal is for the site to be the go-to source for parents who want to match their kids’ sports interests with the right league, thanks to the magic of pull-down menus and a well-stocked database.

Punch in a sport, city, ZIP code, age or gender, check off some boxes, and in return, you’ll be given a filtered list of organizations. Once you find what you want, you can have registration deadline reminder notices emailed.

There are also original parent-targeted articles and listicles on topics like concussion prevention, first-aid, healthy snacks and schedule organizing—as Scripps digital solutions group director Bo Schuerman puts it, less how-to-kick-a-field-goal, more how-do-I-stay-busy-while-my-kid-is-at-soccer-practice.

“We did some research and found there wasn’t really a need being met,” said Schuerman. “The biggest thing we heard from parents is that looking for a youth sports team is just overwhelming. They often don’t have confidence in what they’re picking. So it helps our existing customers, and is part of our mission of being community-driven.”

Youthletic has a staff of about five, which last year began the daunting task of culling the necessary data. Schuerman said that’s been the site’s biggest challenge so far.

“A lot of nonprofit youth sports groups are run by volunteers, so the information we have can get old and outdated. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet for this. Data collection doesn’t end. It’s emails, phone calls, website scraping and word-of-mouth. But we’ve had a lot of great feedback from groups like the YMCA. They’ve been ecstatic about it. And parents are amazed. They put in their ZIP code and get back all these choices.”

One planned feature is a ratings and reviews forum, sort of an Angie’s List for youth sports orgs. That could present some headaches if a temperamental parent wants to comment-bash a coach just because their kid didn’t get enough playing time, but Schuerman said filters with very pointed questions will be in place.

Youthletic will get a big promotional push this fall, and if the response is good, Schuerman hopes to expand the concept to other Scripps markets. The site is currently free of ads, but that may change.

“I think there’s an opportunity for ad-based things, but what we’re looking at are things outside traditional ad platforms, like partnerships with local businesses,” Schuerman said. “If we could expand this to large brands like Nike and Under Armour, we probably wouldn’t slap logos all over the site, but build their brands through content marketing."

For more information, visit youthletic.com.