Flag Star Football Accelerates Participant Growth By 40% with SportsEngine HQ

At a Glance

	Challenge: Flag Star Football is a large flag football league with a small administrative staff. It needed a way for its small staff to manage registrations and team communications while also ensuring all 600+ coaches and volunteers had completed background checks.
	Solutions: With SportsEngine HQ, Flag Star Football has simplified league management for both its staff and all its 10,000+ players. SportsEngine’s app provides a single location for registration, payment, rosters, schedules, and team communication.
	Results: Since starting with SportsEngine, Flag Star Football has grown by 40%, to 14,000 players. Its administrative staff have saved countless hours on team rostering and communication, allowing for continual growth.

Intro:

Flag Star Football is a flag football league serving over 14,000 youths in the Washington, DC metro area. It uses SportsEngine to manage all aspects of league administration, including rostering, waivers, and team communication. Since beginning to use SportsEngine, league registration has grown by 40%.

Challenge:

Growing league searches for one-stop shop for league administration

Flag Star Football provides year-round flag football programming for youths from kindergarten to 12th grade. But with a small staff and thousands of players, it needed an easy way to manage registrations, rostering, and team communication while also ensuring all its 600+ coaches and volunteers had approved background checks. 

Prior to using SportsEngine, Flag Star Football used SI Play for player registration. After SportsEngine acquired SI Play, FlagStar Football looked at other providers, but ultimately decided to make the switch to SportsEngine. 

“SportsEngine was already familiar with what our needs were,” explained Nikki Turner, Director of Operations at Flag Star Football. “It’s a one-stop shop for everything—registrations, scheduling, rostering, the communication. Everything you need to do to run a league, you can do it through this one system.”

Solution:

Flag Star Football switches to SportsEngine HQ for all-in-one management

Moving to the new platform was a simple process, thanks to SportsEngine’s fantastic customer service. “They took the reins for us and helped create the registration platforms step by step,” said Turner. “SportsEngine’s customer service is a huge selling point for us.” 

The biggest challenge Flag Star Football faced was getting approximately 10,000 existing users to create new accounts with SportsEngine. While that was a challenging process, the end result has been a major benefit to players and parents.

Instead of going to different websites or locations to access information, parents can now see everything in a single location. “The app makes everything really easy for the end users,” explained Turner. “Once they download the app, they have their entire schedule, the roster, everything they need.” 

SportsEngine’s customer service made the transition process smooth and painless. “We’re such a large organization, and we have a lot of random things that come up,” Turner said. “I’m able to easily access someone at any time, either through the chat feature or through my direct contact. Someone is always there to assist with anything that pops up.”

Results:

Flag Star Football grows by 40%, reaches key markets, ensures player safety with SportsEngine HQ

Now, the team at Flag Star Football can handle every aspect of team management with just the SportsEngine platform. “You can do all the scheduling, the rostering, all the communication, everything that you need to do to run a league. You can do it through one system, and everything syncs together,” said Turner. 

When players are ready to register for a new season or event, they simply log into their SportsEngine account and all of their personal information is already in the system, making registration a breeze. Discount codes, payments, and every aspect of management is handled on a single platform. 

Flag Star Football has also leveraged SportsEngine’s reporting to help it expand its programs. Reports are as general or as detailed as users need them to be, and Turner and her team use the information to expand registrations for certain geographical areas or age groups. 

“When we’re looking to go to a new market, we can isolate people who are from that area,” explained Turner. “If we need to fill out a certain age group, we run a report of people who are in a certain grade or a certain age group. We can reach out to those groups directly through SportsEngine and encourage them to sign up for the season.” These tools have helped Flag Star Football accelerate its growth. Since beginning to use SportsEngine in 2022, Flag Star football has grown by 40%. It served nearly 14,000 players in 2024. 

Player safety is a major priority for any program, and the size of Flag Star Football’s roster makes it even more challenging to ensure players stay safe. But with SportsEngine, players fill out information about allergies or medical issues and sign any needed waivers during the registration process. This ensures vital information is collected and immediately available for coaches and volunteers without requiring paperwork or extra steps. 

With over 600 coaches and volunteers, SportsEngine’s background checks are another important aspect of player safety. “We can see through SportsEngine which volunteers are approved,” explained Turner. “If anyone is flagged, we can see that in SportsEngine and we also get a separate email, so we’re able to follow up on those right away.”

Conclusion:

Flag Star Football aims to grow all-girls league and overall player registration with SportsEngine

The addition of men and women’s flag football to the 2028 Olympics is an exciting opportunity for Flag Star Football, and one they hope to capitalize on with SportsEngine. 

“We’re hoping to grow our girls’ flag football programming now that it’s an Olympic sport,” said Turner. “Colleges now offer women’s flag football, and a lot of high schools in this area have added it to their programming. We had about 300 girls that played in the all-girls league this past season, and we really want to get more girls involved so they can go on and play in high school and college.” 

As Flag Star Football continues growing, it will use SportsEngine to simplify season management for both its staff and its players. “I’d highly recommend SportsEngine to any size of league, small to large,” said Turner.

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