Running a high school sports program is more than tryouts, practices, and games. To build long-term success for your team, you must work to grow your program throughout the year.
Building a website for your high school team can seem like a lot of extra work, but it can be an online resource to take your program to the next level. A sports website is a powerful tool to promote student-athletes, engage with alumni, build a reputation in your community, raise money, and more.
Whether you’re the leader of a high school booster club or the head coach of the team, you should consider building a website before your next season.
How to build a high school sports website
1. Choose a design and layout that represents your team
When players, parents, and community members land on your website, you want them to have a great experience. Your website should be well-organized, with clear navigation so visitors can easily find what they are looking for.
For example, team members might look for game schedules or training resources, parents might seek registration details or safety information, and community members might be interested in event calendars or news about the team.
You want to create a well-designed homepage that guides different visitors to the relevant areas of the site. You also want your website to represent your school’s brand and load fast.
Here are a few tips for creating an exciting and user-friendly sports website design for your high school team:
- Make the layout clean and well organized. Add a navigation bar that includes your team rosters and game schedules at the top.
- Use high resolution photos. If you don’t have any, post on your social media asking parents and fans to send you photos for the website. Even just photos taken on an iPhone should work great.
- Use official logos and branding. Some sports website builders will automatically match the colors of your website to your logo.
- Update your website year round. Maintain an up-to-date website with the latest team information, even during your offseason, so that your site is not full of outdated content.
2. Showcase important program information
Once you have your initial layout, colors, and branding for your website, add relevant content. There are a few key categories that every high school sports team needs on their website.
Current season information
- Coaching staff profiles. Have profiles for your coaches on your website with photos, positions, and experience. Coaching staff profiles help promote your teams in your community, build credibility for future players, and recognize the hard work of each coach.
- Team mission statement and values. Sports teams rally behind mottos, mission statements, and key values. Publish your team's beliefs on your website to rally your fans around your mission.
- Game schedules. Include up-to-date information about games, events, and news for freshman, JV, and varsity teams.
- Rosters with player profiles. Include player photos, position, graduating year, and anything relevant to your team.
- Apparel store: Add a link to your team's online store so players and fans can purchase team merch anytime.
Team history
Recognizing your team’s history gets community members involved with your organization and fosters pride and connection. It also allows people to feel part of a larger story, where past achievements contribute to the team’s spirit.
On your website, highlight past accolades, like:
- If you’ve won league, regional, or state championships. You can even include the years in your website design.
- Individual statistical records for single game, full season, and career.
- Accomplishments for key coaches, like overall records, Coach of the Year awards, etc.
- Alumni love to be recognized, even if they graduated decades ago. Have players won individual awards in the past? You can include an “Individual Awards” or “Hall of Fame” page on your website to recognize player achievements.
Camps, clinics, and any other offseason information
Include information about any offseason activities on your website. Running a successful high school athletic program goes beyond the school year, and your website should house information about any important offseason events.
A few to consider adding:
- Tryout dates for next season
- Offseason conditioning, weight training, or clinic schedules
- Any camp information for elementary or middle school players
3. Allow player registration and other online payments
Your high school sports team can boost its budget by collecting payments online. Adding registration forms to your website can help you generate $1,000+ of extra revenue each year.
Here are a few different forms to add to your site.
Player registration
Your website can be used to register players for tryouts, offseason workouts, camps, and other events.
Depending on your team's needs, you can customize the player registration process to include:
- Creating online registration forms
- Collecting player and parent contact information
- Collecting necessary information (contact details, medical forms, etc.)
- Automating confirmation emails and notifications
Encourage donations from your community
Make it easy for visitors to donate online. You should have a way for community members to donate directly on your website. Explain the importance of donations, how they are used, and the impact donations have on players.
Here’s an example description you can use to get more donations:
Donations help us fund travel to our Holiday Tournament in Florida each season. You can also contribute to our Alumni Scholarship Foundation, which endows an academic scholarship that is awarded to a graduating senior each year who exemplifies our team’s mission.
🧠 🧠 LEARN MORE: Your Complete Youth Sports Donation Guide
Collecting payments for fundraisers
You can also set up online payments for fundraisers like postseason banquets, alumni dinners, golf outings, and anything else your team does to raise money.
4. Promote your sponsors
You can get a lot of support for your high school sports team from sponsors in your community. Use your website to recognize your sponsors and attract new ones by creating a dedicated webpage.
Every sports website theme should have built-in opportunities to promote your sponsors. Here’s a few ideas to recognize sponsors on our website:
- Promote sponsor logos and include links to the sponsor’s website
- Offer advertising opportunities on the website.
- Have a sponsor support a team highlight video or other popular content.
- Add a section on your website’s homepage with all of your sponsor logos.
List sponsorship packages on your website and allow sponsors to make payments online.
5. Create a communication hub
Make your website the home for your organization’s online communication. Connect your social media accounts, post regular updates and important news, and send your updates to groups involved with your organization.
Create a list of subscribers that you can send messages to. You can set up lists for groups like the current team, parents, and alumni.
Important updates like schedule announcements, tryout dates, and offseason fundraisers should be sent via text and email.
You can also send a monthly newsletter to everyone involved with your organization with game recaps, alumni news, fundraising progress, and more.
6. Create engaging content and features
Keep your website's content exciting to keep visitors coming back.
You can make your website more fun for everyone in your community by adding these features:
- News on player achievements on and off the field (scholarships, awards, etc.)
- Social media profiles
- Game schedules and results
- Photo Albums from key games and events
- Embedded YouTube videos
- Links to your HUDL page
- Link to your MaxPreps page
💡PRO TIP: Coaches who do not have the time or interest to manage their organization's website should look for parents or assistant coaches who are willing to do it.
If you have a high school student who is passionate about digital media, ask him or her to build and manage the online content for your team as a side project or for class credit.
Best practices for high school athletics pages
Getting a high school sports website takes a few minutes. Then, you can build out content throughout the year to engage with your players, fans, and community.
The following tips will help you design a high school athletics website that your athletic director will love:
- Always have upcoming events on your website, even in your offseason
- Provide a link to live streaming
- Post video highlights from your YouTube channel
- Create coach and player profiles
- Showcase team and individual records
- Offer fan engagement opportunities (polls, contests, etc.)
- Collect payments online to increase donations, fundraising, and more
- Have an apparel store open year round
Remember, your website should be the online hub for your program. Ensure it includes current season info, team history, photos / videos, and fundraising opportunities.
Choosing the right sports website builder
You should try to find a website builder that coaches or parents can easily manage. Here are some functionalities to consider when picking one for your high school sports team:
- User-friendly interface: Updates should be easy to make, even if you’re not a tech wizard. Look for a tool with a drag and drop builder to easily build your website, and one that lets you choose a custom domain name for your team.
- Customization options: You should be able to add your team’s logo, customize colors, and easily add content throughout the year.
- Mobile responsiveness: More than half of the visitors to your website will be on their phone. Make sure your website is built to work great on any device.
- Built specifically for sports. It’s best to use a website builder that has built-in features to help you grow your program. Page templates like rosters and player profiles will help you build your site quickly. You’ll also want to have built in features to help collect player registrations, payments, and donations.
Try out a few different website builders before making a final decision. You should be able to set up a website in just a few minutes with a modern website builder, and add content quickly throughout the year.
Build your high school sports website with Jersey Watch
Jersey Watch has helped hundreds of high school sports programs build a website, manage registrations, collect donations, and more. Built-in features include player registration, staff profiles, rosters, schedules, and more.
You can create a free account to try all of the features.
