Free agents usage on IMLeagues

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I'm trying to see how other schools utilize the "Free Agent" feature on the site. Currently here at the University of Washington we have our free agents come to the office and sign up for the sport they wish to participate in on the sport specific sheet. I also tell them to go to IMLeagues and sign up as a free agent. or look for teams that have the "wanted" label under the team name and contact them via email.

I want to move away from having free agents come to the office and have them go to IMLeagues and generate the Free Agent Roster there. Are any schools utilizing IMLeagues to generate Free Agent rosters? How did you implement it? Has it been successful?

We strictly use the free agent list through IMLeagues. Unfortunately many times we have to step in to help place them on teams. Traditionally we will send an email out the day before registration ends, asking teams to consider adding one or two of the available free agents. Other times I will call or message captains that are more open to the idea of adding free agents. Sometimes teams need a little coaxing, so we will offer small incentives like a full season of early games.

While creating free agent teams can occasionally be successful, we find that teams created strictly from the free agent pool are usually problematic. Dramatically more forfeits and lackluster attendance. All too often they are "just excited to play" until they realize the team is outmatched in skill, and that they lack leadership to keep people showing up.

My suggestion is to encourage free agents to create a team, invite 1 or 2 friends and then try to fill their remaining roster with other free agents. This way the team has a specific leader and an identity.

I echo Burkhart.

We too only use the Free Agent feature of IMLeagues. We do not keep an internal document or require participants to come into the facility to be added.

In the past, we have attempted to create teams from people listed on the Free Agent list but ran into a number of problems:

1. Not all schedules match up. Even though 10 people are on the list, not all 10 can play Thursday @ 7:00p.
2. Free Agents were looking for different competition levels. It was hard to place this one team into one specific division.
3. There was no captain, thus no responsible party. Nobody knew anyone on the team so there wasn't the camaraderie that encourages attendance and participation and fun.
4. Tons of forfeits.

One thing that a previous institution has done (UIowa) is host a Free Agent Meeting. There, participants can meet each other for the first time and someone can step up to the place and serve as a captain.

Another remedy I learned from UKentucky is still create the team, but put a staff member such as a Supervisor or GA in charge of the team. They can serve as the "captain" for this team. Typically these teams are comprised of freshmen or new students who aren't familiar with the program, so having a staff member be their coach/captain will provide them with a go to person who is familiar with the program. Who better, right?

Good luck to you and your program .

JON RANDLE
University of Kansas
jonrandle@ku.edu

Thanks for the feedback.