Overview
As a governing body for a multi-tiered sport, or event a standalone sport operator, it's important to make sure your database is ingesting membership information in a clean, well-structured way, so that your reporting and general database admin can be done with clarity and transparency. Two particularly common data points used across the sports industry to categorise, report and compare membership data are Seasons & Age Groups.
As a GameDay administrator responsible for defining the sport's season and age group structure - whether top-level governing body or standalone organisation - you can future-proof the categorisation of incoming member data upfront by linking multiple seasons with their corresponding age groups, ensuring that when seasons roll over, members are automatically placed into the correct age group based on their data of birth.
In the guide below, we'll show you how to create these automatic linkages using a sample size of three seasons.
Step-by-Step
Step 1: Head to the Seasons & Age Groups page
In the left-hand menu, open the My Organisation section, then click SETTINGS.
Step 2: Create your Seasons
Make sure you're looking at the Seasons & Age Groups tab, then click the CREATE SEASON button to create your first season
Enter the following information
- Season Name: Provide a clear title for the season
- Season Start/End Date: Define the date range within which the season runs
Click CREATE to save the season in your database
Repeat this process until you've banked up a few future seasons
Step 3: Head to the Age Groups tab
Click the AGE GROUPS tab to move to your list of Age Groups
Step 4: Create your Age Groups
Click CREATE AGE GROUP to set up your first Age Group
At this stage, all you'll need to provide is a name and, if you want, you can add a description that can be seen by other administrators in GameDay. Enter the information, then click CREATE
Step 5: Edit your first Season
Go back to the Seasons tab and click EDIT for the first season to which you want to link Age Groups
Step 6: Define the date of birth range for each Age Group within the season
Within the season, head to the RELATED AGE GROUPS section
Here, you can link your relevant age groups to the season using the ADD AN AGE GROUP button, so that any members that register in this season by purchasing a season product will be assigned into their corresponding Age Group, based on their date of birth.
For example, in the 2026 season, we've defined the Under 10 age group as anyone born between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2015, and followed that convention with our Under 11 and Under 12 age groups.
This, however, will change as each new season rolls over, so we need to future proof this system to make sure the system recognises the correct age group allocations for each of our future seasons as well.
Step 7: Define the date of birth range for each Age Group within your future seasons
We can now repeat the process in step 6, heading back to the Seasons tab and clicking Edit for the next season in the list. We can then go to the Related Age Group tabs and add any relevant age groups and the update date of birth range.
For example, for season 2027, we can now define the Under 10 age group as anyone born between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2016.
Continue this process until you've created all the seasons you need, with each corresponding age group and date of birth range linked. This will ensure that as each season rolls around, you won't need to worry about re-creating any seasons or age groups, or reconfiguring anything to ensure members are placed in their correct age group - this will now happen automatically.
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