Happy New Year to all of our BBGC friends and family.  This year, BBGC celebrates its 52nd year of offering youth sports to our community.  We have made some changes for 2015 that we are eager to share with you. 

New Registration System

We decided to give BBGC a makeover for 2015 and transition to a more user-friendly registration system.  We are pleased to announce the launch of our new registration portal, website and organizational management tool powered by Blue Sombrero. This new system was designed by athletes & administrators for athletes & administrators. It is easy to use, quick to set up, and offers our club:

• Online registration
• Enhanced communications tools (emails, text and the ability to send attachments)
• A new and integrated website for all sports
• Scheduling
• Team Pages (social)
• Custom reporting
• Bookkeeping functions 
• Helpdesk support

Why Did We Change Registration Systems:

The old system (Sport Register) was a product of years of special customization and “work-arounds” that relied exclusively on one person to develop, update, maintain and troubleshoot.  Requests for modifications and changes to the system were limited and slow to occur. The recent identification of security vulnerabilities within this system, unless upgraded and repaired, would prevent BBGC from processing credit card transactions using this vendor.

We approached Sport Register with the findings and attempted to work with them to resolve the issue(s). During this stage, it was determined that Sport Register would have to make a sizeable investment in new infrastructure and technology to meet the minimum security standards levied by all banks and credit card processing centers. After much deliberation, hard work and failed solutions, Sport Register decided to discontinue offering its sports registration system.

New Pricing Model

BBGC is proud of its long-standing tradition, reputation, and ability to provide quality youth sports at a reasonable price in our community. 

Pricing model changes have afforded us the ability to tailor our pricing around the “true cost” of participation in each of the sports we offer within the club.  In the clear majority of the cases we studied, we found that most families will see a price reduction under the new model and not an increase.  In those instances where an increase was identified, we felt it to be reasonable and explainable to the customer. The increases reflect the rising cost of insurance, inflation, and administrative costs associated with operating BBGC.  These increases would have been experienced under the old pricing model as well. 

•   New Prices WILL include all major fees. One thing you will not experience is additional "County" or "Sports" fees assessed at the start of the season.

•   Sports will still retain the ability to add on miscellaneous charges while in season.   Examples of such fees could be: adding additional tournaments to a team’s schedule; team socks, team uniform accessories; homecomings; banquets; parties, etc. 

It was impossible for us to think through every possible scenario that a family might face therefore, we settled on the commitment to remain sensitive and compassionate to those families that have been with the club and now face an undue hardship placed on them by the pricing change(s). 

Why Did We Change Our Pricing Model:

We have a two-fold reason for changing our model. First, for years we have worked under a very dynamic yet challenging pricing model that attempted to account for too many variables: one-sport, two-four sports, first, second, third and fourth child(ren), family maximums, administrative fees and sports fees. Although on the surface it seemed affordable, this approach was complicated, hard to understand by our customers, did not account for all the children playing sports or support equity in pricing across all the clubs sport offerings. 

Second, all of the new registrations systems we researched and reviewed could not incorporate our clubs “unique” pricing model into their systems logic. It was just too hard, too expensive or both!  We discovered that most, if not all, of these systems work best using a single-sport model. We performed a cost-benefit analysis and compared our old model to a single-sport structure and decided to make the change. We believe that the single-sport fee offers simplified pricing for our customers, increased financial accountability within our sports and a portable pricing model that enables us to easily from one system to another (if ever needed).

We realize that change can be difficult and sometimes scary but wanted to reassure our customers that the decisions to move forward with these new changes were necessary and done with you, the customer, in mind.  We appreciate and look forward to your continued support and commitment to BBGC and our children throughout this transition.