Team Mom Do’s and Dont’s

One thing I will never forget is my first season as a team mom. I’m the type of person that always over extends, over volunteers and over commits. It’s the people pleaser in me, you need help? I got you! It’s just who I am, to my core. So of course when my husband decided to coach I automatically got in the passenger seat as team mom, no questions asked, even though I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I figured it would be easy, make a snack schedule, get jersey sizes, done and done! I was SO wrong. As a team mom you are the heart of the team, the coaches do what’s needed on the field and they develop the players but everything that happens on the other side of that fence is… you guessed it, YOUR job! A good team mom can make a season GREAT, a bad team mom can quite literally ruin your season. So be the good one, bring the heart, set the tone and run the team like a BOSS. So what does it take? What do you need to do? I’ll tell you all my secrets!

  1. GET ORGANIZED FIRST

At the start of every season the very first thing I do is start a new Google Sheet, titled “TEAM NAME Season Year” for example “RAIDERS Spring 2026”. This becomes my bible for the season. I will be able to go here to reference my roster, sizes, jersey numbers, walkout songs, any dues that are owed or paid, parent contact info and more. Sheets is great because once you start it you can access it from any device so its easy to edit or refer back to on the go! We will reference this sheet MANY times throughout this blog.

Get my FULLY LOADED Sheet HERE. I promise you, this will be a gamechanger!

2. Setup a form of communication for your parents

We use group-me because we love to be able to build rapport with our families and talk back and forth. You can also use remind if you want more of a one-way communication but its not as fun. At the beginning of your season the first thing you want to do is reach out to all your parents and introduce yourself, be warm and inviting! Send them the link to your group-me or whatever platform you chose for communication. I typically text all my parents to send the app link and I make sure everyone gets in before making any announcements. Save your parent contact info to your sheet!

3. Get sizes for uniforms and player number requests

Once everybody is in the group get all the sizes you need from each player and ask what jersey number each player would like. If there are duplicate number requests, whoever requested first wins! Don’t forget to get your coaches sizes! Again, we’re going to plug all this info into our sheet!

4. Order Uniforms

There are several ways to order uniforms. Your league may do it for you if you are playing rec, but if you are a travel team you will have to find your own vendor. Best way to do this is word of mouth recommendations in your area. DON’T go online and find the cheapest jerseys and order them. You will more than likely be very disappointed! Your sheets come in handy again here because you will have all your sizes already organized and you can send your sheet (or a portion of) directly to your vendor! They will love you for it!

5. SNACKS!

If it applies to your team, set up a snack schedule for games days or maybe a couple moms for tournaments – multiple game – days. I use and LOVE sign up genius. Its fairly easy to setup once you get the hang of it and it’s FREE! What I love most is that it will send out reminders to the parents who sign up so you don’t have to! I do however fill in the volunteers on my sheet, on the game schedule page. See our full list of snack recommendations here!

6. Walk Up Songs

This is a fun one that everybody loves! You’ll need to get a speaker to do walk up songs, I personally recommend a Monster Speaker if you’re on a budget but if you have the funds to splurge the Turtle box is small but MIGHTY and easy to hang on the fence behind home plate.

Pro Tip: If your team has more than one turtle speaker they can connect wirelessly; for multiple Monster Speakers they can connect with an auxliallry cord. Perfect for playing those rival teams when you wanna get extra LOUD!

I use BallPark DJ for walk up songs, it makes it really easy and outside of walk up songs, it also gives you the ability to add full songs or even snippets of songs for certain occasions.

Music etiquette : Your team plays music when your team is taking the field on defense, when your pitcher is warming up, and walk up songs when your players are at bat. At the beginning of the game it’s whoever gets the warm up music started first. Don’t be that team trying to play over the other teams speaker, thats icky and weird and you’ll get the side eye. DON’T play when the other team’s pitcher is warming up, it’s their turn.

7. GameChanger and/Scorebook

Every team does it differently but a lot of the time it’s a battle to find a parent willing to score the game on GameChanger or do the scorebook. One of the 2 is REQUIRED to be kept by the home team in every game; we do it no matter what. As the team mom I always made sure I knew how to do both things so that if I can’t get anyone to do it, I can. Remember as team mom it’s your JOB to make sure everything runs smoothly. Thankfully this season we have AMAZING coaches and they score the game on Gamechanger so that I dont have to, but for the last 2 seasons, I had to do GameChanger and another mom had to do the scorebook to be a back up for me in case I missed something. Whatever it takes!

8. Fundraising

This mainly pertains to travel ball teams because tournaments are expensive, practice facilities are expensive, and overall travel ball has become a huge money grab at every turn. We feel like it shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars to play on a competitive baseball team so we do A LOT of fundraising. Depending on your area there are lots of lucrative fundraisers but we have found raffles and sponsorships to be the most lucrative. For sponsors you can advertise them on your team banner as an incentive to them, or a logo on your jersey sleeve if they sponsor the jerseys. Theres many different ways to incentivize big companies!

9. Dugout Organization

Depending on the age of your players, I highly recommend getting a dugout organizer – it will make everything a lot smoother and the coaches will very much appreciate it! See our full list of Dugout necessities here!

10. DELEGATE!

Overwhelmed yet? I know I was. One thing one of my other OG baseball mamas taught me, was to delegate! You have a whole team of moms and most are eager to help! It’s a great way to bond with your other mamas, and it’s a great way to get them involved! On our team we have a ballpark DJ mama, a scheduling mama (tournaments and group-me calendar), a finance mama who manages fundraising funds and paying for different things we may need, a mama that does our uniform designs and ordering and then there’s me, who catches anything that falls through the cracks and keeps everything organized with… my SHEET! I’m telling you my sheet is my bible and I’d be lost without it!

I hope this helps you in this team mom journey! Being the team mom for the last 4 years has been the best rollercoaster ride I’ve ever been on! I have made so many new friends, many of which I now call family and I’ve met SO many incredible kids that have seriously changed my life for the better. Remember, as the team mom you’re heart of the team, you’re the bonus mom to so many bonus babies, soak it up, enjoy it and run your team like a PRO!



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