Managing athletes isn’t just about performance on the field—it’s about everything behind the scenes that keeps them prepared, focused, and on time. Sports managers know that scheduling isn’t as simple as marking dates on a calendar. It’s a complex process that can be affected by everything from travel logistics to last-minute changes in training schedules. If you're managing multiple athletes or balancing tight timelines, you’ve probably encountered a few of these challenges. Let’s explore five common scheduling headaches that sports managers face and how Umbrella, our project management app designed for the talent industry, makes them a thing of the past.

1. Balancing Multiple Games, Events, and Endorsements

For athletes, their commitments go well beyond game day. Media appearances, sponsorship obligations, and personal events often compete for attention, with some players attending 30 to 50 non-game-related appearances per year. When managing multiple athletes, keeping tabs on everything can feel overwhelming.

Umbrella’s Solution:

Umbrella’s calendar and task features provide a comprehensive solution for organizing an athlete’s diverse commitments. You can create events for media appearances, games, or sponsorship engagements, assign them to specific individuals, and add optional fields like detailed descriptions or additional assignees.

Using the task assignment feature and secure document sharing, you can link endorsement deals to specific tasks, tracking their progress and ensuring deadlines are met. The ability to prioritize and categorize tasks means that when you’re juggling multiple athletes, you can quickly sort commitments by urgency or importance.

Real-time communication through the chat function ensures that you’re in constant touch with your athletes and team, whether through group discussions or private chats.

2. Training Schedules That Shift Constantly

Training schedules are always evolving due to performance updates, injuries, or last-minute changes from the coaching team. For sports managers, it can feel impossible to keep track of these shifts while ensuring athletes stay on time.

Umbrella’s Solution: 

The calendar feature makes it easy to create, assign, and adjust training schedules in real time. Whether an athlete’s session needs to be moved due to injury or altered for performance reasons, the app’s repeating event capabilities allow you to schedule regular training while also setting end dates for temporary adjustments.

Umbrella’s AI assistant provides additional help by suggesting new time slots or prioritizing critical training sessions when schedules get tight. Notifications with customizable settings ensure that athletes and coaches are alerted instantly to any changes, minimizing confusion.

Studies show that using AI for scheduling and task management can reduce administrative time by 40-60%, freeing up time for managers to focus on higher-value tasks (BCD, 2023).

3. Constant Travel Coordination

Coordinating travel logistics for athletes who are constantly on the move is hard. You have flights, hotels, transportation, and even time zone management to consider, often for multiple athletes with conflicting schedules.

With the average NBA player taking between 42 and 100 flights per season, sports managers may spend up to 25% of their workweek coordinating travel-related details for athletes (Jerico, 2023). 

This time-consuming process can detract from other important tasks, such as team management and player development​.

Umbrella’s Solution: 

Umbrella’s calendar function is designed to streamline event-related tasks. You can create detailed travel events with information like start and end dates, descriptions, and the ability to assign the event to multiple individuals—perfect for managing travel itineraries. 

The organized calendar display allows you to easily validate event information, ensuring no travel conflicts or missing details, and set repeating events if an athlete has recurring travel commitments. Ensure your team never misses a flight or hotel check-in with customizable notifications and real-time updates, so everyone stays informed, reducing the chaos of last-minute changes.

4. Managing Injuries and Rehabilitation Timelines

Injuries can disrupt even the best-laid schedules. Rehabilitation timelines, medical appointments, and adjusted training regimens all need to be tracked carefully to avoid further complications or delays in recovery.

Athletes who follow structured recovery and rehabilitation plans after injury are 30% more likely to return to peak performance compared to those without such management (Suchde, 2014).

Umbrella’s Solution:

With Umbrella’s task management system, you can easily create tasks for each stage of an athlete’s recovery, assign them to medical staff, and set deadlines for key milestones. You can also attach detailed descriptions of rehabilitation protocols or upload relevant documents through the secure file-sharing feature.

Umbrella’s notifications will keep you on top of appointments, and the AI assistant offers guidance on best practices for injury recovery timelines. Meanwhile, real-time updates allow you to adjust schedules as athletes progress through recovery.

5. Handling Unpredictable Weather or Venue Changes

Outdoor sports are often at the mercy of the weather, and unexpected changes in venue can wreak havoc on carefully planned schedules. For sports managers, this means reworking everything from practice sessions to travel plans on short notice.

Unpredictable weather or venue changes cause approximately 10-20% of outdoor sporting events to be rescheduled each year (SJ, 2018).

Umbrella’s Solution:

When unpredictable weather strikes, Umbrella’s AI assistant steps in to suggest alternative venues or training times. The calendar’s event creation and validation ensures that all updated schedules are conflict-free, while notifications provide immediate alerts to the entire team.

You can also use the chat function to coordinate venue changes with team members and stakeholders in real-time. Umbrella’s comprehensive task assignment and prioritization tools will ensure that nothing falls through the cracks when plans change unexpectedly.

The Winning Play

Managing a sports team or an individual athlete involves much more than just showing up for the game. Between travel, training, media commitments, and the unpredictable nature of sports, it takes an organized system to stay ahead of the game. With Umbrella, you have a project management tool specifically designed to handle the fast-paced, ever-changing world of sports management. From validating event details to providing AI-assisted schedule changes, Umbrella keeps you in control of every facet of your athletes’ lives—leaving you to focus on what truly matters: their performance.

References

6 factors that improve sports team travel. BCD Meetings & Events. (2023, November 24). https://bcdme.com/blog/6-factors-that-improve-sports-team-travel/ 

Institutional reforms and the recoupling of academic and athletic performance in high-profile college sports. The Sport Journal. (2018, December 19). https://thesportjournal.org/article/institutional-reforms-and-the-recoupling-of-academic-and-athletic-performance-in-high-profile-college-sports/ 

Jerico. (2023, April 20). How often do NBA players travel? (a lot!). Ball Unlocked. https://ballunlocked.com/how-often-nba-players-travel/ 

Smith, J., & Smolianov, P. (2016, February 4). The High Performance Management Model: From olympic and professional to university sport in the United States. The Sport Journal. https://thesportjournal.org/article/the-high-performance-management-model-from-olympic-and-professional-to-university-sport-in-the-united-states/ 

Suchde, S. (2014, February 28). A professional athlete’s fitness regime: An Insider’s Guide. TheHealthSite. https://www.thehealthsite.com/fitness/a-professional-athletes-fitness-regime-an-insiders-guide-88398/