Communication channels:
We’ve used the same communication methods with our Junior Academy Girls groups since 2014. The new NASA Tophat PlayMetrics system may lead to changes in our communication methods. But until the PlayMetrics system has proven itself, we’ll keep our current Junior Academy Girls communications systems in place.
We have three Internet-based communication channels and one old-school in-person channel:
1. Our web site (primary channel, includes all news items except late-breaking weather changes):
The Junior Academy Girls web site is our primary communication channel. We update it on a regular basis (typically several times per week when we’re in-season). We recommend you bookmark our news page: www.nasaacademygirls.org/nasa-tophat-junior-academy-girls/news/. This link bypasses our home page and takes you directly to our current news items.
When we’re in-season, we recommend you check our web site twice each week. (Some families check daily. If nothing has changed since their last visit, they only lose 30 seconds. If there’s a new news item, they learn about it first.)
Our web site has a drawback when it comes to getting the word out about late-breaking weather updates. Why? This type of surprise, and its corresponding response, requires a few minutes of sit-down time to post on a web site. But it only takes a minute to post a response on our Twitter account (more about Twitter below). When weather surprises affect us, a quick response (posting a tweet) is more important than a formatted or categorized response (such as posting a web site update).
2. E-mail (occasional channel, mostly for polls and unexpected schedule changes):
We’ll send occasional group e-mails, usually only for polls or updates related to unexpected schedule changes. But we won’t send a regular weekly e-mail. Why don’t we send a weekly e-mail?
- Web sites are more reliable than e-mail. It’s easy to accidentally delete an e-mail and not notice that you’ve done so. But it’s very hard to delete a web site.
- Frequent group e-mail messages are subject to ever-changing spam filters and may not get delivered.
- Web browsers support more formatting freedom than do e-mail clients. (We’re not fans of a black & white world with one type style.)
- Our experience tells us that too many e-mail messages leads to e-mail fatigue and messages being ignored.
Some families like us to send to a single e-mail address, others prefer us to send to several (home, work, mom, dad, grannie, nanny. etc.). If you’d like us to add any e-mail addresses to our distribution list, just send the address(es) to the coach / team manager.
- Notes for Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo accounts: Gmail tends to redirect our group messages to spam or suspect e-mail folders. Hotmail and Yahoo often block them altogether. If you have one of these e-mail accounts, you may miss our group messages, but you can still stay current by checking our Junior Academy web site.
Alert: If you wait for weekly e-mails instead of checking our web site, your daughter will likely miss events.
3. Our Twitter account (used for promo photos and videos, and also for late-breaking weather updates):
- We have a Twitter account for late-breaking news, usually related to weather updates: https://twitter.com/nasajracadg. If bad weather develops shortly before a practice or game, you can check our Twitter account to find out if our plans have changed. You don’t need to have a Twitter account of your own in order to check our Twitter feed.
- Info on our Junior Academy Girls Twitter feed takes precedence over the general NASA Tophat field status updates — not for all NTH groups, but for our particular Junior Academy Girls group.
- If you’d like to receive text (SMS) messages about any last-minute schedule changes, you can do so via Twitter. Link: text updates.
- We don’t update our Twitter account on a daily basis, only when we switch from our normal routine.
4. Face-to-face (the preferred method for discussing topics that are best served by a conversation)
- If you have a question that is best handled through a conversation, and not an e-mail or text, please check with the coach after a practice. (After practice is very much preferred to before practice.) This would typically be a situation that deals with feelings (such as “Susie worries that she isn’t as good as LiCec”) instead of straight facts such as “Susie will miss next Saturday’s game.”
Bad weather procedures:
For more about how we deal with bad weather, check our weather link.
Junior Academy contacts list:
| Name | Phone | E-mail or web address (see note below) |
|---|---|---|
| NTH Junior Academy web site | N/A | https://www.nasaacademygirls.org |
| NTH Junior Academy Twitter | N/A | https://twitter.com/nasajracadg |
| NTH field status | N/A | NTH field status page |
| NTH Admin and Soccer Staff | see link | see link |
| Ward Swain (coach) | 4(zero)4-532-9(six)63 | ward(dot)swain(at)nasatophat(dot)com |
| Emily Tewell (coach) | n/a | n/a |
Note: Replace “(at)” and “(dot)” with the traditional e-mail “@” and “.” symbols. (We’re masking the addresses to foil Internet spam bots.)