Questions schools ask before they start

No. Parents simply open your school’s Huddle link and add it to their phone’s home screen, where it opens like any other app. There is nothing to download from an app store and no account to create, which makes it easy for every family to get started.

The one exception is an academy or club that uses our optional member access. Because access to their alerts and documents is paid for, their parents register an account and subscribe.

Yes. Huddle works in the browser on both iPhone and Android, and parents can add it to their home screen on either.

To receive alerts on an iPhone or iPad, open Huddle in Safari, choose “Add to Home Screen”, and then open Huddle from that home-screen icon.

No, and this is by design. Huddle is a one-way channel: the school publishes and the community follows. Because there are no replies, comments or group chats, your staff have no conversations to moderate and no message threads to manage.

Access is set by role, so each person sees and manages only what they are responsible for:

• The Sports Office has full control of the school’s Huddle, including staff accounts, sports, teams, sponsors and settings.
• Heads of Sport manage the fixtures, results and messages for the sports assigned to them.
• Coaches manage the fixtures, results and messages for their own teams.

Only the Sports Office can publish school news or send a notice to the whole school.

Huddle supports every sport your school offers: each can have its own teams, fixtures and results.

Live scoring is available for any sport played to a running score, including cricket, hockey, netball, rugby, water polo, soccer and basketball. Your school decides which sports use live scoring and live alerts.

Your existing fixtures can be imported from a spreadsheet, up to 500 rows at a time, or captured directly in Huddle. As part of setup, we load your school’s sports and teams so that everything is in place before you go live.

Protecting learners’ information is built into how Huddle works:

• Learners are shown by initial and surname only, and full first names are never stored.
• Squad lists are visible only to the staff who manage that team.
• Parents and learners at schools never need an account, so no personal details are collected from them.
• Staff can remove any post, notice or document themselves, immediately and at any time.

Huddle is offered as an annual subscription per school. The subscription includes the initial setup of your school’s Huddle, training for your staff, and ongoing support. Please contact us for a quote tailored to your school.

Setup moves at your school’s pace. We handle the initial configuration for you, including your crest, colours, sports and teams, and we are usually ready well before a school has finalised its decision. In practice, the timeline is set by when your school is ready to go live.

Support is included in your subscription and is available by email at support@huddlesport.co.za, from 08:00 to 16:30, Monday to Friday.

We also train your staff during setup so that your Sports Office can run Huddle independently, including preparing it for each new school year.

Yes. You are welcome to explore our demonstration school at demo.huddlesport.co.za. When you are ready, book a demo and we will show you Huddle set up with your own sports and teams.

Yes. Huddle Tournaments and Huddle Sports are separate products, so an association, league or festival organiser can use Huddle Tournaments on its own, without a school subscription.

No. Players are added to their team lists by the organiser and never need to sign in. Only the people the organiser authorises, such as the tech table, have a login.

Pricing depends on the size and complexity of your event, such as the number of divisions, teams and match days. Digital match sheets can be switched on for any event. Please tell us about your festival or league and we will prepare a quote.

Yes. Organisers can keep finished events online as a public archive of results and standings, and leagues can display the standings from previous seasons alongside the current one.