How do I invite a parent or an adult athlete?

Everyone with an account is an adult, so an invitation always goes to an adult.

When you invite someone in connection with an athlete, you choose which:

• A parent or guardian, for an athlete under 18. They become the person you deal with about that athlete.
• The athlete, if they’re 18 or over.

You make that choice at the point of inviting. Team Assist doesn’t ask for the athlete’s age and doesn’t store one — you know who you’re working with.

How inviting works

Each athlete gets their own invite code — ten letters and numbers. From the athlete’s page, Send Athlete Invite opens your Messages app with a pre-filled text to the phone number saved on the athlete’s record, containing the code and what to do with it. You press send, so you always see exactly what goes out.

A second guardian can be added to the athlete record with their own name and phone number, and invited to their phone with the same code.

Connecting doesn’t stop at signup. A connected adult can add another coach or trainer later from the Teams tab: + opens the connect card. They pick which child the code is for first, paste or type the code, enter the phone number you have for them, and press Connect — the app never asks “which athlete?” afterwards. Manage shows every connection they hold.

Each connection is named for the person who owns it. In the family’s connection list, a coach connection carries the coach’s name and team, and a trainer connection carries the trainer’s name and team — even when you are both, they are two separate connections and read as two. A connection whose invite was re-issued shows under its own role with no team until the new code is entered; it never borrows the other role’s name.

Each athlete has their own code. If you coach two children in the same family, send each child’s own code — the two codes are different and are not interchangeable.

How they accept

The invited person, on their own iPhone:

1. Installs Team Assist and confirms they’re 18 or over.
2. Chooses the Athlete profile.
3. Enters the invite code and their phone number — the one saved on the athlete’s record — and taps Join with Invite Code.

The first time a code is used, it becomes tied to the account that used it. From then on that code only works for that person — someone else who finds the text can’t use it to connect. Phone numbers match on digits alone, so writing “(555) 123-4567” where the coach saved “5551234567” works fine.

If the same phone number matches more than one of your athletes, Team Assist asks which athlete this invite is for. Once connected they see what you publish for that athlete and can message you.

If you have more than one child with the same coach, read this. When you enter a second child’s code, Team Assist shows you the list of athletes and asks which one the code is for — it does not decide for you, even when the names match. Any athlete who is already connected to that coach is marked in orange, saying that picking them adds a second connection for the same child.

That marking is the thing to look at. Picking the child who is already connected is almost never what you want — it gives one child two connections to the same coach. Pick the child the new code was sent for.

Pending, resending, and ending a connection

“Connection retired” is not the end of a connection. If the app ever reports that the server no longer recognizes an athlete’s link, it keeps asking the server on each launch and brings the link back by itself when the server still knows it — you will see Connection restored. Do not send a new invite for it unless the connection stays retired after a day; a new invite makes a second connection for the same child.

The Athlete Access section on the athlete’s page shows where things stand and is where you send, resend, or disconnect. Resending uses the same code — a code never expires and never changes. It is the permanent link between you and that parent.

Connections are independent per role. If a family is connected to both a coach and a trainer, resending one invite never touches the other connection — a coach’s resend can’t disturb the trainer’s link, and the reverse. And the join screen on the family’s phone only ever offers invites that were actually sent: one candidate per role, nothing invented.

Disconnect Athlete Access (you confirm with Disconnect Every Guardian) ends the connection on both phones: within a couple of minutes the family’s Teams list drops it, your sessions stop reaching them, and the old link answers This Athlete Access invite was disconnected. The code itself stays valid, asleep. To reconnect, tap Resend Athlete Invite — the same code — and the parent enters it again on their phone. Give the resend a few minutes before they type it: entered straight away, the code can still be refused as inactive; a few minutes later it is accepted, and both phones read connected a couple of minutes after that. Your Athlete Access section flips from Invite Pending on its own. Either side can end the connection, and only the parent can bring it back, so both of you keep a say.

Changed the guardian’s phone number on the athlete record? Team Assist re-issues the invite for the new number, so the parent connects with the same code and the phone number now on the record. The old number no longer matches.

Deleting the athlete’s contact entirely is different: that retires the code for good, and the app warns you before it happens.

You don’t have to invite anyone

An athlete record works fully without any invitation ever being sent. Sessions, teams, billing, notes and reporting all behave normally. Plenty of athletes will never have anyone connected, and that’s a finished setup rather than an unfinished one.

What an invitation adds is a channel: someone who can see what you publish and message you about that athlete.

Athletes under 18 are never invited

They don’t have accounts, so there’s nothing to invite them to. Everything relating to them goes through their parent or guardian, if one is connected.