For a parent to send their young athlete to a summer camp, the process is fairly straightforward. You do your research on the best camps, sign your child up, pay the fees, and then send them off. For coaching directors, it’s a whole different story.

There are administrative tasks such as hiring skilled, trustworthy and knowledgeable staff, building your schedule, marketing to the right markets and then handling all of the registration details.

Camp Directors are always cognizant of the enormous responsibility that has been placed on them by the parents. Coaches must ensure at all times that they are running a camp that is safe, educational, and hopefully lots of fun.

The University Wisconsin¬ Madison is host to a number of summer academic and athletic camps. Ensuring a positive experience for everyone is the utmost priority. Last summer, after considering different ways to improve information flow and communication between parents, players and staff, the Soccer Camp Director decided to use a mobile app. They chose First Touch for Camps. It had a good set of features and it was free.

First Touch is a free mobile app used by almost a hundred thousand athletes, parents and players, student clubs and greek chapters. The First Touch app is designed to streamline and improve channels of communication and information flow.

By having a simple but private platform the app contains and shares all relevant camp materials like the daily schedules, releases and other documents, directions and drills. It is also one seamless platform for all communication between the camp directors, the staff, the campers and their parents. And it includes voice, text, emails, photos, videos, documents and calendars.

According to Julian Holtzman, one of the coaches at the camp, "We were able to hear about an issue instantly, on the field, and immediately answer questions. This avoided the usual pent up parent or camper frustration that would result in several calls per day. With the app, we could answer immediately, sending quick voice messages that solved problems before they escalated."

We found that First Touch Blast significantly reduced many of the normal bottlenecks that normally occur at camps. Our kids didn't have to hang around waiting for their coach to go track some piece of information down. We just had very little wasted time.

Compared to previous years we saw that parents and campers complained less because they knew how to find everything and could easily get access from their smartphones when they had a question.

I believe this app represents the future of how camps will be organized and run. We saved many hours of work, and a few trees because we did not have to print 200+ schedules, rules and expectations etc for only a 3 days use.

There are a number of apps out there to do this. We liked working with First Touch: They understood our Camp needs and were quick to answer our questions. First Touch solved many of our problems. We are looking forward to using them again this summer. A number of camps I have spoken to haven't used an app yet but I think most are going to try one this summer.

Even if it is "the future" it will take a year or two for many camps to use apps. Many just aren't early adopters I guess. I think Camps that have younger coaches or Directors do have an edge with technology. But even some of the older coaches love it when they see the time savings. It’s very individual.

To learn more about the features and benefits of this new mobile app visit http://firsttouchcamps.com

Contact Person: Cat Kennan, First Touch, Director of Communications, 845-373-9335.