New web registration for Valley high school athletes, parents

MAT-SU — The Mat-Su Borough School District has a new Sports and Activities channel on its website to make registration and information-gathering easier, especially for college-bound student-athletes.

Parents can now register their kids for high school sports and activities through iPlay, an online tool that works in conjunction with iParent accounts. There also is an iPlay checklist that helps keep parents more organized in identifying the paperwork a student needs — such as physical fitness evaluations and drug policy acceptance forms — as well as where to find it.

“We know that parents are the primary caregivers for students and this is just another way we can stay connected,” said Mat-Su Borough School District Public Information Officer Catherine Esary.

In addition to the new convenience of iPlay, scheduling for sporting events has also been made easier through ArbiterLive, an online system that allows users to “follow” their team and receive updates and reminders for practices, games, races, meets and matches. Instead of calling the school, parents and students can confirm that everything is a go by checking the calendar, or with a message delivered straight to their phones.

“It will become really important in the winter with road changes and weather changes,” Esary said.

Another benefit of the new system is being able to pay activity fees online in a safe and time-efficient manner that does not require the student to carry cash or checks around with them.

The standard fee for one sport is $150 per student, with a cap of $400 for the year. Even with the cap, however, many parents are not able to pay this — especially if they care for more than one student — and the school district offers scholarships to those unable to otherwise participate.

“If a child wants to play in our schools, money will not be an issue,” Esary said.

According to the most recent online version of the High School Co-Curricular Handbook, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch pay only half of the sports fee. Payments for the associated activities can be made via School Cash Online at matsu.schoolcashonline.com.

“Athletics brings many things to kids,” Esary said. “It’s discipline, it’s encouragement — it’s another reason to come to school, a driving motivation. We want to make (high school sports) as accessible to as many people as possible and help more students to participate.”

Dale Ewart, the Athletic Director and wrestling coach at Palmer High, said he worked on setting up the system up with other athletic directors and school district staff last year and is “really excited to have it on board” this fall.

“Glitches are going to happen — as big and new as (iPlay) is — but for the long-term, once people get used to it, this is going to be an easy, one-stop thing,” Ewart said.

Ewart said that there can be “lots of headaches” in the paper registration process, as signatures sometimes get messed up and forms often get lost if they have to be taken back and forth between a student’s home and their school for amendments. With six or seven pages for every student and every sport in a given year, the old system also used up a lot of paper, he said.

“We’re hoping to alleviate all that,” Ewart said.

On the school district website, under the High School Athletics tab, students also can now find guides for NCAA eligibility, as well as other information such as regulations of Play for Keeps, Win for Life — the statewide Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Prevention program — concussion protocol, and opportunities for homeschooled and alternative education students to participate in high school athletics.

Fall sports began Monday but athletes can still sign up and compete as long as they have paid the activity fee and attended 10 practices prior to competition.

For more information, call the Mat-Su Borough School District’s Office of Instruction at 746-9212, or the Public Information Office at 746-9251, or visit matsuk12.us/athletics.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.