Whether you’re a softball parent., or a softball coach with kids playing at the YMCA, or playing select ball there are a variety of online tools that can help you and your team. Here are the top 10 services for softball parents and coaches that allow you to manage your team’s schedule, notify players of news, upload and share player photos and statistics, and much more.

Many of these services are free, but there are a few high-quality services that require a monthly or one-time fee for a season. Each provides trial periods so you can test them out to see which works for you and your team.

10. TeamTexting only does one thing, but it does it extremely well. It’s totally free and lets you create a new email address that everyone on the team can use to share news and information instantly via text messaging or email. The format is TeamName@teamtexting.com. If you just need a way to keep everyone in the loop and don’t want to bother with getting everyone’s email address and creating a distribution list, then this is the answer.

9. RosterBot does slightly more than TeamTexting when it comes to communicating with your team. It uses email to poll each player and notifies you of the results.

8. Pinger isn’t geared specifically towards sports enthusiasts, but its group voice messaging feature makes it ideal for team captains to communicate with each member instantly. Pinger is free at this time and works on most mobile devices, but especially well with Blackberries thanks to a handy little application that plays back voice messages.

7. MyEZTeams basically does the same thing as RosterBot but adds message boards and Google Calendar integration.

6. TournamentBrackets.US offer brackets for both single and double elimination tournaments. The best part about then is they are free, just print whatever you need.

5. Fastpitch.TV takes all the best fastpitch softball videos on YouTube and puts them in one place. No more looking trough tons of videos about nothing to find the few you are interested in looking at.

4. TeamPages is another full-feature team site with a free basic package and a couple of premium packages that remove ads and add more features.

3. RedZoneLeagues offers an impressive amount of features and it’s totally free. All of the standard features are available, including a calendar of games, player stats, photos and more.

2. eTeamz is a professional looking service that covers just about everything teams and even league organizers will ever need. They offer a free basic service that is extremely limited but it’ll be good enough to get your feet wet if you just want to test it out. You can even add video highlights of games in addition to player photos and statistics.

…and the number one tool?

1.TeamSnap is similar to eTeams in regards to all of the incredible features it offers but it edges them out simply because it’s currently free. Now, it won’t remain free for very long, but for the time being it’s offering all of the commercial grade options and features for free.