You're looking for one platform to handle eligibility, compliance, multi-sport rostering, recruiting, and coach onboarding — without spending your entire budget on a single vendor. Here is the honest comparison of what the major options actually cover.
See Lightning for SchoolsMost ADs end up with three or four separate platforms — one for compliance, one for film, one for recruiting, one for parent communication — and none of them talk to each other. This page is a side-by-side of what each major platform actually covers, where the gaps are, and what the all-in budget looks like for a typical high school athletic department.
The department-wide jobs are consistent: eligibility and clearance tracking, physical forms and parent consent, multi-sport rostering, facility and schedule management, coach onboarding and oversight, parent communication, emergency contact info, and incident logging — plus recruiting exposure for the athletes. The evaluation question is how many platforms it takes to cover that list and whether they share data.
The typical stack: Hudl for film and game analysis (hundreds to over a thousand dollars per team per year), a recruiting network for exposure, a forms platform for physicals and consent, and a separate communication tool. Each is good at its specialty; none covers the whole list, so departments run three or four subscriptions that don't talk to each other. Lightning for Schools covers the AD workflow — eligibility, clearance, rosters, communications, compliance documents, facility calendar — in one platform at $150–$250 per school per year, with player recruiting profiles built in.
Every state association (CIF, UIL, FHSAA, and the rest) runs its own eligibility and transfer rules, so eligibility tracking has to be organized around your state's requirements rather than a generic checklist. Lightning for Schools tracks eligibility and clearance per athlete and keeps the supporting documents and audit trail in one place, so association questions are answerable from the dashboard instead of a filing cabinet.
Stacked separately, film plus recruiting plus forms plus communication commonly runs into the thousands per year for a single school — film alone can exceed a thousand dollars per team. Lightning for Schools is $150 (Standard) or $250 (Pro) per school per year with 10 coach seats included, and athletes' recruiting profiles are $25–$50 per athlete per year if families want them. For most departments the consolidation math is not close.
Roll out in the off-season: import your athlete roster, connect coach accounts to their teams, and run the first season with your old forms process in parallel until the clearance workflow is proven. Coach onboarding is the real cost of any switch — which is why Lightning includes 10 coach seats and keeps each coach's view scoped to their own team.
Lightning replaces the eligibility/clearance tracker, the roster spreadsheet, the parent-communication tool, and the recruiting-profile subscription. It supplements rather than replaces dedicated film platforms — keep Hudl if film analysis is central to your program, and link your athletes' film into their Lightning profiles. Student data stays DPA-compliant: consent before import, per-team coach access, logged document access.
Yes — eligibility and clearance are tracked per athlete, with the supporting documents and an audit trail in the dashboard, organized around your state association's requirements.
You can import your athlete roster from a spreadsheet export rather than re-typing it. Consent is required before a student record is loaded, per the DPA/FERPA model.
No. Lightning supplements rather than replaces a dedicated film platform — keep Hudl if film analysis is central, and link athletes' film into their Lightning profiles.
One athlete record carries every sport they play, so a three-sport athlete is one entry with per-sport rosters — not three copies of the same student.
Yes. Plans include 10 coach seats; each coach's access is scoped to their own team, and coach activity on student records is logged.
Schools ($150–$250/school/yr) is the athletic-department platform — eligibility, clearance, compliance, communications, coach seats. Coaches ($60–$250/yr) is an individual coach's toolkit — recruiting, game tracking, AI planning. School coach seats connect real coach accounts to the school.
Communications go out from the school dashboard to the parents of rostered athletes, and parent engagement is tracked — no separate messaging tool or exported email lists.
Yes — clearance tracking covers physicals and consent documents per athlete, with document access logged for compliance.
Emergency contact info lives on each athlete's record, and the communications tools reach rostered families quickly for schedule changes and cancellations.
Pricing is $150–$250 per school per year. For a multi-school district rollout, contact us and we'll work out the district arrangement directly.
Incidents are logged per athlete in the dashboard, and access is role-scoped by the school. Ask us about your trainer's specific workflow during setup.
Most schools onboard in the off-season: import the roster, connect coach seats, and run your old forms process in parallel for the first season until the clearance workflow is proven.
Starts at $150/school/year. Multi-sport rostering, state HSAA eligibility tracking, parent communication, and player recruiting profiles in one platform.
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