Most athletes on yelloball are minors, and the other side of the platform is adult college softball staff. That shapes the product more than anything else. What follows describes what the software does today. The limits below are enforced by database permissions, not by policy alone.
There is no private messaging and there are no comment threads. A coach cannot send a message to an athlete, and an athlete cannot send one to a coach.
The only channel from a program to athletes is a camp update: one message about one camp, sent to everyone who saved that camp, marked interest in it, or registered for it. It arrives as an in-app notification and an email, it stays attached to the camp so recipients can read it later, and there is no reply path. The program never sees who received it.
A listing may publish a program contact email. That is a coach's work address. Athlete email addresses are never shown to anyone.
There is no public athlete profile. An athlete profile is visible to the athlete, a confirmed linked parent, and platform administrators — and to nobody else until she connects with a specific coach.
Following is not connecting. An athlete can follow a coach or a business the way she follows anything else. It exposes nothing about her, puts her on no list, and is never a recruiting signal. It only means she wants to hear about their camps.
Connecting is a separate, deliberate request, and only the athlete can send it. She asks a specific college coach. Until that coach answers, all they can see is her name, class year, position, and state. If the coach accepts — and only then — they can view her profile, contact details, and posts, and she is told it happened. If the coach declines, nothing opens. Either side can end an approved connection at any moment.
A coach cannot start this. There is no athlete directory and no athlete search, so no coach can reach an athlete who has not reached out first. Receiving a request also requires an administrator-approved association with a college: a travel coach, private instructor, umpire, event organizer, recruiting service, or media professional cannot connect with an athlete on yelloball, whatever their verification status. Requests are capped at fifteen a day and ten waiting for an answer at once, and a coach who has declined her cannot be asked again for a hundred days. A request nobody answers closes on its own after ninety days; that is not a decline, and she may ask again thirty days later.
A yello is a college program saying what it needs, not a search for athletes. A verified college coach can post what the program is looking for — class years, positions, states, and things they would like to see. Athletes who fit the class year, position, and state see it in their feed and decide whether to answer. Answering sends the ordinary connection request described above, and the coach still has to approve it.
Nothing about an athlete reaches a coach unless she can see what he asked for. She reads the full criteria before she does anything, matching happens inside the database, and there is no screen, export, or endpoint anywhere on yelloball that hands a coach a list of athletes. He is told how many people answered him and nothing about anyone who did not — including whether anyone hid his yello. A program may have three open at a time and each one closes after ninety days.
No accounts under 13. yelloball asks for a date of birth during setup and does not create athlete accounts below that age.
A permitted viewer sees athletic and academic information: name, photo, graduation year, city and state, high school, travel organization and team, positions, bats and throws, height and weight, measured metrics, pitch arsenal, GPA, intended major, highlight videos, and bio.
Contact is the athlete's decision and is optional. A family may enter an email and phone for the athlete, for a parent or guardian, for both, or for neither — the gap between a senior fielding her own calls and a fourteen-year-old whose mother handles everything is real, and the platform does not decide which family is which. Whatever is entered is shown only to a coach she has connected with, and closes the moment that connection ends.
These are never shown to a coach under any setting, and are not merely hidden — they are not part of what a coach can retrieve at all: the email address she signs in with, her date of birth, street address, ZIP code, and precise location.
An athlete may also post updates — a tournament result, a new time, where she is playing next. These are visible only to coaches she is connected with. They are deliberately one-directional: a coach can read them and cannot like, save, comment, or reply. No table exists for a reply.
Change this from privacy settings or on the profile editor.
A program sees counts, not names: impressions, detail views, saves, shares, interest marks, and clicks through to its own registration page.
Saved opportunities, interest marks, and saved searches are readable only by the account that created them and by platform administrators. A program cannot pull a list of the athletes who saved its camp — that permission does not exist in the database.
A parent creates their own account and requests a link using the athlete's email address. Nothing is shared until the athlete signs in and confirms the request. A link is never active from the parent's side alone, so an adult cannot attach themselves to a minor's account by knowing an email address.
A confirmed link lets the parent view and edit the athlete's profile — including its visibility settings — and see the athlete's camp registrations. It does not mirror the athlete's saved camps, saved searches, calendar, or notifications; those stay on the athlete's own account. A parent who wants reminders and camp updates should save the camps on their own account, which sends them to the parent directly.
Requests are sent, confirmed, and declined in Settings → Account.
Anyone can create an account and browse. Publishing an official camp requires a verification request that a person reviews, checking the requester's name and title against the program's published staff directory. A matching email domain is one signal among several, never proof by itself. Unverified staff can build and preview a listing; they cannot publish it.
Listings from verified programs are labeled official. Anything else carries a visible third-party label. The poster cannot set that label — the platform does.
Every camp page has a Report control on the listing. You need an account to use it, so reports are attributable. The reasons offered are: the camp does not appear to exist, it is not an official college program, dates or price or details are misleading, inappropriate content, a safety concern involving a minor, spam or a duplicate listing, and something else. You can add details in your own words.
Reports go to a moderation queue that platform administrators work through. An administrator can unpublish a listing, revoke a program's verification, or suspend an account. Every moderation action, verification decision, and suspension is written to an append-only audit log that cannot be edited or deleted.
There is no report button on program or college pages yet. If the concern is about a person or a program rather than one camp, report any of that program's listings and say so in the details — it reaches the same queue.
If an athlete is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first. Reporting here is not an emergency channel; a person reviews the queue. Once everyone is safe, file the report so an administrator can act on the account.
Verification confirms that a coach works for the program they claim. It is not a background check, not an endorsement of the camp, and not a guarantee that a camp runs as described. Registration and payment happen on the college's own site under the college's terms. Confirm dates, price, and the refund policy with the program before paying.
