KnowMore - A Sports Calendar That Actually Works

Ever tried coordinating a youth sports team? Endless WhatsApp messages, parents asking “what time is training again?”, coaches juggling paper attendance lists. Sound familiar?

KnowMore is a calendar app for sports clubs that puts an end to the chaos. It runs on your phone, respects your privacy, and just works.

Table of Contents

• The Problem
• What KnowMore Does
  • Customizable Dashboard
  • Team Calendar
  • Federation Standings and Schedule
  • One-Tap Responses
  • Multi-Player Management
  • Coach Tools
  • Team Chat
  • Photo Galleries
  • Passwordless Login
  • Works on Your Phone
  • Club Themes
  • Multilingual
• Privacy First
• Who Is This For?
• How It Works Behind the Scenes
• Getting Started
• What’s Next

The Problem

If you coach or have kids in a sports club, you know the drill:

WhatsApp is not a planning tool. Important messages get buried under memes and emojis. Someone asks “who’s coming Saturday?” and 30 people respond in a thread that nobody reads. The coach screenshots the attendance list from three weeks ago because nobody can find the original.

Spreadsheets don’t work on a football pitch. Some clubs use shared Google Sheets or Doodle polls. Good luck updating those while standing on the sideline in the rain.

Privacy is an afterthought. Most apps want your data. Phone numbers get shared freely. Photos of minors end up on servers you don’t control. For a youth sports club, that should be a dealbreaker.

Parents with multiple kids lose their minds. Two kids, three teams, trainings on different days, tournaments on weekends. No single app ties it all together without making you create separate accounts.

What KnowMore Does

KnowMore replaces the WhatsApp group, the spreadsheet, and the Doodle poll with one app that everyone can access from their phone.

Customizable Dashboard

Your dashboard is yours to arrange. Drag, resize, and show/hide tiles to create the layout that works for you. See upcoming events, standings, team chat, and more — all at a glance. Switch between teams and players with a single tap in the top bar.

Coaches get quick-action tiles for creating events and sending team notifications. Club admins see management shortcuts. Follow any team in your club to track their standings and results on your dashboard.

Team Calendar

Every team gets its own calendar with all events - trainings, matches, tournaments, camps, meetings. Color-coded by type so you can tell at a glance what’s coming up.

For Swiss football clubs, KnowMore syncs match schedules automatically from the Swiss Football Federation. League matches, cup games, friendlies, and tournaments appear in your calendar without any manual data entry. New matches and schedule changes are picked up in real-time via a webhook, with a full sync running daily as backup.

Federation Standings and Schedule

Beyond the calendar, KnowMore gives each team a Standings page (Tabelle) with the current league table and a Schedule page (Spielplan) showing all upcoming and past federation matches. Tap any match to see the match detail page with scores, events, and lineup on an interactive pitch diagram.

Coaches and parents can see at a glance where the team sits in the league, what the last result was, and when the next match is — all without leaving the app.

Any team or event can be published as a live calendar subscription (webcal://) so federation matches and trainings show up in Apple/Google Calendar automatically and stay in sync as events change.

One-Tap Responses

When an event is created, every player gets a simple question: are you coming?

Yes. No. Maybe. That’s it.

No forms to fill out, no apps to download, no accounts to create on some third-party platform. Open the app, tap your answer, done. The coach sees who’s coming in real-time.

Multi-Player Management

This is where KnowMore stands out for parents. If you have two kids on different teams, you manage both from one account. Switch between players, see all upcoming events across all teams, respond for each child individually.

No more logging in and out of different accounts. No more missing a tournament because the notification went to the wrong phone.

Coach Tools

Coaches get the features they actually need:

• Recurring trainings: Set up a weekly or biweekly training once — pick the weekday(s), an end date, and the time, and KnowMore generates every occurrence with player responses already seeded. Editing the series later is rule-aware: change the day or time and choose “this event” or “all events”. A live preview shows exactly which dates will be created before you save.
• Squad Selection (Aufgebot): Pick your lineup for the next match. Selected players get notified, and their responses automatically lock in.
• Attendance Overview: See at a glance who’s been showing up and who hasn’t.
• Event Management: Create trainings, matches, and tournaments. Set response deadlines. Mark events as active or inactive.
• Player Management: Add players to your team, assign guardians, manage the roster.
• Federation Data: League standings, upcoming matches, and results from the Swiss football federation — synced automatically, visible on the dashboard and dedicated pages.
• Quick Actions: Coach-specific dashboard tile with one-tap access to create events, send team notifications, manage the team, or view team info.
• Team Switching: Compact toggle in the app header — switch teams and players instantly from any page.

Team Chat

Sometimes you need to say more than “yes” or “no.” KnowMore has a built-in team chat with mentions (@player, @all), reactions, and reply threads. It keeps team communication inside the app instead of scattered across WhatsApp groups.

Photo Galleries

If your club runs an Immich photo server (a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos), KnowMore connects directly to it. Browse team photos, download albums, and even pick your profile picture from your Immich library. No cloud services involved.

Passwordless Login

Tired of forgotten passwords? KnowMore supports passkeys - log in with your fingerprint, face, or device PIN. No passwords to remember, no passwords to leak. It works on any modern phone or laptop.

Works on Your Phone

KnowMore is a Progressive Web App (PWA). That means:

• Install it like a native app - add it to your home screen and it looks and feels like a real app
• Works offline - cached data is available even without internet, handy at sports facilities with spotty WiFi
• Auto-updates - the app silently updates in the background, no app store downloads needed
• Push notifications - get notified when new matches are scheduled or event details change

Club Themes

Beyond the club’s brand color and logo, admins can now pick a structural theme — Aurora (the baseline), Crisp, Bold, Editorial, or Mono — from app settings. The whole look of the app changes from one setting, no code.

Multilingual

The app is fully available in German and English, with proper Swiss German football terminology where it matters (Aufgebot, Junioren categories, etc.).

Privacy First

This is the part we care about most.

KnowMore is self-hosted. That means your club runs its own instance on its own server. The data never leaves your control.

No tracking. Zero analytics scripts, no Google Analytics, no Facebook pixels, no cookies tracking your behavior. The app doesn’t even have a cookie banner because there’s nothing to consent to.

No third-party services. Authentication, file storage, real-time updates - it all runs on your server. No AWS, no Firebase, no external dependencies that could change their terms of service tomorrow.

Especially important for youth sports. When your app handles data about minors - names, photos, attendance records - you want to know exactly where that data lives. With KnowMore, the answer is simple: on your server, under your control, period.

GDPR-friendly by design. Not because we hired a lawyer to write a privacy policy, but because the architecture makes it almost impossible to violate privacy. There’s no data to leak if the data never leaves your infrastructure.

Who Is This For?

KnowMore works best for:

• Youth sports clubs (football, hockey, basketball, handball - any team sport)
• Small to mid-sized clubs with multiple teams and age groups
• Clubs in Switzerland (with SFVZ match import integration)
• Privacy-conscious organizations that want to control their data
• Clubs with tech-savvy volunteers who can handle a simple Docker deployment

It’s probably not the right fit for:

• A single pickup game group (too much setup for too little benefit)
• Professional sports organizations (different requirements entirely)
• Clubs with no one comfortable running a server

How It Works Behind the Scenes

You don’t need to know any of this to use KnowMore, but if you’re curious:

The entire app runs inside a single Docker container. That container includes a database, an API server, file storage, and the web app itself. Deploy it on a cheap VPS, a Raspberry Pi, or a NAS like Unraid - anywhere Docker runs.

Each club gets its own instance. Your club’s data is completely isolated from every other club. There’s no central server, no shared database, no way for one club’s data to leak into another’s.

The backend uses PocketBase - an open-source backend that stores everything in a single SQLite file. That means backups are as simple as copying one file. Migrations are automatic. Updates are straightforward.

Real-time features (like seeing responses appear instantly) work through Server-Sent Events - the same technology that powers live sports tickers. When a parent taps “yes” on their phone, the coach sees it on their screen within milliseconds.

Getting Started

Setting up KnowMore for your club takes about 5 minutes:

1. Get a server - any VPS with Docker support works. A basic 5 EUR/month server is plenty for most clubs.
2. Run the Docker container - one command, and you’re up.
3. Create your club - set up your club name, logo, and colors through the setup wizard.
4. Add your teams - import them from the Swiss federation or create them manually.
5. Invite your members - send email invitations or share join links via WhatsApp.

That’s it. Your club has a professional team management app running on your own infrastructure.

What’s Next

KnowMore is actively developed and already in use by real clubs. Recently shipped (v0.10.0):

• Statistics comparison workspace - the statistics page is now a pin-based workspace: pin players, teams, or clubs side by side and compare attendance and participation trends, backed by a rewritten team-stats SQL view
• Calendar export and sharing - publish any team or event as a live webcal:// subscription that syncs into Apple/Google Calendar
• Selectable themes - admins pick a structural theme (Aurora, Crisp, Bold, Editorial, Mono) on top of the club’s brand colors
• Recurring trainings - set up a weekly or biweekly training once and generate every occurrence, with rule-aware “this event / all events” editing
• Superuser impersonation - a superuser console for auditing accounts and stepping into a user’s view to debug their setup
• shadcn-svelte UI - the Flowbite component library was fully removed; the UI now runs entirely on shadcn-svelte primitives

Still on the roadmap:

• Multi-federation support - beyond the Swiss football federation to other associations and sports
• Federation calendar navigation - jump between rounds and matchdays without bouncing back to the standings page

If you’re interested in trying KnowMore for your club, or if you’re a developer who wants to contribute, the project is open and welcoming.

---

This is the second post in the KnowMore series. For the technical deep-dive into how it’s built, check out Building KnowMore - Architecture of a Privacy-First Sports Calendar. For the real-time data system, see KnowMore Real-Time Data Loading.