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Osseo-Maple Grove Athletic Association (OMGAA) is a youth baseball and softball association serving families in Osseo, Maple Grove, and the surrounding Minnesota communities. With more than 50 spaces, including batting cages, a seasonal sports dome, and outdoor fields, OMGAA supports 1,000+ players and 80+ teams across travel and recreational leagues each year.
Osseo & Maple Grove, Minnesota
Youth Athletic Association
46 separate calendars. That’s what it took to manage bookings at Osseo-Maple Grove Athletic Association (OMGAA) inside their old booking software: one for every section of the seasonal sports dome it operates, along with its batting cages, fields, and turf.
Their story started long before “software” was even a concept, though. Established in 1974, a group of volunteers launched a single-school district youth athletic program. 50+ years later, OMGAA has grown into a massive organization, supporting more than 1,000 players across 80 baseball and softball teams, two municipalities, and 50+ spaces.
Cody Billings, OMGAA’s IT Director, says, "We have over 50 spaces in AllBooked, right, so we manage quite a few, anything as small as a batting cage to as large as an athletic complex."
Factor in rec and travel teams, seasonal closures for their sports dome, and six types of users making bookings—their old platform just couldn’t handle it. So, Billings did what any IT Director would do, and pulled together a specific list of non-negotiables for their next platform.
Billings is the first to say it: “If I was running a med spa, I'd probably be able to use Acuity very well,” but once you introduce the operational realities of managing shared fields and complexes, the system broke down.
“Practice booking was working fine in Acuity. There weren't really any issues there. It was really the biggest problems that were around our shared spaces.”
The team tried to configure shared-space logic so that booking half a dome would block out the full dome. But, it just wasn’t possible. After trying every workaround they could think of, including creating 46 separate calendars for each “space,” the end result was wasted time, frustrated players, and lost revenue.
“I was issuing refunds left and right.”
“It got to the point where our team had resorted to managing bookings in a shared calendar and spreadsheet outside the system, which is not a source of truth that anyone can work with.”
Eventually, they had to close off spaces entirely.
“Our revenue for our batting cages had been pretty much eliminated because we just had to block it off since we couldn't manage it properly anymore.”
Their experience made one thing clear: “If something isn't being managed in the system, then nothing is being managed in the system.” This became the guiding principle behind what they looked for next.
As an IT Consultant by trade, Billings drew up a formal list of requirements that he then sent to six booking software companies that were shortlisted from research.
“I've been in IT for decades. I just approached it like one of my normal IT projects.”
Some of their non-negotiables in a multi-sport booking software were:
“A couple of the companies right away just said, 'Yeah, we read your RFP. We're not for you.' Which is good. That means the RFP process is working.”
After narrowing it down to two final contenders, AllBooked won.
According to Billings, when the RFP came through, Gem, his AllBooked Onboarding Specialist, “didn't even blink at it. Some vendors just didn't even want to proceed after seeing it.”
During onboarding, “We created a whole runbook of all of our field spaces with custom maps and all that kind of stuff. They turned out great.”
Customized maps of their entire operation were the cherry on top. What truly made the difference was AllBooked’s ability to handle the complex booking logic of a multi-sport, multi-location operation.
The seasonal sports dome OMGAA operates was the clearest example of Acuity’s operational limitations: multiple teams needed to share the dome, but the platform had no way to recognize when different booking areas overlapped.
“We could have half the dome booked, but then they’d still be able to book the full dome because the objects didn't see each other,” Billings explains.
Behind the scenes: AllBooked’s Space Sharing rules treat the dome as a parent space, and the batting cages and fields as separate spaces within it.
When someone books the entire dome with batting cages, the whole thing becomes unavailable. But if they book the dome without the cages, other players can still reserve the batting cages at the same time.
That same logic extends to more than 10 parks in both towns. If an entire park is reserved for a tournament, each of its individual fields automatically becomes unavailable for separate bookings.
The result: OMGAA has reclaimed operational control over their locations, and in return, has also reclaimed batting tunnel rental revenue.
“I haven't processed a single refund in AllBooked since it launched in February, while I was processing refunds all the time from mis-scheduling in Acuity.”
In the old system, “Anyone could just book any of the practice spaces," Billings explains. “I would end up with coaches of younger teams on a 14U field with a grass infield, with 90-foot base paths. That’s stuff that they shouldn't be practicing on.”
Age groups were just one piece of it. Acuity had no way to set different rules for different types of users at all.
Billings put it simply: “A public rental has different rules than a coach practice. A board member needs different visibility than a family booking a cage. Some spaces need payment. Some need approval.”
Behind the scenes: AllBooked’s tagging system is the engine that makes all these factors work together. OMGAA assigns labels to users by sport, coaching age group, or admin role, and then sets rules using those tags.
“All of my 14U+ baseball coaches have a baseball 14U-plus tag, and they’re only allowed to practice on specific 14U+ fields. So, when they go to book, they log into their account, see the fields we want them to see, and then book the practices.”
Their six user tiers each have their own rules and permissions in AllBooked, keeping operations tight:
The result: OMGAA now runs every sport and space from one system that keeps them in control without being hands-on.
“The biggest win for OMGAA is control. We can let people self-serve while still keeping the rules in place. That's the balance we were missing.”
With 80 teams sharing fields, and Minnesota's limited spring daylight allowing for only two evening practice windows per field, one team could easily dominate the schedule at everyone else's expense.
“We don't let people book from 6 to 8, because then they monopolize that space for the whole evening, and we have a lot of teams,” Billings explains.
At the same time, OMGAA wants to make sure that coaches never have to pay for practice space during warmer months. This requires a system that applies both rules at once in the self-serve booking window.
Behind the scenes: AllBooked's rules engine lets OMGAA control what times different users can book, how far in advance they’re allowed to book, and how long each booking can last. With fixed booking windows, 5-7 p.m. and 7-9 p.m., it’s no longer possible for one team to monopolize the schedule.
To add further complexity, when the dome is up from October through April, they charge for indoor bookings. Come warmer months, when the dome is taken down and practice happens outdoors, coaches need to be able to book without entering a credit card. In AllBooked, all they do is remove pricing, and coaches can book for free.
The result: Teams never monopolize a field, coaches never have to pay, and no one has to coordinate it. The rules handle it all now, automatically.
“I barely spend any time managing AllBooked. So that means it's very successful."
That’s the slogan OMGAA’s President came up with once they started using AllBooked as their operational source of truth. In addition to having all their bookings under one roof, they’ve seen serious returns.
“I'm paying around the same for you guys as I did for Acuity, and I'm getting a lot more.”
“AllBooked gave us a way to bring our facility scheduling under control without making it harder for people to use. Since launching in February, we've had over 2,400 bookings, 191 active users, and our batting tunnel rental revenue is back online. For a volunteer-run youth sports association, that's a big win.”
