Okay, here we go, here’s how my “hounds baseball” project went down, warts and all.
Alright, so I decided, pretty much on a whim, to build a little something for my kid’s baseball team, the Hounds. The usual team website was… well, let’s just say it was lacking. I figured I could whip up something better in my spare time.
First thing I did was brainstorm. What did I actually want? Not just a fancy website, but something useful. I jotted down a few things:
- Team roster with player profiles (basic, just name, number, position)
- Game schedule that’s easy to read
- Maybe a simple way to track scores
- Contact info for the coaches, but only visible to team members, of course.
I decided to use Python and Flask. It’s what I know, it’s quick to get going, and honestly, it’s good enough for this. I started by setting up the basic Flask app structure – folders for templates, static files, the whole shebang. Real boilerplate stuff.
Next up was the database. I went with SQLite – again, simple and easy. I defined the models using SQLAlchemy. Players, Games, Scores… pretty standard stuff. Got the database initialized and seeded with some dummy data just to see things working.
The roster page was pretty straightforward. I queried the database for all the players and looped through them in the template. Added some basic CSS for styling. Looked alright, nothing fancy, but it got the job done.
The game schedule was a bit trickier. I wanted to display it in a calendar-like format. I ended up using the `calendar` module in Python, which helped a lot. I fetched the game data from the database and then used the `calendar` module to generate the HTML for the calendar. It’s a little clunky, I’ll admit, but it works.
Now, tracking scores… that’s where things got a little hairy. I wanted to keep it super simple. Just an input field for each game where you could enter the Hounds’ score and the opponent’s score. I used Flask-WTF for form handling. It’s a bit overkill for this, but I’m used to it. The main problem was figuring out a good way to display the score history. I ended up just showing a table with the game date and the scores, ordered by date. Not ideal, but functional.
For the contact info, I wanted to restrict access. I added a simple login system using Flask-Login. Users would have to register and log in to see the coaches’ contact information. This part took a little longer than I expected, mainly because I kept messing up the password hashing.
Biggest roadblocks? Definitely the score tracking. I spent way too much time trying to figure out the “perfect” way to display the data, and ultimately, I just went with something simple that worked. Also, the CSS… I’m not a front-end guy, so making things look decent was a struggle.
In the end, the site is… functional. It’s not beautiful, it’s not cutting-edge, but it does what it needs to do. The coaches seem happy with it, and the parents can now easily see the game schedule and team roster. And that’s all that really matters.
What would I do differently next time? Probably spend more time planning the UI/UX upfront. I kind of just jumped in and started coding, which led to some wasted time and refactoring. Also, maybe learn a bit more about CSS. A little bit of front-end knowledge goes a long way.
So yeah, that’s the Hounds baseball site project in a nutshell. Nothing revolutionary, but a good learning experience and, hopefully, a useful tool for the team.
