Athete Safety Training Information for Club Administrators

Updated January 2026

Midlakes has selected to use a training framework provided by the U.S. Center for SafeSport to meet the safety training insurance requirements our league.  Every participant in our league must receive athlete safety training to the level that matches their particpant role. Please review the Detailed Athlete Safety Training Requirements.

We have one administrator for the SafeSport training courses at the league level, and each of our Midlakes clubs also has one administrator account used to review the participant training associated with their club.

**The remainder of this page is information for our club level administrators of the SafeSport training.**

If you are not the administrator for your club, you can return to the general Safety in Sport information page. 

If you are the administrator for your club, please contact your club or program manager for instructions to access the safety training that is specific to your club and review the following.

Resources

Club-Level Administration

Participant Training

Purchasing Courses and leftover courses

Verification Report Creation - Required

Issues You Might Have

Resources Club Admins May Need

Points of Contact:  

• Midlakes league administrator for athlete safety training: [email protected]. 
  Contact if you:
  • need to change the administrator account for your club.
  • want an additional administrator for your club.  There is a cost associated for this.
    Your leage administrator will have the latest contract information from SafeSport.
  • have questions about setting up reports to track participant usage.
  • are confused about anything!
     
• SafeSport Help Portal: https://safesport.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/4/group/9/create/32.
  Contact if you:
  • 5 or fewer participants that have SafeSport accounts that are not yet affiliated with your club.  Complete the form and include your club's name and enrollment key, as well as the participant's name and email address that should be associated to your club.
     
• SafeSport Customer Success Desk: [email protected].  
  Contact if you:
  • have issues with your administrator account, e.g. password difficulties and "forgot password" link is not working.
  • have more than 5 participants that have SafeSport accounts that are not yet affiliated with your club, e.g. they took SafeSport training with another organization such as USA Swimming, U.S. Soccer Federation, etc.  Provide a spreadsheet with your club's name and enrollment key, as well as each participant's full name and email address.

Club-Level Administration for Athlete Safety Reporting

Each of our Midlakes clubs receives access for one administrator account used to access the U.S. Center for SafeSport's Absorb reporting system in order to review the participant training associated with their club.

Club Admin Account Set-Up

The club-level administrator account is supplied by the club to the Midlakes Administrator for Safety Training who then makes sure that account is associated correctly for reporting.

• The account should not be a personal account that could be used for a family's personal training,
       e.g. don't use an account like [email protected].
• The email account should be generic so that one or more people can use it and it can be handed off to the next person who may take over managing athlete safety compliance at your club.  The access to this account will be managed by the club.
       Examples: [email protected] or [email protected]  
• The email account should not include the term "safesport" since this is a registered trademark by the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

Club Admin Account Changes

If your club needs to change its administrator account in the SafeSporting Absorb reporting system, you will need to contact the Midlakes Administrator for Safety Training at [email protected] to submit the request.  Your club will be charged $150 for the change.  This is another reason why personal accounts are discouraged as Robert replaces Sue who replaced Hamish.

Participant Training

SafeSport training courses are availble to every participant in Midlakes team sports and the necessary course is defined by the participant's role.  This includes the coaches, athletes, parent reps, and other volunteers for every sport: Swim, Dive, and Water Polo.  Board members and staff that supervise our youth sports programs must also take athlete safety training courses.

The requirements for your club's athlete safety training have been defined as of 2026 as well as consequences for non-compliance.

Your club will receive access instructions at the start of each season with the enrollment key that your participants will use to create their accounts.  The enrollment key is what associates the participant with your club so they show up in your club's SafeSport admin reports.

• Each participant should create a personal training account at the SafeSport website.  We recommend that parents each have their own account and not share an account for training.
        **Children may use a parent's account or their own personal email. 
   
• Returning participants can simply log into the https://safesporttrained.org/ website and will continue to be affiliated with your club if they were already affiliated in prior seasons.

The exact names of the training courses in the "Catalog" can change, but will appear similar to what is outlined in the decision tree image and table below.

Purchasing Courses for Your Staff and Volunteers

As the club's administrator for athlete safety training, you have the ability to pre-purchase courses for your staff and volunteers from the U.S. Center for SafeSport.  You might do this for your club's board members, manager(s), and programs director(s), your team coaches, and your team parent representatives by purchasing the "Volunteers..." course, "SafeSport Trained" course, or the appropriate "Refresher" course.

Here are the steps to purchase courses for others in your club.  **Make sure to purchase only one type of course in each transaction.**

1. Log in to the public dashboard for SafeSport at https://safesporttrained.org.  (Not the admin dashboard)
2. Locate the course you wish to purchase and select "Add to Cart".
3. Edit the Shopping Cart and check the box below the Quantity to "Purchase on behalf of others".
4. Once this is checked you can also change the quantity to the desired number.
5. If purchasing a course with a discount code, then enter the code before completing checkout.
6. NOTE: Do not purchase more than one type of course in a transaction.
7. Discount available!! If you are purchasing the "SafeSport Trained" course at $20.00, you may enter the discount code MIDLKS19 for a discounted rate of $19.00.

After the purchase is completed, you should receive two emails. 

1. One is a receipt of the transaction for your records. 
2. The other is the access email that you will send to the participants; this email contains a unique code that allows the participant to take the course without paying for it themselves. 
        IMPORTANT!  Do not click on the link or you may accidentally redeem one of the courses for yourself. 
        Just sent it to the intended course-taker.

Example: 
You need to purchase "SafeSport for Volunteers Abuse Awareness and Prevention Essentials" for 2 board members, 1 aquatics director, 2 swim team parent reps, and 1 dive team parent rep.  You will follow the steps above and set the quantity to 6 (= 2+1+2+1).  Then forward the access email to the board members and parent reps who will need to log into the SafeSport training website with the link from the email so that the course shows as pre-paid, not through their standard login.
 

LEFTOVER COURSES - We purchased more than we needed!

If you discover that you purchased extra courses beyond what you needed, you can save them for the following season. 
Make sure to save the email receipt and note who used the courses and how many are left over.

NOTE:  If you purchased extra courses from the previous season that are unused, you MUST email [email protected] to request an extension BEFORE they expire.

***  Make sure you check with your coaches before purchasing courses. 

• If they took "SafeSport Trained" in the previous season, they qualify for taking "Refresher 1" this season. 
• If they took Refresher 1 or Refresher 2 in the previous year, they can take Refresher 2 or 3. 
• If they took Refresher 3 in the previous season, they must re-take the complete "SafeSport Trained" course this season.

​

Reporting

You must complete the Mandatory Verification Report that identifies the level of training for all your sport participants (coaches, athletes, volunteers, and program directors or board members) and send it to the Midlakes Administrator for Safety Training by the due date listed in the Midlakes Safety Requirements for each sport (Swim, Dive, and Water Polo).

As a club-level administrator, you have access to the SafeSport Absorb reporting system which can help you gather the majority of your training certificates.  The training for many families will show up in the reporting sytem, and we now have a document to help you with easy report setup in SafeSport's reporting system.  For certificates that do not show up in the system, please see the next section on Issues You May Have.

Mandatory Verification Report form:  Here is the Excel workbook you will use to submit your athlete safety training verification report. 
/reclmslwa/UserFiles/File/SafetyTraining/Reports/2026---safesport-verification-report---myclubname_020593.xlsx

The report will look similar to this (but with your own club's data, of course!):

Issues You Might Have

1. Some Training Doesn't Show Up in SafeSport's Reporting System:
   Yes, we know that some training doesn't show up in the reports.  There are three main reasons for this:
   
   A)  Most Common!  The participant took the training under someone else's account. 
   
   It is very common for children to complete their SafeSport training courses under a parent's account.  Check for the SafeSport youth and kids training courses under the parent's name and email in the reporting system.  Remember that some children's last names can differ from their parents' last names.  Your team roster should be able to identify parent and child names - ask your club manager or head coach for a complete roster.
   
   Additionally, some parents may take the training together.  This will generate only one certificate in the system for the person who was logged in during the training.  Please get written confirmation from the parent that they took the training under their spouse's account.  The U.S. Center for SafeSport discourages this.  All adults should take the training under their own accounts whenever possible.  It helps keep our costs lower by having more overall participants in their system (this is related to proving need for SafeSport's government funding).
   
   B)  The participant didn't actually take the training. 
   
   If they say they did, they should be able to log into their account (or parent's account if a youth participant) and locate the PDF file of their certificate to send it to you.  If they don't have this, they didn't do it.
   
   **Consider that their training may have been done at some point in the past, and remind them that their training must be completed annually.
   
   C)  The participant has completed a SafeSport course with another organization. 
   
   This happens for several of our athletes, and some parents and staff. If they took training while enrolled with USA Swimming, U.S. Soccer Federation, U.S. Rowing, etc., they will already have an account with SafeSport that is not affiliated with your club so their account does not appear in your report.

   • 1. - First step:  The participant can send you a copy of the PDF file of their training certificate.  You can confirm their training and add their info to your Safety Training Verification Report.
   • 2. - Next step: You will contact SafeSport using the Help Portal to submit a request to affiliate their account with your club as a "secondary organization".  When making the request, remember to provide your club name, your club's enrollment key (starts with FSMIDLAKES", the participant's name, and the participant's email that they used for their SafeSport training which is on the PDF file of their completion certificate.
   •  
   • If you have more than 5 athletes, coaches, parents, or other volunteers who have completed training that need to be affiliated with your club, you can send the list to the Midlakes Administrator for Safety Training, or to the SafeSport help desk to ask that those participants' emails have your club added as "a secondary organization" in SafeSport.  This will help them show up in your admin reports in the future. 

   ***It's important to affiliate their account to your club now, since it will save you time (and frustration) in future years for returning staff and families.
    

2. Participant Has Different Training Than Midlakes Requires:
   At times, a participant may have received athlete safety training through another organization and the name of the course may differ slightly from the courses that are offered through our Midlakes access.  If the training they took elsewhere is of a similar caliber or is more comprehensive than the training needed for Midlakes, then they do not need to take additional training as long as it is current through the team's season.
   
   Example 1: A board member took "SafeSport Trained" through USA Swimming.  This is a more comprehensive training than the "SafeSport for Volunteers" course, so this participant does not need to also take the Volunteers course.  It would be a waste of their time and the club's money.
   
   If you're not sure, contact your Midlakes Administrator for Safety Training at [email protected] who can help determine whether the level of training the participant has taken covers the need for their role at your club.
    
3. Participant Has Trouble Taking Appropriate "Refresher" Course:
   After a participant has taken the base "SafeSport Trained" course, they will be eligible to enroll in "Refresher 1" the following year, and can enroll in "Refresher 2" the year after they take "Refresher 1".  There is a 2-month grace period!  If the participant attempts to enroll in a follow-on course more than 2 months before or after their current training expires, they will have to start over with the base "SafeSport Trained" course again.  If you feel an exception is warranted, you can contact the SafeSport help desk or the Midlakes SafeSport administrator at [email protected].
    
4. Purchased Too Many Courses:
   If you discover that you purchased extra courses beyond what you needed, you can save them for the following season.**
   
   Example: You purchased 4 "SafeSport Trained - Not Affiliated - NGB" courses for your 2 swim coaches, 1 dive coach, and 1 water polo coach.  Then you found out that one of your swim coaches had taken a "SafeSport Trained" course through USA Swimming the previous year and only needed to take "Refresher 1".  You can then purchase "Refresher 1" for the coach, and save the "SafeSport Trained" course purchase for one of your coaches the following season.  Just remember to use it!
   
   **Note: Contact the Customer Success help desk at SafeSport before the leftover course expires to extend the time.  You can request to reactivate the purchase if you miss the expiration.  Make sure to save the email receipt and note who used the courses and how many were left over.

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