We are the parents
who had to look it up.
Sideline Ready is an independent guide site for youth-sport families — free explainers, sizing charts, and three browser games for kids. No accounts, no paywalled content, nobody paying us for a ranking.
Who we areAn independent publisher, launched September 2026
Sideline Ready went live on 17 September 2026. It is run by a small team of parents who signed a kid up for a sport, then spent the first season finding out that nobody hands you the rulebook, the size chart, or the bill in advance.
The site covers three sports — baseball, softball, and gymnastics — because that is what our own kids play. Each sport gets a plain-language explainer, a set of reference charts for the sizing questions that come up every season, a gear guide for the first-year shopping list, and a free game kids can play to learn the rules without being lectured at.
There is no membership, no email list, and no app to install. Everything on the site is readable without an account, and the games keep their progress in your own browser.
How the content is madeWe build the charts ourselves, then check them
Most sizing charts you find online are copies of copies. Ours are derived from the governing rules first, and then tested against a published chart before they go live.
- Rules come from the rulebook, not from memory. Division names, field sizes, lead-off and steal rules, and the gymnastics level ladder are written from Little League, USA Gymnastics, and NFHS published material — not from what someone remembered at practice.
- Charts are derived, then validated. The Little League age chart is worked out from the August 31 cutoff rule rather than transcribed. Before publishing it, the derivation was checked row by row against the published 2027 chart — all thirteen rows matched — and only then was the same method applied to build the 2026 rows.
- Gear guides are tested, not scraped. The gear pages say "we bought" and "our kid" because we did. Where we have not used something, the guide says so instead of inventing an opinion.
- When we get it wrong, we fix it and date it. Guidelines change and our own phrasing gets sloppy. Corrections are made in place with the date updated, not quietly buried.
Our standardsWhat we will not do
- No pay-for-placement. Nobody can buy a spot in a chart, a recommendation, or a "top pick." Commercial relationships never influence what a guide says.
- Affiliate links are disclosed every time. Some gear pages earn a small commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. The disclosure appears on the page itself, not buried in the policy. See our privacy policy for the full picture.
- The kids' games stay clean. The three games carry no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party scripts at all. That is a product promise, not a setting we might change later.
- No personal data, ever. There are no accounts and no analytics cookies. Usage is counted from anonymized server logs only.
IndependenceWho we are not affiliated with
This one matters enough to say plainly.
Sideline Ready is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or operated by Little League International, USA Gymnastics, the NFHS, US Specialty Sports Association, or any local league or club. We are an independent publisher writing about those programs for parents.
League and federation names appear only so parents can find the right rules for the program their child is in. Trademarks belong to their respective owners. Nothing on this site should be read as an official statement from any of those organizations — and when our guidance and your league's published rules disagree, follow your league.
How we keep it currentMaintained, dated, and corrected in public
Guides go stale quietly. We date every page so you can tell how fresh it is, and we keep the publishing record on the sitemap accurate to the day the content actually changed.
- Seasonal pages get revisited every season. Age charts, division rules, and gear lists are re-checked as each new season's rules and prices land.
- Sizing and level pages are re-checked when the underlying standards move. Bats, gloves, and gymnastics levels all change on their own schedules.
- Corrections are made in place. We do not silently rewrite history — a guide that was wrong gets fixed and the date moves.
Something out of date, or a rule we have wrong? Send it over — corrections from parents are the fastest way these pages get better.
What's on the site
Three sports, three free games, and a reference library built for people who just found out their kid's season starts in two weeks.
For the kids
- Baseball IQ — rules and decisions, Tee Ball to Senior
- Softball IQ — Little League Softball quirks made clear
- Gymnastics IQ — the four events and gym safety, ages 6–10
- All three are free, ad-free, and need no sign-up
For the parents
- Baseball, explained · Softball, explained · Gymnastics, explained
- Sizing charts for bats, gloves, and league age
- Baseball and gymnastics gear guides for year one
- The full library →