It’s an American pastime to complain about things but to do nothing about them.

Travis Solin, a 1995 graduate of Oak Harbor High School, decided to buck that trend and develop a solution to his needs.

While playing and managing soccer in the Seattle area, Solin was frustrated with the tools available to help him in his efforts to meet the needs of his teams and leagues.  He, therefore, developed Team Cowboy, a free website that helps organize teams and groups.

Solin said, “I started Team Cowboy in an effort to create something better, and it’s grown from a very basic website into a very full-featured solution for managing teams and sharing information with your team members.”

He said some of the site’s “popular features include integrated team calendars, team rosters, RSVPs for games and events, message boards, photo and video albums, document storage, team emails and our mobile site (http://mobile.teamcowboy.com).”

Other websites offer similar services, but Solin’s is entirely free. He said that other websites claim they are free, but that is for only limited services. To get access to more than basic functions, the functions one truly needs to manage a team, users have to pay a fee.

He said, “I wanted to ensure from the start that free does not equal ‘basic’ or ‘limited.’”

In addition to being free, Team Cowboy is heavily focused on customer service.

Solin said, “If customers have questions for us via email, we answer them in minutes or hours, not days. It has unfortunately become cliché to say that you have good customer service, but we live it daily.”

What started as a personal need for Solin in 2006 has grown into a service that is used by thousands of teams and other organizations from over 60 countries.

Team Cowboy caters to more than athletic teams. He said, “We have customers that are using Team Cowboy to organize traveling marching bands, knitting groups, Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts, and more.”

The name Team Cowboy was chosen, Solin said, because it is “unique and memorable” and because  “traditional images of cowboys involve herding and organizing — something that team managers do a lot of.”

He added, “Managers of all social activities have many tasks to keep track of, and it’s often a thankless job. Team Cowboy aims to make these tasks easier.”

Solin, who played golf while attending Oak Harbor High School, graduated from Washington State University in 1999 and worked for Cambridge Technology Partners, Morse Best Innovations and the Mercent Corporation before leaving to focus on other ventures, including Team Cowboy (www.teamcowboy.com).