EFFECTIVELY MANAGE YOUR ATHLETICS FROM BEGINNING TO END

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1 EFFECTIVELY MANAGE YOUR ATHLETICS FROM BEGINNING TO END White Paper: Athletics Management in Schools Using Cloud-Based Solutions for Work Orders, Preventive Maintenance, and Event Scheduling

2 2 Getting Ready for Sports Season Sports are important to our students, schools, and communities. Athletics help students learn critical life lessons about teamwork, accountability, and the power of practice and preparation. In our schools, sporting events provide a cohesive atmosphere in which the spirit and pride of the organization can shine. Sports influence extends beyond the school and students to the greater community. While sports and sporting events are important to school districts, students, parents, and the greater community, it requires a lot of work of multiple departments within schools to coordinate athletics. From scheduling the games, refs, fields, and facilities to making sure the fields are in safe playing condition, hours of work go into every sporting event that takes place. Managing Your Fields Safety It is schools responsibility to ensure its fields, turfs, and courts provide a safe and playable environment. Maintenance teams keep players safe and fields playable with routine maintenance like filling depressions, removing rocks, anchoring goals, and keeping fences in place. Each type of field has its own specific needs. Baseball fields need proper transitions between dirt and grass in the infield to minimize tripping. Soccer fields, on the other hand, demand a sturdy turf from one end line to the other. Maintenance staff must create safe and playable fields that minimize the likelihood of serious injury. Image In addition to safety and playability, most people notice when the wow factor is present healthy green grass, bright white lines, and razor sharp edges; this image supports a sense of community pride. Schools want the wow factor. Rich Riggs Principal, Riggs Site Consulting An online maintenance solution gives schools a cost-effective way to manage athletic fields, improve the overall condition of fields, and protect the school s investment in its facilities. SchoolDude s maintenance solutions provide a productive and money-saving approach to field maintenance: Cloud-based Maintenenace Solution Advantages: Simplify daily work orders for field inspections Prioritize proactive schedules of what needs to be done when, how, and by whom throughout the calendar year and sports season

3 3 Track status of athletics and field tasks undertaken by staff Prepare summary reports of costs, budgets, and workloads Experts have provided tips for coordinating field and facilities management and assigning tasks when utilizing a maintenance management solution: 1) Devise a field maintenance plan 2) Prepare field use and maintenance schedules each fall 3) Create master program detailing tools and equipment needed for annual maintenance 4) Utilize inspection reports or checklists that grounds staff can complete as they walk fields 5) Assign tasks to particular grounds team members to achieve goals Ensuring Bleacher Safety According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, in the past 30 years, over 15 known bleacher collapses have occurred. Investigations of bleacher collapses revealed that if bleachers are not maintained properly, they may collapse. Causes of bleacher injuries include gaps in footboard areas, lack of or poorly designed guardrails, poorly secured bleachers, sharp edges or splinters on seats, no hand rails or aisles, lack of warning signs, and many others. Ensuring that indoor and outdoor bleachers provide a safe seating environment INCREASED RISK FROM BLEACHER SAFETY 3,350 CHILDREN IN EMERGENCY ROOMS FROM FALLING THROUGH BLEACHERS An estimated 3,350 children enter hospital emergency rooms each year with injuries associated with falling from or through bleachers. Consumer Product Safety Review

4 4 for students and the community should be a top priority for schools. Properly maintaining bleachers through regularly scheduled inspections and maintenance tasks is essential to a safety program that reduces the risk of injuries while also decreasing your risk of liability issues and the need for costly replacements. To ensure you are compliant with bleacher safety: Utilize certified safety inspections Bleacher Inspection checklist: frame inspection deck inspection step inspections rail inspections electrical inspections power inspections Complete product renovations and repairs Make operational and safety enhancements Use certified parts and installation Identify missing bolts, nuts, bent or missing parts, missing or damaged wheels, cracked or splintered seats, and cracked welds Check electrical wiring Maintain proper floor and wall connections Maintain proper aisle ways, hand, and guard rails An online maintenance solution also provides a way to track preventive maintenance and work orders to ensure bleacher safety and comply with regulations. You can use an automated system to manage work orders and PM schedules for bleacher safety by: Scheduling a series of inspections with a preventive maintenance schedule Tracking and reporting on regular inspection activity Tracking inventory parts needed to maintain bleachers Ensuring every inspection and work order performed has adequate documentation An automated maintenance management system can ensure your school complies with bleacher safety, your staff understands what work needs to be performed on bleachers, and your school has confidence in its documentation to reduce the risk of liability concerns.

5 5 Scheduling athletic facilities and team transportation Multiple people may be involved with a district s athletic scheduling athletic directors, coaches, referees, and the opposing team s staff. It is critical that facility space and fields are scheduled correctly to ensure proper set-up and that field maintenance takes place before a game so the game goes off without a hitch for the athletes and spectators. An online facility scheduling and transportation management solution is a costeffective way to manage calendars, schedule facility spaces and fields, organize transportation needed for athletic teams, and coordinate multiple departments. SchoolDude s facility usage solutions provide a productive and money-saving approach to athletic scheduling: Centralize scheduling of spaces for all athletic events Display games, practices, and community field use in calendar format for improved coordination between departments Increase transparency of the use of facility space to maximize internal and community use of facilities IMPROVE communications INCREASE coordination SAVE staff time no headaches! Improve coordination with drivers and other support resources Track transportation requests for athletic events and display them on a shared calendar Schools indicate system integrations improve productivity and save staff time when their departments can eliminate the need for double data entry and other duplicated tasks. Athletic scheduling requires various systems to ensure facilities and fields are booked properly, buses and drivers are secured, and necessary staff, equipment, and logistics are coordinated. SchoolDude and ArbiterSports, the leading provider of game management solutions and part of the NCAA spectrum, have partnered to streamline athletic scheduling. The partnership integrates ArbiterGames, ArbiterSports athletic scheduling solution, SchoolDude s FSDirect for facility scheduling, and TripDirect for transportation management. When your athletic department schedules events in ArbiterGame, athletic activities are automatically added to your organization-wide facility use schedule in FSDirect and to your transportation schedule in TripDirect with no duplication of work or re-entry of events and trips. This integration improves communication, increases coordination, saves staff time, and eliminates last minute scheduling headaches.

6 6 Conclusion The benefits of school sports abound -- sports build self-confidence, teach our students how to win and lose, and keep a focus on health and exercise in their lives. To ensure organized sports can be played regularly among and between schools requires many resources to ensure field and court safety, bleacher safety, beautiful playing conditions, adequate spaces for practice and games, and transportation to off-campus athletic events. Automated cloud-based software can track work orders for fields, schedule inspections for bleachers, track the necessary inventory and parts for athletic maintenance, schedule facilities for events, and manage vehicles and drivers for games and practices. These solutions improve communication between the athletic department and facilities department, streamlining the athletic scheduling process while ensuring athletes, students, parents, and the community are in a fun and safe environment. Learn more about how SchoolDude s solutions can simplify the management of athletic events in your school. Rev Copyright sales@schooldude.com