ACS News

Situation Critical: Student-Athlete Information Management

Up until recently, many athletics administrators and coaches viewed technology as a means to get a leg up on the recruiting front or improve the monitoring of recruiting information such as telephone calls and text messages.  Certainly, technology has helped a great deal in managing those areas of risk, but what about the nuts and bolts of your program – managing student-athlete information?

Most departments are critically deficient in maintaining, storing, transferring, entering, analyzing and sharing data in an efficient manner.  Usually, one or two staffers are responsible for obtaining important student-athlete information from one system and then entering it into one or more other systems.  Or worse, information is obtained from hard-copy forms and hand-entered into the necessary system.  Sound familiar?  This creates a large margin of error and increases an institution’s risk in areas such as admissions, eligibility certification, financial aid tracking, student-athlete complimentary admissions and even communicating quickly and effectively with student-athletes and parents.

ACS Athletics clients have improved staff performance in a number of areas through integration, monitoring, communication and mobilization.  These solutions are offered at a fraction of the cost of adding just one entry-level staff member, yet benefit dozens of coaches and administrators across the department.  Included below are some recent examples involving ACS clients and the ACS Team Manager solution:

 

Brown University

Partnered with ACS:    2010

Challenge Addressed: Centralizing Student-Athlete Information through Campus Integration

“At Brown, we have over 900 student-athletes, so keeping up with all of that information can be a huge challenge.  ACS’s ability to integrate with our Banner system has made this task much more manageable due to the seamless transfer of student-athlete information from Banner into our ACS system.  This has eliminated the burden and risk of manually entering student-athlete information into multiple systems.  With ACS, I have a central location for all student-athlete information.”  Sarah Fraser, Assistant Athletics Director

 

Texas Christian University

Partnered with ACS:    2006

Challenge Addressed: Student-Athlete Forms

“We now have the ability to identify and analyze information almost immediately, which previously took tons of time and energy.  It has made the difference between simply collecting and storing information, and the ability to analyze and monitor student-athlete responses via the ACS Athletics reporting features.”  -Andrea Nordmann, Associate Athletics Director

 

University of Louisiana

Partnered with ACS:    2009

Challenge Addressed: Student-Athlete Complimentary Admissions

“Monitoring (student-athlete) complimentary admissions lists has always been a challenge, simply as a result of the nature of the process.  We now have a streamlined, online system, capable of being accessed 24 hours/day. The compliance office staff can spend more time monitoring the relationship of student-athletes to their guests and be more proactive in preventing potential violations after reviewing student-athletes’ answers to questions asked by (the) ACS (system) when requesting complimentary admissions. Reports can be generated in a matter of seconds indicating our monitoring efforts.”  –Jessica Clarke, Associate Athletics Director

 

University of Houston

Partnered with ACS:    2006

Challenge Addressed: Roster Management

“The roster management tools ACS provides have been big help to our department.  With ACS, everyone has the same roster and this sharing of information keeps everyone on the same page.  With the roster auto-notification, everyone knows when a student-athlete’s status has changed in real-time, reducing the likelihood that a student-athlete will practice or compete while ineligible.”  -Kevin Klotz, Assistant Athletic Director

 

ACS Athletics is now offering its proven, battle-tested Team Manager solution separate from the full InControl suite.  If you would like to learn more about how this affordable solution might benefit your program, please contact us at sales@acsathletics.com.

Tags: ACS Athletics, Information Management, student-athlete

Student-Athlete Life-Cycle Management Challenging for NCAA Division III Institutions

Although each division within the NCAA has its own unique identity, one common theme exists among them all:  The ability to properly manage information related to the student-athlete life-cycle.  The student-athlete life-cycle begins when the student-athlete is being recruiting by the institution and continues until he or she graduates, and managing this information is especially challenging in NCAA Division III.

The challenges begin during the recruiting process and often involve the interaction between the athletics department, admissions and financial aid office. “Communication is often the most pressing and constant challenge,” said Travis Feezell, a former Division III athletics director. “The crux of the challenge is that you are working often with three ‘independent’ but mutually dependent offices on campus. Each has its own mission and duties, and yet they rely on one another, particularly for information on individual student-athletes, to fulfill those things. It’s tough stuff.”  Chris Martin, Commissioner of the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin, echoed those sentiments.  “The biggest challenge seems to be coordinating the various recruiting efforts across the various offices,” Martin said. “Ensuring that campus offices such as athletics, admissions and financial aid are communicating about various students is essential in recruiting success.”

Another challenge for Division III institutions during the recruiting process is developing a unique brand via marketing efforts and effectively building a “pool” of prospective student-athletes (PSA’s) that will be easily integrated into the institution.  “Because of the tuition-driven nature of some institutions, the roster size rather than the competitiveness of the team is most crucial,” Feezell said.  “And if this is the case, then building an appropriately sized pool of potential recruits is even more crucial. How do you appeal to a pool of this size? How do you make that pool ‘come alive’ and apply to the school? How do you differentiate yourself from others in the same boat? And ultimately, how in fact should you build that pool?”

Feezell also indicated that once student-athletes enrolled and began attending classes, coaches access to information was limited, as providing access to student-athlete information often also provided access to non-student-athlete information.  Creating a central location for coaches, athletics department staff members and campus administrators to access critical information can alleviate these day-to-day challenges.  “Technology (could provide) a central holding place of information that allows interested parties to access and input information … it should be a ‘one-stop’ shop in this case, the place EVERYONE goes to,” Feezell added.

Martin agreed, adding, “Any system that allows coaches and recruiters to streamline the recruiting process would be helpful and will continue to assist in the recruiting process.  Technology certainly can play a big role in allowing various campus entities, such as admissions and athletics, to be more efficient in their communications and marketing for PSAs.”

With the ACS InControl Baseline system for NCAA Division III institutions, coaches, admissions and financial aid directors will have the ability to effectively and collaboratively develop recruiting campaigns and manage prospective student-athlete information in order to meet institutional initiatives. Once the prospective student-athlete matriculates to the institution, all of the information collected during the recruiting process is carried over to the student-athlete database as the life-cycle continues.  ACS provides technology solutions and integrates all of the critical student-athlete information into one platform which may be accessed by any designated user.  From this integrated platform, all recruiting and student-athlete information is maintained and updated over the course of the student-athlete life-cycle, creating a complete record of all activities associated with that individual.  Further, with the ACS InControl software suite, student-athletes may complete and submit required NCAA and institutional forms electronically through a secure password-protected portal.  Not only does this reduce the need for paper, save time and improve communication, the collected data may be used to create various reports for use by the institution in identifying recruiting trends, demographics and much more.  Finally, for institutions looking for a higher level of integration, ACS Athletics offers an application programming interface (API) for InControl. This capability allows the athletics department to share data with other on-campus systems, helping to improve efficiencies and communication among all stakeholders across campus.

For more information, please contact ACS Athletics at (800) 343-6220 or sales@acsathletics.com.

Tags: department communication, Division III, student-athlete