Nick Cemer knew he would have to make some changes to how the Bennington Basketball Association operated when he took over as the president and director of operations. The organization used to run on a custom website, which made communication more difficult, and all the other day-to-day activities more tedious than they needed to be.
Before moving into his role with the Bennington Basketball Association, Cemer volunteered at another organization within his community where he learned about SportsEngine. When he moved into the new role, he decided to make the leap to SportsEngine, knowing it was going to be an upgrade, despite taking a little while for the parents involved to get on board.
“The first thoughts were, ‘You’re crazy, what do you mean we’re not going to get an email and phone contact,’” Cemer said with a laugh, recalling the parents’ initial reactions when the Bennington Basketball Association moved to SportsEngine, “but I think that everybody in our community has become very receptive to it, and it’s been very useful for our board members to communicate respectfully to everybody all at the same time.”
Utilizing the Platform
Before switching over to SportsEngine, Cemer would have to field hundreds of emails from parents looking to join the Bennington Basketball Association every season. Those emails would then need to be organized into the different leagues and teams, which took a lot of extra time.
Then pile on scheduling tryouts, seasons, and collecting registration payments, not to mention all the other intricacies that come with running a youth sports organization, and soon there was no free time left for the Bennington Basketball Association’s admins to enjoy themselves. But all of that seemed to change once they switched to SportsEngine.
“Time. Time saving is the big thing,” Cemer said. “Just the ability to communicate via a message board, or an alert in the organization, and even in the back office side for any administrative work has been great.”
SportsEngine has also made it easier for parents to register, for coaches to upload schedules and rosters for their teams. It’s become a one-stop shop for Cemer, which he is thankful for as he no longer has to generate multiple excel spreadsheets and file away all the information he needs separately.
“SportsEngine wears a lot of hats for us,” he began. “It’s a multi-person, repeatable computer software that is not that hard to learn, and it’s been very beneficial to our organization. We are thankful for it, and ... I think it’s very feasible and the affordability of what we have within SportsEngine for what we get is second to none.”
The People
One of the other aspects that Cemer has enjoyed since switching to SportsEngine are the people that he has had the opportunity to work with. Simon MacKenzie has been the account owner for his program for the last six to eight months, and has been a joy to work with during these trying times everyone is facing.
No matter the need, or the question, Mackenzie has done his best to provide the Bennington Basketball Association everything they need.
“The best thing about Simon has been an open line of communication,” Cemer began. “He‘s always available and if he doesn’t have the answer he gets back to me and let’s me know. He’ll search for the answer, and I don’t think I’ve had to wait longer than 24 hours in order to receive a phone call or email back from him. He’s followed through with everything he’s said in support for our organization, which makes my job really easy.”
A product that provides what’s needed to fully run an organization while saving time, and a support team goes above and beyond what’s asked, either of those are usually enough for total customer satisfaction, but the fact that SportsEngine offers all of that and more is what continues to make Cemer a loyal customer. He’s had the opportunity to run his program to another platform, but knows it wouldn’t be worth it.
“I have been approached by other companies,” Cemer concluded, “and I don’t see why I would want to change if I continue to get the support that I’m getting from SportsEngine, Simon, and all the colleagues that have been around since then.”
About Eric Oslund
Eric Oslund has been covering sports in one form or another since college when he ran live television broadcasts for the Bemidji State University football and basketball games. Since then he has covered the Minnesota Vikings and worked at the Elk River Star News before finding his way to SportsEngine.