Teamworks is highlighting our clients across college athletics, and the successes and lessons learned engaging with their student-athletes. Thanks to these featured clients for not only empowering your athletes but also being champions of the Teamworks app and platform!
In this Q&A, we’re featuring Dr. Jason Boothe, Director of Athletics at Dixie State University. Dr. Boothe is leading the Trailblazers as they compete in their inaugural season as a D1 department within the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). Dixie State is Teamworks third department-wide partner from the WAC.
Dixie State leveraged Teamsynced for the last few years. Why was it necessary to maintain a technology solution by partnering with Teamworks?
Teamsynced was a great tool for us as a DII program the last few years as it was a budget-friendly tool to help monitor class attendance with the limited staffing that we had. Now as we grow into a DI athletic department, we see a much greater need to professionalize our team operations and communication with our student-athletes, among all the other incredible benefits that Teamworks provides. It will allow us to provide a true DI experience to our student-athletes without the need to hire team operations staff for each sport right away.
How has COVID-19 impacted your role overall and your day-to-day job?
The better question would be how hasn’t it impacted my job. COVID has certainly turned our industry upside down.
Interestingly for us at Dixie State, since COVID came at the time when we were leaving DII for DI, we are perhaps one of only a handful of departments whose budget was increased from last year to this year as opposed to decreased with cuts, layoffs, furloughs, etc. While it was increased due to the jump to DI, it certainly did not go up as much as we had initially anticipated for our first year and caused us to hold back on a lot of marketing and promotional initiatives, and a couple of new positions.
For me specifically, my day-to-day job is still very busy, but now it’s more time in my office on Zooms as opposed to traveling across campus to have meetings, or to other parts of the state and country to fundraise, etc. It’s still very exciting to come to work every day as we begin to build new traditions, support, and success as a DI program.
At a time when departments have limited resources, how does an athlete engagement tool like Teamworks allow your staff to do more with less?
We don’t have the resources right now to provide as much staff as we ultimately need, especially not for team operations positions. Teamworks will serve in that role for us, freeing up a lot of time for the coaches to take care of things quickly within Teamworks and allowing them to focus on other areas of their jobs.
How has technology like Teamworks helped level the playing field in a competitive industry like collegiate athletics?
As a youngster in the DI world, this product will help us stay competitive.
Without it, we would struggle.
It will allow our coaches to provide excellent resources for the student-athletes while giving them time to focus on academic support when needed, along with providing tools for recruiting and coaching.
What are you most excited to use Teamworks for in regards to student-athlete engagement?
The ease of access to communicate with all student-athletes or a select group of athletes will be huge. Our administration staff isn’t very big either so freeing up our time to quickly and effectively communicate what we need to, especially with academic issues, will be critical for us to provide every resource for the student-athletes to succeed.
If your peers called you today, what are two sentences about why you partnered with Teamworks?
Teamworks will allow us to stay in front of the student-athletes and meet them where they are, online and on their phones.
Communication is so vital in everything we do and this will allow us to stay on the leading edge of all of our communication needs.
Keep up with Jason:
Twitter: @DStateAD
LinkedIn: Dr. Jason Boothe
