Jonathan TrockVideo CoordinatorUniversity of MarylandHow has the world of athletic operations changed since you first started working in this industry?There’s no denying the fact that the generation growing up right now, their fifth limb is their cell phone. It’s no longer “Do I have my wallet and my watch?” when you’re leaving the house. It’s “Do I have my cellphone?” Everything circles around their phone - it’s with them when they go to sleep, when they wake up in the morning, when they’re standing in line somewhere. Whatever information we can give the student-athletes on their phone without us having to relay it to them makes our job way easier.What challenges were you guys facing before Teamworks?In short, I would say there was an overall lack of group communication. Right now, our coaches are in 6 different states on recruiting trips, but we are able to see what everyone’s up to at any point in the day through Teamworks. It saves us a lot of stress and time and improves our group communication, even without us actually talking.Everything is still getting taken care of thanks to Teamworks even if it doesn’t seem as important as some other things on the to-do list. Even the small things that aren’t top priority – the small potatoes if you will – are still grade A.What are some ways Teamworks has helped improve your team?Teamworks has increased personal accountability among our players. One example is the change in messages that I’m sending. I’m no longer sending messages saying “Practice is at 4 o’clock.” Instead, I send messages that say “Updated the Teamworks calendar, make sure you check it out.” It’s putting the responsibility on the players – we don’t want to keep spoon-feeding them. We want to give them the tools they need to succeed. If it’s on Teamworks, it’s your responsibility – you’re held accountable.Why did you decide to implement Teamworks?The two main initial draws were the Scheduling and Messaging features. The ability to make a central schedule is great - everyone is able to see everyone else’s schedule. Also being able to send a message to everyone or just a select group is a definite plus. Everyone’s on the same page, and it’s so much easier to go about focusing on basketball.How has the Travel feature changed how you guys plan?We just got into the Travel feature and it’s definitely made everything so much more efficient. Without Teamworks, everything was a lot more manual – someone had to do everything by hand. Now it’s just all on Teamworks. Teamworks helps our support staff make sure everyone gets from point A to point B so our coaches can coach and our players can play. We are able to do so many things that aren’t directly related to playing basketball with Teamworks that it allows us to focus more on the basketball related things.How have your athletes and staff responded to Teamworks?They love it. In terms of the players, our top four most frequent logins are all student-athletes. They interact with it constantly and they know that that’s where they go for any and all information they need. It’s great that our staff has also adopted the program so well and that they trust the system because it’s made the athletes’ respond to it just as positively. Teamworks has been a great experience for us so far and it hasn’t let us down. As long as we can get information to our athletes at their pace, there's no reason to stop using it.What would you say to programs that haven’t heard of Teamworks?I’ve worked with programs with a lot of money, I’ve worked with programs with little to no money - I’ve worked the whole spectrum really. I’ve seen how messages and communication gets relayed across, whether it’s at the college level or the professional level. I don’t think there’s a better mass central calendar or mass messaging system out there. I haven’t found anything that’s anywhere near similar.