Citadel Gymnastics – “LoveAdmin is a fantastic system which we’d be lost without”

Citadel Gymnastics

Citadel Gymnastics first opened its doors in November 2018 and is the first purpose-built gymnastics club in County Donegal, Ireland. They cater for all ages and abilities from toddlers right through to the ever-adventurous adult with many different styles of classes. The club considers itself a family and second home for its gymnasts where a strong and supportive environment is always encouraged. Citadel has grown rapidly since its opening, and its member base currently stands at an impressive 800 which is double what they expected at this stage of their journey.

The club is run by Head Coach and General Manager, Fiona Murphy, and her colleague who came on board as a Director. In Fiona’s past life, she spent several years working at another gymnastics club where all member admin was managed in spreadsheets which she described as a “nightmare.” So, when she heard the positive word about LoveAdmin, it was a no brainer for Citadel to begin using it right from day 1.

Success So Far

LoveAdmin has proved to be successful in several key areas of admin management for the club. Firstly, the staff doesn’t have to worry about holding incorrect or misinterpreted member information. Parents have the freedom to edit this themselves to ensure that it’s always correct and up to date. On a similar note, another great feature the staff love is the group email tool. This has allowed them to communicate with groups of parents efficiently at one time and what’s more, is that they can see who’s read emails – including those overdue payment reminders.

On the financial side of things, the staff can quickly check when payments come through and thanks to LoveAdmin’s automatic reconciliation there is always a record of who’s paid and who hasn’t – this has meant neither parents nor staff have had reason to question this. This ties in directly to the added benefit of financial reports which the staff use for reviewing their end of year finances. Having this automated means they don’t have to spend hours manually calculating everything.

Attendance Registers are another feature the club makes good use of. Coaches can mark attendance on the go and only see the exact information they need including photographic consent, emergency contacts, and medical conditions of gymnasts from “one singular hub”. This has been particularly useful for the club because it has given them control over access rights and in particular, they don’t want to share financial information with younger coaches.

During the Coronavirus Crisis

Since the lockdown began, Citadel Gymnastics have relied heavily on the Development Programme and Content Scheduler in LoveAdmin to keep their gymnasts busy and engaged. Luckily, Fiona’s daughter is a gymnast, so she filmed a practice video for every skill of the British Gymnastics Strength and Conditioning Proficiency Awards and the Irish Proficiency Awards. These were uploaded to a private YouTube channel and then pushed out to their gymnasts via the LoveAdmin mobile app.

Throughout all of this, the club made digital practice game-based and has promised a prize for whoever gets the most credits when they return. When motivation has been low, this has provided a great incentive for gymnasts to continue working on their skills. Whilst coaches work behind the scenes to grade gymnasts, parents can add or take away credits on the LoveAdmin mobile app according to how hard their child has been working. In general, parents at Citadel seem happy with both the content and how they can access it and the club has also had a family with 3 competitive siblings who keep trying to outdo each other with practice and earning credits.

In the future, Citadel Gymnastics plan to keep digital content running via LoveAdmin for their competitive gymnasts and they also look forward to using the new built-in Certificate functionality within LoveAdmin which will save them plenty of admin time there too.

Overall, Fiona says, “LoveAdmin is a fantastic system which we’d be lost without. We’re looking forward to Version 2 of LoveAdmin later this year, but we’ve also been very happy with the current version!”

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