Teamworks Aims To Make Scheduling A Snap

On average, a major league team will spend 180 days together. One-hundred sixty two games and 18 off days. That’s not counting six weeks for spring training, either. Or the postseason. With 25 players (or 40 in September), plus a manager, coaches, trainers and other various essential staff, there’s a whole lot of work behind the scenes to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.

Everyone involved has to get to and from the park every day, have their hotel rooms ready when they arrive in a new road city, jostle for time in the trainer’s room getting treatment for whatever dings and dents they’ve incurred through the grind of the season and balance any off-field appearances they have scheduled on the rare occasion they’re not at the park.

With the help of a new program dreamed up by a former Duke football player, scheduling a season is about to get a whole lot easier.

During his freshman season with the Blue Devils, offensive lineman Zach Maurides was late for practice. As punishment, he was made to run stadium stairs. He learned his lesson, of course, and made sure to show up on time to practice thereafter. While he was sweating it out, however, he had a realization: There has to be an easier way to keep a football team’s schedule running smoothly.

“As an 18-year-old, the lack of communication meant you were running the stadium stairs,” Maurides said. “Those stadium stairs had their intended effect, but a lot of my peers continued to struggle with it throughout my athletic career.”

Away from the field, Maurides began coming up with a solution.

“In a computer science course, we had to come up with a hosted mobile solution,” Maurides said. “Schedule was dictated by 7-8 different people. All of those areas relied on me, the 18-year-old with no time management skills, to keep it together.”

After extensive development, the end result was a multi-platform scheduling program called Teamworks, which helped integrate every part of an athlete’s life into one simple program. More than 850 teams and athletics departments currently utilize Teamworks, and this year the San Francisco Giants and Washington Nationals have jumped on board, too.

“We’re always in search of ways to enhance the efficiency of our operations and communicate more effectively throughout the organization,” said Bill Schlough, the Giants’ senior vice president and chief information officer. “Teamworks is the next evolution in communication infrastructure, and our collaboration with Teamworks keeps us on the leading edge in professional sports.”

Teamworks integrates several major parts of an athlete’s day-to-day life and puts all the relevant info a click away. Need to sign a form? Teamworks has you covered. Did you forget when your flight to your next road city is taking off? Teamworks has all the details stored inside. There’s also a scheduling feature so, for example, a student-athlete doesn’t create conflict between his or her athletic and academic lives.

Maurides’ alma mater, Duke, conducted a six-month case study by using Teamworks throughout its athletic department. The results? Nearly $245,000 in savings. The findings are explained in this infographic, provided by Teamworks.

From there, Teamworks took off. All four teams in this year’s College Football Playoff (Clemson, Alabama, Michigan State, Oklahoma) use the system. The Big Ten conference uses it to schedule its officials for football and basketball games. The conference’s officials also use Teamworks to distribute and view video critiques of their work. This year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament used it, too.

With all those teams and programs in tow, Maurides and his colleagues still have lofty goals.

“Our focus is to get every professional and collegiate team in the U.S. using this,” he said. “What we’ve built here is a tool that is really good for communicating with a large group of people that is not sedentary.”

While Teamworks continues to catch on and expand throughout the sports world, the mission remains the same: To produce a simpler world for teams and athletes everywhere.