UX / Systems Design | Volunteer Role | 2022-Present
Jr. Amerks Operations Redesign
How a volunteer redesigned the administrative backbone of New York's largest youth hockey organization, freeing coaches to coach.
- 1,000+ Youth Players
- $0 Tool Budget
- 1x Volunteer Designer
- NYS #1 Largest Organization
01 | Overview
Context and Scope
The Jr. Amerks are the premier youth hockey organization in New York State with more than 1,000 players. Each fall they run multi-day tryouts, team commitments, and payment plan collection at high volume.
Before this project, core workflows lived in inboxes, disconnected spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge. Coaches fielded registration issues while board members manually reconciled data.
The design challenge was organizational, not technical: build a maintainable system volunteer staff could run confidently, while allowing coaches to stay focused on the ice.
02 | Problem Space
The Chaos Behind the Boards
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Fragmented Registration
Tryout sign-ups happened across email, paper forms, and verbal confirmations with no trusted source of truth.
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Payment Plan Drift
Custom installment plans were tracked manually and overdue payments were frequently discovered too late.
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Coaches Handling Admin
Coaches became the contact point for roster, commitment, and logistics questions unrelated to player development.
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Parent Confusion
Families received inconsistent guidance about slots, team placement, and deadlines during a stressful process.
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Scale Mismatch
Operational practices designed for a smaller organization did not scale to the current player volume.
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No Institutional Memory
When volunteer board members rotated out, process knowledge disappeared with them each season.
03 | Users
Three Audiences, One System
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Primary User
Board Members
- Need real-time visibility into registration and commitment state
- Need automated payment status and follow-up triggers
- Need to onboard new volunteers quickly
- Need reliable workflows without technical depth
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Secondary User
Head Coaches
- Need clean roster access and commitment status
- Need separation from payment and admin handling
- Need confidence in source data accuracy
- Need timing clarity before final roster decisions
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End User
Parents and Players
- Need a clear and low-stress registration path
- Need transparent payment schedule expectations
- Need consistent communication and deadlines
- Need one source of truth for next actions
04 | Design Process
How I Built It
- 01
Discovery Through Seasonal Shadowing
I documented where information stalled, what coaches were answering unnecessarily, and where families felt uncertainty. Every workaround became a design signal.
- 02
Define a Behavioral Success Metric
We aligned on one clear outcome: a coach should step on the ice without handling administrative questions. That north star drove scope decisions.
- 03
Design for the Least Technical Operator
I built forms and sheets that are readable at a glance through status colors, guardrails, and constrained inputs so operation did not require formula knowledge.
- 04
Iterate Every Season
After each cycle, we reviewed friction and improved commitment tracking, payment visibility, and coach-facing data access.
- 05
Document for Handoffs
I embedded documentation directly into the system with annotated tabs and a season-start checklist to preserve institutional continuity.
05 | Solution
What I Built
- 01
Tryout Registration System
A structured intake form feeding a master dataset with division-ready views and attendance planning visibility.
- Single source intake with standardized fields
- Duplicate detection for cleaner data
- Session-level counts for operations planning
- 02
Commitment Tracker
A post-evaluation workflow for accepted, declined, and pending states with board controls and clean output for coaches.
- Status-based tracking model
- Deadline-aware visual flags
- Automatic roster view generation
- 03
Payment Plan Manager
A dashboard-backed tracking system for custom installment schedules with due-date logic and running balance clarity.
- Per-family installment timeline
- Overdue highlighting rules
- Balance calculations to remove manual reconciliation
- 04
Coach Read-Only View
A protected roster view that exposes only the information coaches need and hides sensitive board workflows.
- Auto-refreshed from master data
- Role-based sheet permissions
- Print-ready format for team operations
06 | Results
Coaches stopped worrying about who paid. Board members stopped asking coaches for roster help. Parents stopped getting contradictory answers. The season ran cleanly.
- Admin time per tryout cycle reduced substantially
- Data quality improved with near-zero registration and payment errors
- System scaled past 1,000 players without additional staff
- Coaches fully removed from administrative burden
07 | Reflection
What I Learned
What Worked
- Designing for the least technical user first improved adoption across every stakeholder group
- Embedding instructions in the tool reduced onboarding friction during board turnover
- Separating coach and board views removed the largest organizational bottleneck
- Treating spreadsheets as interfaces improved usability beyond expectations
- Seasonal iteration prevented process decay
What I Would Improve
- Automate parent-facing confirmations and reminders
- Add explicit waitlist management workflow
- Standardize historical archive exports
- Evaluate purpose-built platform options if budget becomes available
- Run direct parent usability sessions instead of relying on proxy feedback
Let's Build Something Better
If you need someone who can turn operational chaos into clear systems, let's talk.
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