Out of the Filing Cabinet: How Joliet Catholic Digitized Registration with Bound
"We had a big filing cabinet up here with registrations and physicals and all that stuff. Now that's gone. Everything's digitized."
Jim O'Brien | Joliet Catholic Activities Director
Paper everything.
When Jim O'Brien became Athletic Director at Joliet Catholic Academy, the department was running on paper. Registrations came in on paper. Physicals came in on paper. All of it went into a filing cabinet, and his administrative assistant handled the sorting, tracking, and follow-up by hand. Digitizing was one of the first things on his list.
The daily cost of paper showed up most clearly in chasing physicals. Every missing form meant another round of phone calls and the same set of answers — it's in my locker, I left it at home, I gave it to the main office. With Bound, parents upload the document directly and the athlete is cleared immediately. A coach can still send a kid up to the office, but now that kid can upload it on the spot.
Jim O'Brien
Athletic Director, Joliet Catholic School
Registration became the foundation for everything else. Joliet Catholic went all in, moving off Snap for scheduling and bringing camp registration, sport registration, ticketing, concessions, fundraising, facility management, social media posting, and event worker tracking into one system. Jim runs reports weekly to review the week ahead, and the worker records let the department see exactly what each event paid out against what it brought in.
The migration itself took about two weeks. Bound's support staff took everything Joliet Catholic had — paper records and the handful of things already online — and moved it over.
"There were some bumps and bruises getting familiar with the software, but it was a lifesaver. It saved so much time for us up here."
Support has stayed close since. Chat responses come almost immediately, and when Jim discovered mid-game that he hadn't set up a senior citizen ticket type, the fix landed while he was still standing at the gate.
Watch the full story.
Bound has helped Jim...
Eliminate Paper
By moving registrations and physicals into a digital system parents upload to directly, Bound has emptied the filing cabinet and removed the manual sorting and tracking that used to fall on the athletic office.
Clear Athletes Faster
By letting families submit physicals from anywhere, Bound has replaced rounds of phone calls and locker searches with immediate confirmation that an athlete is eligible to participate.
Run the Business Side
By connecting registration to scheduling, ticketing, concessions, workers, and reporting, Bound gives Jim a weekly view of what's coming and a clear accounting of what each event costs and earns.
