What they were up against
Nathan Hilton, director of coaching at Nova Centurion, needed a solution that would simplify his club’s increasingly complicated administrative tasks. To maintain his club’s status as the area’s premier club, he needed a tool that allowed him and his coaches to devote more time to what they knew best—coaching their swimmers.
TeamUnify provided Nathan and the Nova Centurion coaches a more efficient way to manage their administrative tasks, as well as robust and engaging coaching tools that pleased their athletes and families, alike.
A solution to meet many needs
Hilton is no stranger to the pool. As a teenager, he made the England National Final. Shortly afterward, he began coaching part-time. However, Hilton does much more than coach at Centurion Swim Club, a club that has produced dozens of top-tier swimmers, and a handful of Olympic Medalists. “Primarily I am a coach, but my responsibilities are wide-ranging,” he notes. “I work with the club to develop our coaches and staff, I lead conferences, I visit other swimmers and other clubs in the area, a lot of things.”
Along with these responsibilities came time-consuming administrative work. Countless team emails and stacks of paperwork were the norm. However, since Nova Centurion adopted TeamUnify, Hilton and the rest of the coaches enjoyed the time-saving benefits.
It has certainly been beneficial for us in saving time and making things easier,” Hilton says. “Comparing the cost of the platform, versus the time we are saving now, it has been worth it for us.
Hilton explains, “The TeamUnify mobile app, specifically, saves us so much time. It easily saves each of our coaches an hour a week, just taking into account the group emails and messages before. Right there, that’s 500 hours of time saved throughout the year,” Hilton continues.
Better data to work with
“Before TeamUnify, we would take handwritten notes at every event and then enter them into our database afterwards. Now, everything is stored in real-time through our phones,” Hilton continues.“We get one detailed record for each of our swimmers, with all of their information stored.”
“It’s brilliant,” says Hilton, “Everything is in the palm of my hand now. No more messing around with paper and multiple databases.”
Getting them talking
“The Teamfeed is another brilliant feature that has been a game-changer with how we communicate with our members. It allows coaches to share updates, results, and urgent information with the push of a button and shares it with all of our social media accounts. It keeps families involved and engaged when they are away from the pool,” says Hilton.
“The ability to take and upload a video to an account, privately, while giving feedback on the video has changed the way we coach our swimmers,” Hilton continues. “They can access race footage and split times on their own.”
About the club
Nova Centurion Swimming Club is the competitive outlet of the Nottinghamshire County Swim Squad. The County Swim Squad was one of the first squads to operate in the country and formed a model for many similar types of squads across Britain. The squad has become one of the most successful in the country, having won the Great Britain Club Team Championships and been the Top Team at both the National Senior, Youth and Age Group Championships on numerous occasions.