Making McGregor Proud: How Hudl Tickets Created an All-In-One Destination For Administrators and Fans
Nov 25, 2024
7 Min Read
By Caleb Bacon
Hudl Tickets helps three key administrators at McGregor High School deliver a product the community can take pride in.
Like many high schools in Texas, McGregor High School is an immense source of pride within the small town it calls home.
The school is fully aware of its importance to the community and embraces it at every turn. All over the school grounds, you’ll notice a rallying cry; “Make McGregor Proud.” It’s posted on signs, emblazoned on athletic gear and echoed through the halls.
The school’s small but mighty administration is fully committed to the motto. Tools like Hudl Tickets help them in their respective roles to provide a product that the community can be proud of.
Here’s how three key administrators benefit:
Quentin White: Athletic Director + Head Football Coach
Coach White arrived at McGregor from a larger school outside of Houston around a year ago. Moving to a smaller district meant adapting to fewer resources. “I don’t have two assistant athletic directors and three secretaries and a staff to do things with,” he explained. “A lot of it falls on me and my head coaches.”
With his smaller staff, any opportunity to work more efficiently is key. McGregor already relies on Hudl to capture and review game film across different levels and teams within the program, supported by their athletic department package.
They also actively stream their games with Hudl TV. It made sense to White to entrust Hudl with digital ticketing, too. “As many one-stop shops that we can get, the better,” he said.
What makes it all work seamlessly together are their Hudl schedules. Coaches typically enter these ahead of their seasons—so as White inputs the varsity football schedule, he can select the games he wants to stream and ticket. Hudl does the rest from there, automatically capturing the game, streaming it and enabling fans to purchase school event tickets from McGregor’s Hudl Fan profile.
It’s a huge time-saver for White. “When I sit down, I've got one place to look to make sure that our schedules are set, and the times are right,” he said. “Our streaming is going to be set up. Our ticketing is already going to be set up. I don't have to go to three different places.”
The time he saves lets him focus more on his responsibilities as head football coach. “The cameras, the ticketing, the scheduling, the streaming, all of that ready to go in one place, allows me some time to sit down and watch either our junior high or sub-varsity teams that were on the road last night to see how they did,” he said. “So when those boys walk in here, I'm able to talk to them about their performance.”
Before digital ticketing, gamedays could be even more chaotic for someone like White, who, in addition to his coaching duties, is the main point of contact for problems at the gate.
“Instead of chasing around ticket booths or even rolls of tickets and all the paperwork that goes with that, I have the ability to spend that time on Thursday afternoon with my varsity football team, to be able to go to the team dinner and not worry about something that's going on at the gate,” he said. “That’s huge because that allows me to develop more of those relationships and get my team more well-prepared to play.”
It’s not just pregame that’s become easier to manage. Postgame reporting has been vastly simplified. White has frequent sit-downs with the district superintendent, Dr. Mutscher, to review game reports, track revenue and find ways to improve the margins. Having the ticketing revenue centralized makes it easy.
“When we account for revenue from gate receipts, we have it all in one place. We don’t have to do any math,” he said. “Instead of spending thirty minutes working on those reports, you're done in ten.”
Melissa Seward: Technology Director
Melissa Seward has been part of the McGregor district for twenty-six years, serving as Technology Director for twenty-three of them. She’s seen it all with McGregor athletics—and done her fair share to help them succeed. “Being in a small district, we do wear many hats,” she said. “I've always enjoyed working with our coaching staff and helping our athletic program.”
She was first introduced to Hudl Tickets in a meeting with Coach White and Dr. Mutscher. “The main goal in that was to consolidate. At the beginning, we were a little fragmented,” she explained. “We had one portal for ticketing, we had one portal for livestreaming, and the goal was to pull all of that together and create a one-stop shop for our Bulldog fans, and Hudl gave us the ability to do that.”
Sounds great, right? But Seward was naturally a little leery of what all this consolidation might mean for her workload.
“With technology implementation, you never know what to expect,” she said. “So when they were telling me, ‘We want to do this with Hudl and expand our feature base and take on the ticketing and the livestreaming,’ my first reaction was, ‘Oh, man, here we go.’”
McGregor Technology Director Melissa Seward talks about the convenience of the school's Hudl Fan profile.
Thankfully, her concerns were short-lived. She was tasked with integrating Hudl Tickets into the school website—a process she found much easier than expected.
“With that integration, it was very simple. I just connected with the [Hudl] integration team, and they did all the work,” she said. “I really didn't have to do much, which is a beautiful thing that does not happen very often.”
Once Hudl had entered the data, Seward approved the necessary URLs and set up a dedicated page on McGregor’s site linking to their Hudl Fan page—their go-to destination for fans.
“The Hudl Fan page is what we encourage all of our Bulldog fans to go to because that’s where they can log in and see our schedules, get our livestreams, watch the games live, and then also buy their tickets,” she said.
“It's literally a one-stop shop, and that's what we were looking for. And Hudl did that.”
Dr. Travis Mutscher: District Superintendent
When you ask Dr. Mutscher what makes McGregor special, you’ll notice a central theme—pride.
“McGregor is proud of their kids, their school and their town,” he said. This deep-rooted pride shaped the “Make McGregor Proud” motto that’s ever-present throughout the school.
So it’s no surprise that to him, the most rewarding part of his role is fostering the student outcomes that bring that pride to the school and community.
A lot of vendors make their way to Mutscher’s desk. The ones that catch his attention are the ones that can ultimately drive those successful outcomes. Hudl Tickets stood out to him with its potential for simplifying things.
“We were actually using three different products,” he explained. “So three different websites, three different usernames and passwords, and three different spots to send our fans to. It was too complicated.”
District Superintendent Dr. Travis Mutscher discusses the improved gate experience that Hudl Tickets has brought.
McGregor had always used Hudl to capture film. When they adopted it for livestreaming, digital ticketing was the final box to check to give everyone involved an easier process. “When I heard all in one, for me, that just simplifies things, for our coaches, for our staff, for our fans,” said Mutscher. “Looking more into the details of it, I was like, ‘This could be a great product.’”
Mutscher has a different role in the ticketing workflow than you may expect a district superintendent to have. He manages the day-to-day operations each week, ensuring all school event tickets are set up correctly using features like Reserved Seating and Passes to customize the experience for the fanbase. “I wouldn't say it's a job that I would pick out for myself,” he laughed. “But it's really been pretty easy. It's not complicated at all.”
McGregor, as a smaller school, has a lot of athletes playing multiple sports and parents who are year-round fixtures at games. “They had asked me last year, ‘Why can't we just buy a pass, whether it be for the season or whether it be for all sports?’ That was one of the things that intrigued me [about Hudl Tickets],” said Mutscher.
Another feature of Hudl Tickets that fits the community is Reserved Seating. McGregor has dedicated fans who have been going to games for decades—and these diehards often have a particular seat preference. Reserved Seating is the best way to guarantee those fans get their favorite seats, game after game.
From Mutscher’s view, there are two additional areas where Hudl Tickets has helped the athletic department get better—speed and security.
“The scanner function is probably the quickest scanner I've ever used. I mean, you barely point it at a ticket and it lights it up green, and you're on to the next person,” he said. “The scanner often is the holdup, so for us to be able to use our phone, download an app and use that as our scanner, and for it to be as precise as it is, that has really sped things up and allowed people to get through the gates.”
With cash ticketing comes the potential for fraud. A football game can bring in thousands of dollars, and having an employee monitor and transport that amount of cash can be a liability. It’s the kind of thing that keeps a district superintendent up at night.
“[Digital] ticketing eliminates all of those problems,” said Mutscher. “It tells you how many tickets you sold, how many adults, how many students, what your total intake was. It's just a lot quicker, cleaner, you don't have the cash security issues and you don't have the potential for fraudulent activity.”
