Introduction

At Houston Christian University (HCU), running a Division I athletics department is a team effort. With 15 sports, roughly 375 active student-athletes at any given time, and a lean administrative staff, there is little room for unnecessary manual work. Add in the movement created by the transfer portal, and closer to 450 student-athletes may pass through the department over the course of a year. For Andrew Hoffman, Associate AD of Compliance and Academics, that makes collaboration essential.

HCU’s compliance operation is supported by a team of just a few people managing everything from scholarships and eligibility to academics and day-to-day compliance responsibilities. As Hoffman puts it, it takes a “small village” to keep everything moving. When he first arrived at HCU, however, much of that work was still happening on paper.

The Challenge: When Compliance Meant Paper, Binders, and Manual Follow-Up

CARA logs. Recruiting activity. Official visits. Expense reports. Student-athlete forms. Nearly every workflow involved a physical document that had to be completed, collected, reviewed, and stored.

One process in particular captures what that looked like. Each week, coaches submitted paper CARA logs documenting their hours and off days. They were then responsible for collecting signatures from a portion of their student-athletes to verify that the information was accurate. Hoffman still has one of those old binders sitting in his office.

I still have a binder from three years ago full of CARA logs. Every week our coaches would submit a piece of paper with their hours and their off day, and they were responsible for getting about 30% of their kids to sign off that it was accurate.

– Andrew Hoffman

The process worked, but it required significant time from coaches, student-athletes, and administrators, and made it harder for the compliance team to quickly understand what had been completed and what still needed attention. When HCU’s previous software provider went out of business, Hoffman and his team saw an opportunity to rethink the process. Their goal was straightforward: move essential workflows online and create a more manageable foundation for the department.

Starting With What Mattered Most

Rather than trying to transition every process at once, HCU worked with Spry to identify the workflows the department needed most and build a strong foundation from there.

Spry helped us get everything up and running very quickly. We focused first on the things that were absolutely necessary — making sure our CARA calendars, CARA logs, and beginning-of-year student-athlete forms were ready to go.

– Andrew Hoffman

With those essential workflows in place, HCU could manage its summer responsibilities through Spry instead of relying on paper processes and hundreds of individual emails. From there, the department continued building, adding new workflows to the platform as its needs evolved.

From Paper to Digital: Seeing Compliance at a Glance

For Hoffman, one of the biggest differences is visibility. When information lives on paper, identifying an incomplete task could mean reviewing individual documents, tracking down a coach, or piecing together activity across multiple places. Now, the compliance team can quickly see where things stand.

That alone has been a huge time saver because it’s easier for us to track. We can go in and see who has and hasn’t done what, and then send a friendly reminder directly on the platform.

– Andrew Hoffman

That visibility extends beyond CARA logs. For recruiting activity, forms, and other compliance responsibilities, Hoffman can identify gaps and follow up with the right person instead of spending time searching for the information first. For a small staff managing hundreds of student-athletes and dozens of coaches, those small efficiencies add up.

Building Workflows Around the People Using Them

No two athletic departments operate exactly the same way, and even within a department, coaches and staff may approach the same process differently. For HCU, that makes flexibility especially important. With regular staff and roster turnover, the compliance team needs workflows that can evolve alongside the people using them rather than forcing everyone into a rigid process.

Spry gives Hoffman and his team the ability to customize workflows around HCU’s needs, see how they work in practice, and make adjustments along the way.

Being able to adjust things on the fly has been really helpful. We can build a workflow, see how it works for our coaches, and make changes based on what actually makes sense for them.

– Andrew Hoffman

That adaptability allows HCU to create processes that work for administrators while remaining approachable for coaches, including those who may be less comfortable with technology. As the department’s needs change, Spry gives HCU the flexibility to adjust alongside them, bringing more workflows into the platform without forcing the department to change the way it operates.

A Partner, Not Just a Platform

For HCU, the value of Spry extends beyond the technology itself. As the department continues to refine its processes and bring more workflows into the platform, having a responsive partner to help turn those ideas into solutions has become an important part of the experience. When a new need arises, the HCU team can connect directly with Spry to talk through what they are trying to accomplish, work through the details, and determine the best way to build it within the platform.

When we have an idea like, “We want to transition this into Spry,” the team will jump on a call and walk through what we want to set up — what it could look like, what makes sense, and what we may want to change. We’re not sitting around emailing tech support and waiting for a response.

– Andrew Hoffman

For a lean athletic department, that level of support makes a difference. HCU does not have to navigate new processes alone. Instead, the department has a partner it can lean on as its needs evolve, helping the team continue improving the way it supports administrators, coaches, and student-athletes.

Results and Looking Ahead

Three years into its partnership with Spry, HCU’s story is not about one feature or one workflow. It is about what happens when dozens of small administrative processes become easier to manage. When Hoffman first arrived, the volume of work coming from hundreds of student-athletes and 60–70 staff members often left the compliance team deciding what needed immediate attention and what could wait. Today, there is greater visibility into that work, and more room to be proactive.

Spry has cleaned up a lot of our processes and lets us focus more time on trying to get ahead instead of just trying to keep up. That’s been great for us.

– Andrew Hoffman

HCU is still building. The department continues identifying paper processes that can move online and finding new ways to make existing workflows work better for administrators, coaches, and student-athletes. For lean athletic departments, that progress matters. The goal is not simply to digitize paperwork. It is to spend less time chasing it, and more time supporting the people the department is there to serve.