Alicia Svoboda proves to be naturally gifted as webmaster for Phoenix-area program.
Name: Alicia Svoboda
Site: Liberty Lions Football
Position: Booster Club President, Webmaster
Use of platform: Registration, Sitebuilder
Background: Svoboda grew up in the north Phoenix suburbs, where she dabbled in softball and attended Cactus High School in Glendale. She started her retail career when she was 17, landing a job with a company called Clothestime. Through the years she worked her way up from sales associate to assistant district manager. She later held multiple roles, including district manager for more than four years, at a pop culture and music inspired fashion store called Hot Topic. “That’s where I learned a lot about social media, right when it first started to get really big,” Svoboda said. She also worked as a district manager for teen fashion retailer Rue21. She now works at Savers, a thrift store chain, as an Area Development Manager. Part of her job is to help create and nurture partnerships with non-profit organizations, and she presents the company’s FUNDrive program as a way for organizations to raise money by donating used items. Svoboda, who has been married for 23 years, and her husband are raising three children (two boys and a girl), the oldest of which, Austin, is a senior backup quarterback for the Liberty High School football team based in Peoria, another north Phoenix suburb.
What she does: Svoboda helped the football program transition to the SportsEngine platform last spring, and, despite having no formal information technology education or training, has handled the bulk of the website duties ever since. “I love taking on challenges, and I love figuring things out for myself,” she said. Svoboda set up all of the team pages on the site, loading roster and schedule information for the varsity, junior varsity and two freshmen teams. Because freshmen routinely play for both of the school’s white and black teams, she created one main freshmen team page with the overall roster of about 100 players. She also created separate pages for both the white and black teams that includes their schedules, then mirrors that information over to the main freshman page. She encourages parents and players to download the SportsEngine app for the team or teams they are most interested in, so they can get instant notifications when scores are posted or schedules are changed. Svoboda links out to third-party video providers Livestream and Hudl so fans can watch games live and college scouts have easy access to player highlights. Svoboda also has started work on an Alumni page that lists which colleges former players have attended, dating to 2010 graduates.
Making her mark: Svoboda set up a Coaches page that includes professionally shot photos and bio information of all the program’s coaches, 18 of them in all.
Fun fact: With Austin Svoboda sharing time at quarterback, Liberty High’s varsity improved to 5-1 on Sept. 29 with a 72-0 rout of visiting Sierra Linda.
