Former college volleyball star Jenilee Rathje does it all for Michigan Elite Volleyball Academy
Webmaster of the Week: March 28-April 3
NAME:
Jenilee Rathje
SITE:
Michigan Elite Volleyball Academy
POSITION:
Age Group Director, Business Director, Coach, Travel Director, Website Manager
USE OF PLATFORM:
Sitebuilder, Registration
BACKGROUND:
Rathje was a three-sport standout (basketball, track and volleyball) at Mount Pleasant High School in central Michigan. She was a star student, too, posting a 3.98 GPA. Success followed Rathje to Michigan State, where she was awarded the Big Ten Medal of Honor for proficiency in athletics (volleyball) and scholastics (Dean’s List seven of seven semesters). That’s just the beginning of Rathje’s list of college accolades, which threatens the boundaries of the world wide web. Rathje’s list of duties and achievements at Michigan Elite Volleyball Academy is just as long, and migrating the academy’s website and registration to a new platform (Sport Ngin) was one of her first priorities when she was hired full-time in September of 2013.
WHAT SHE DOES:
Rathje does most everything for Michigan Elite, which is based out of the north Detroit suburb of Warren. And “most everything” is a lot considering Michigan Elite, which has 154 teams and about 1,500 members, ranks among the largest volleyball clubs in the nation. She is in charge of getting all registrations set up online, and she has even started creating some of them from scratch herself through her “super admin” status. She traveled to Sport Ngin’s headquarters in Minneapolis in November, and part of the trip included an in-depth site evaluation that included a dozens of suggestions for improving an already strong Michigan Elite site. “I got back home and starting checking each item off, one by one,” she said. Item No. 1 was moving the site onto a mobile responsive template, which recently was accomplished. Before that transition, she helped organize and build out several sections. She said the Recruiting section, which includes a Committed & Uncommitted Players page, has been particularly popular. She said much of the content on the site is geared to answer the most frequent questions from players and parents, and the Payment & Resources section features a FAQ page.
MAKING HER MARK:
Lessons and training are always a primary focus at Michigan Elite, and the site reflects that thanks to the work of Rathje. She has built pages for each of the directors and coaches who run individual and group training sessions, and those Lessons and Training pages include links to various lesson-specific registrations.
