Take Pride in Ultimate Growth: See How Katie McMahon-Gates Prioritizes Program, Participation, and Financial Growth with PRIDE Girls Lacrosse and ULTIMATE Lacrosse

Katie McMahon-Gates is the Executive Director of both PRIDE Girls Lacrosse in Northern Virginia and ULTIMATE Lacrosse, located in six different states across the country. A former 3x All-American lacrosse player at UC Davis, McMahon-Gates has always lined her organization’s goals with her mission: to grow the game of lacrosse by creating a fun and enthusiastic learning environment while teaching young girls to be confident and strong leaders.

A shining example of growing the game, the start of PRIDE Girls Lacrosse looked much different than the current state of the club. “When I first started (in 2016), we had eight teams and were not very competitive,” said McMahon-Gates. Now, PRIDE boasts 22 teams in two different locations. “I’ve used TeamSnap through it all.”

Not only has TeamSnap allowed McMahon-Gates to transition PRIDE Girls Lacrosse into a Top #20 Club in the Nation for Youth and High School, but she brought the technology to her new role directing ULTIMATE Lacrosse, an elite lacrosse program that provides young girls with an exceptional travel lacrosse experience.

How do we define the secret to McMahon-Gates’ success? She credits the TeamSnap for Business platform for helping her grow and expand her lacrosse business. Growing a business, whether in finance, technology, youth sports, or any industry, is always paired with profit growth. But the quick-paced world of youth sports can make profit growth a challenging task.

McMahon-Gates quickly realized that TeamSnap helps her organization collect payments and turn that into substantial growth. She’s championed diverse program offerings outside of the typical leagues: adding new seasons, tournaments, camps, clinics, you name it.

“We’re putting everything through TeamSnap,” said McMahon-Gates, who laughed thinking about her former old-school approach to payment collection. “We would just find checks, old checks, there would be checks under my desk, and we just don’t do that anymore because of TeamSnap.”

The TeamSnap for Business platform is accomplishing much more than preventing the use of old paper checks. McMahon-Gates raved about TeamSnap’s ability to give her a complete picture of her club’s financial situation, at any given time.

“We’re a local business and you really need to tightly manage your cash flows.” No matter if PRIDE/ULTIMATE is collecting payments through registration installments, registration payments made upfront, uniform fees, or other areas, she forecasts yearly budgets directly through the TeamSnap platform.

“We don’t have to have coaches collecting money, directors collecting money, it just goes right through the platform.”

TeamSnap’s reporting tools, both financially and program performance, are a big win for McMahon-Gates and her clubs. Between the higher level overview of financial growth across her organizations to drilling down to the growth of individual clubs, the levels of participation, and areas that can afford more resources, McMahon-Gates has access to every piece of information required to grow her business.

And when you operate more than a dozen individual clubs across six different states, that reporting is vital to success.

Working in the world of youth sports, McMahon-Gates has a keen understanding that financial and program growth ultimately comes down to one item: growth in participation. How does she continually grow the participation rates across multiple programs? TeamSnap’s registration is the biggest factor.

“All the kids have signed up, signed the waivers, and know the policies because they’ve gone through the registration system and we’ve rostered them accordingly with our policies and best practices,” said McMahon-Gates. “I think hands down the financial reporting has grown so robust as well as the registration processes. It is like a dream.”

Adopting the TeamSnap mindset in full, McMahon-Gates knows that running a program is easier when you use TeamSnap for Business because we’ll give you an organizational edge from registration to gameday.