School district switches to new athletics app

Marshall Public Schools board hears updates on registration platform

MARSHALL -- As Marshall Public Schools starts a new school year, the district is going through "a bit of a transition" in adjusting to a new computer registration platform for managing school athletics and activities.

This week, MPS Activities Director Mitch Grunig went over the basics of the new platform, Bound, for members of the Marshall School Board.

"I was telling our kids and our coaches this year, we probably have the biggest change in high school athletics and activities in the last 15 years with the transition from our previous platform to our new one, which is Bound," Grunig said.

Grunig said MPS has switched from using a Minnesota-based computer platform, rSchools, to Bound, which comes from an Iowa-based company.

"They are doing everything when it comes to athletics and activities," he said. "Everything from registration, facilities, scheduling, transportation, all of our events staff, and then obviously our ticketing runs through them as well."

Grunig said Bound's website will act as a "one-stop shop" for the public to view schedules of athletic events and activities, and buy tickets.

"The nice thing is, you can see our home and away (games)," he said. People would be able to buy away game tickets through MPS's Bound website or app instead of having to find the home team's website. "You're not having to navigate multiple websites to really search, it should all be right there for you to view."

Offering online ticketing also lowers the cost for MPS, he said.

Grunig said using the platform has meant some changes for MPS custodial staff. The Bound program is more complex in some areas than others, he said. In some ways, Bound is not as big of a platform as the district's former activities platform rSchool was.

"For the facilities side, on the custodians' end, we're still learning on what we need to make sure we put in," Grunig said. "It's not maybe quite as user-friendly as what rSchools was."

Grunig said Bound is in the process of updating its public website. He said that, while the changes won't come right away, he would expect updates to the website's interface, and how the community uses the platform.

"I am kind of excited about that," he said. "It's just that, with as busy as our athletics and activities are, there's a lot of information there. If we could just kind of trim it down so it's a little bit more user-friendly for our community to look at, I am all in favor."