After 38 years as an Athletic Director, Karen Leinaar saw firsthand how disconnected systems slowed down athletic operations. With Arbiter, scheduling, notifications, and payment workflows became faster, simpler, and easier to manage from one place.
38 years on the Front Lines of Athletic Administration
Karen Leinaar spent 38 years as an Athletic Director across multiple Michigan school districts, managing every part of athletic operations — scheduling, officials, communications, payments, compliance, and more. She served on the NFHS Board of Directors from 2009 to 2013 and later contributed to the industry through the MIAAA. She’s tried a lot of tools over the years. Arbiter is the one she keeps coming back to.
Results at a Glance
- 2+ hours saved daily through centralized workflows
- New official onboarding reduced from 1–4 hours to under 5 minutes
- Eliminated duplicate schedule entry across connected systems
- Improved real-time communication for schedule changes and cancellations
- Reduced parent phone calls through automated notifications
The Challenge
Managing Constant Athletic Department Coordination
Athletic departments manage continuous schedule updates, stakeholder communication, event logistics, and payment coordination — often across disconnected systems. For Karen, the biggest challenge was the amount of manual work required to keep everyone informed and aligned.
Common challenges included:
- Entering scheduling updates into multiple systems separately
- Coordinating game change notifications manually
- Managing parent communication during schedule changes
- Onboarding officials and processing gameday worker payments
- Avoiding missed communication across departments
The operational impact:
- Hours lost daily to duplicate entry and manual follow-up
- Slower communication across staff, parents, and officials
- Greater risk of missed updates and scheduling gaps
- Administrative burden that pulled ADs away from the actual job
The Solution
One Connected Athletic Workflow
Using Arbiter, Karen centralized scheduling, communication, and payment operations into one connected system — eliminating the manual coordination that had consumed hours every day.
1. Enter scheduling information once
Instead of updating multiple systems separately, scheduling data is entered one time and automatically pushed everywhere it needs to go — the state association, GoFan for digital ticketing, live streaming, and directly to parents and students.
2. Simplify real-time notifications
Game cancellations and schedule changes reach the right people instantly, with role-based controls — all staff for a cancellation, facility staff for home games only. No manual follow-up, no missed updates.
3. Reduce parent communication overload
Parents sign up as ArbiterLive Followers — schools share a QR code to make it easy — and receive schedule updates automatically. Fewer inbound calls, faster access to information, and less interruption for ADs.
4. Streamline official and worker payments
Arbiter Pay handles onboarding, payments, and documentation in one place. Same-day changes when someone cancels. No paper checks, no manual W9 chasing, no resurrecting a paper trail.
I enter it once and it goes to my state association, it goes to my live streaming site, it goes to parents and students, and it’s published immediately. It’s a one-step, no nonsense, time-saving masterpiece.
— Karen Leinaar | Athletic Director, Mi
The Results
Hours Back Every day — Across Every Part of the Job
1. Scheduling: enter once, publish everywhere
- Schedule updates sync automatically across every connected platform
- Information reaches parents, ticketing, and streaming instantly
- Nothing gets missed, nothing gets duplicated
It’s a one-step, no nonsense, time-saving masterpiece. It’s a huge time saver — plus you lose the likelihood that you’ll forget to include that information somewhere in some disparate software.
— Karen Leinaar | Athletic Director, MI
2. Communications: the right people notified at the right time
- Role-based notifications go out instantly for every type of change
- Parents self-serve through ArbiterLive — fewer calls for ADs to field
- No more circling back to check if everyone was reached
We have the ability to notify all people or specific people all in one place — all from Arbiter — without forgetting anyone and having to circle back to double-check.
— Karen Leinaar | Athletic Director, MI
3. Payments: from hours per official to under five minutes
- Official onboarding down from 1–4 hours to under 5 minutes
- All workers paid at once — replacements processed same-day
- W9s, 1099s, and payment records handled automatically
It’s fast, it’s clean, we’re not losing anyone’s information. In short, I sleep at night.
— Karen Leinaar | Athletic Director, MI
The One ADs Keep Coming Back to
Arbiter gave Karen one connected system for scheduling, communication, and payments — and gave her back the time to focus on what she came to the job to do.
I’ve tried others, but Arbiter is the one we always come back to. This is one of those products that makes lives easier for everyone and saves hours each day.
— Karen Leinaar | Athletic Director, MI
Still managing scheduling, communications, and payments across separate systems?
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