How Madison-Ridgeland Academy Took the Manual Out of Game Day

Challenge

Reserved seating at Madison-Ridgeland Academy had always been a manual operation. Families who wanted seats for the season would email to request a spot. Staff would look up the stadium chart, figure out what was open, take a screenshot, and email it back. If a family wanted to pay, they sent a check or handed over cash.

Once John moved into the director role, the scope of that process hit him squarely. He’d launch the annual seat reservation cycle by sending an email asking families to reply if they wanted to keep their seats, change them, or claim new ones. What followed was days of back-and-forth—hundreds of emails, phone calls, cash envelopes, and manual updates to a shared Google sheet that mapped every row and section of the stadium.

“I sent an email asking families to keep their seats, change their seats, or get new seats. That was two days worth of my life gone.”

One year, he handed the ticket-generation task to an assistant. It took the assistant seven hours just to build and email out the confirmations—for one cycle of seat assignments, which ran every two weeks through the summer.

John knew the problem wasn't commitment or effort. It was the system. “People would have to show up to the school to pick their seat,” he said. “Like, who has time for that? Go online and pick out what you want — and they deliver it to you.” It was 2026. There had to be a better way.

Finding RevTrak

John didn’t look far for a model. He called Mississippi State University and connected with their deputy AD, who pointed him toward the way major athletic programs handle ticketing. The advice was direct: look at RevTrak.

He reached out, got a demo, and immediately saw what he’d been looking for. Families could browse available seats online, select what they wanted, and pay through a single portal. The ticket would land on their phone. No email chains. No spreadsheet. No cash.

When John was promoted to Director of Athletics, it became the first thing he moved on. “I have to make the easy button on my desk some kind of way,” he said. “And…the easy button was RevTrak.”

Setting It Up

Implementation was straightforward. John worked with RevTrak’s onboarding team to build out the reserved seating portal for MRA’s football stadium—loading the seat map, setting up the access codes, and making sure families would receive digital tickets directly to their phones after purchase.

He planned a three-channel communication push to get families into the new system: email, phone call, and text. He sent reminders leading up to the go-live date, bolding the key information and including his personal cell number so anyone who had trouble could reach him directly.

The launch hit one snag—John had forgotten to include the promo code for families who’d already paid through the Patriot Athletic Club. He called RevTrak support and they had it resolved within minutes. Once the code was out, families self-served. They clicked the link, picked their seats, paid, and got their tickets. John wasn’t in the loop at all—which was exactly the point.

The Results

Reserved seating used to consume six hours of John’s time every two weeks—and that was before accounting for the hours his assistant absorbed. It required constant email management, manual spreadsheet updates, and individual ticket generation. Families had to come through him for everything: to pick seats, change seats, add seats, pay for seats.

Now they don’t. Families get a link, they get reminders, and they’re ordering. If someone wants to add seats mid-season, they go back to the portal and buy them—no email to John, no waiting on a screenshot of what’s available. The stadium chart is live. The tickets go straight to phones. The cash and checks are gone.

John’s goal from the start was consolidation: one place where families can handle everything without going through him. He’s building toward that. But even in the first season, the operational shift was immediate.

“I send them the link, I give them two prompts, and they’re ordering. Then they don’t have to come to the school or email me.”

RevTrak handles the transactions, the ticket delivery, and the seat inventory—automatically. John handles everything else.

The Bottom Line

With RevTrak Events, reserved seating at Madison-Ridgeland Academy is no longer a manual process—it's a portal. Families pick their seats, pay, and get their tickets without involving the athletic office at all. And that's just the beginning — the plan is for parking passes, baseball seating, and every other athletic purchase at the school to run through RevTrak.

John Weaver didn’t wait to be told the old way wasn’t working. He’d lived it—days lost to email, hours lost to spreadsheets, an assistant stuck building tickets by hand. When he stepped into the director role, he moved fast. He wasn’t looking for a workaround. He was looking for a system. With RevTrak Events, he found one.