The Reggie Awards – our playful nod to “registration” excellence – celebrates event organizers who create extraordinary experiences within the athleteReg community. Each month, these passionate individuals share their stories, strategies, and the magic that makes their events uniquely special.
This month’s winner showcases how using registration to streamline and effectively manage volunteers from the very start, along with the right tools, makes volunteer coordination efficient and organized.
Event Overview:
Event Director: John Madigan
Event Name: IBU Regional Event – USBA Summer National Biathlon Championships
Event Registration Site: USBA Summer National Biathlon Championships 2025
Event Website: Ethan Allen Biathlon Club
How many years have you been organizing this event?
About 19 years. It started as mostly a time trial for athletes trying to make an international team for the winter season in Europe and is now as much a festival as competition.
How many participants attended your most recent event? Typically 110 to 130 competitors from across the US and Canada.
Tell us about your event in 3-4 sentences: the sport of biathlon is relatively unknown in the USA but is the number one televised winter sport in Europe. There are regularly 30,000 people attending World Cup races most weekends. Our event is not as big, but brings together the best biathletes in North America as well as races for experienced biathletes from 13 to 65+ years old.
Volunteer Registration Strategy
You used the event categories to have your volunteers sign up, which is something we recommend. Can you talk us through how you used SkiReg to manage your volunteers?
Listing with SkiReg brought in significantly more volunteers this summer. Parents and friends of athletes signed up and we would never have had an easy way to capture them in the past. Also, we had a large sign from the local community who saw it advertised in online papers with a link to sign up.
Manage your volunteers using athleteReg
Custom Questions for Role Management
How did you use custom questions to manage different volunteer roles and responsibilities?
With a ready database of experienced and new volunteers we could fill assignments ahead of the event which made race days much more manageable for coordinators.
Volunteer Communication
What strategies did you use to communicate with your volunteers leading up to the event? How did you keep them informed and engaged?
The email database was our primary method of contact. Knowing now how effective this strategy turned out to be in recruiting new volunteers, we will think more about engaging the volunteers in the future leading up to the event.
Lessons Learned
Looking back at your volunteer management process, what worked exceptionally well that you’d recommend to other event directors?
Use of SkiReg to manage the recruitment so volunteers can easily sign up. Advertise about the volunteer opportunity to reach people you would not have known to target.
Creative ways to recruit your volunteer team
Just for fun
What’s the signature element or tradition that makes your event uniquely yours? (The thing participants rave about year after year!)
It is probably the largest biathlon event in the USA as many of our best biathletes are in Europe during the winter. What people always rave about are the custom socks we give to every athlete and volunteer.
Efficiently Manage Merchandise During Packet Pickup
Current athleteReg users: Log into your event director dashboard to add volunteer categories today.
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