How one communicator covering two jobs uses FanWord to keep an entire department in the news.

October 1, 2026

On game day, Libby Price isn’t always at a laptop.

She might be checking in on setup, troubleshooting something in the arena, or handling any of the dozen operational things that surface before a first pitch or an opening whistle. At the University of Illinois Springfield, Price works in both communications and operations, which means that her job is constantly taking her in opposite directions, often in the same moment.

As a result, everything in her world is done with intentionality.

“After a game, I would head upstairs and spend hours writing,” said Price, Assistant Athletics Director for Strategic Communications & Operations at UIS. “Especially on nights when we had a home event along with multiple teams competing on the road.”

As usual, the job of a communicator in athletics can be unrelenting.

Who: University of Illinois Springfield
Division: NCAA Division II
Conference: Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC)
Sports Sponsored: 17 teams
Location: Springfield, Illinois
FanWord Partner Since: August 2025
Fun Fact: They’re the only Prairie Stars in college sports, debuting the name in 1977 when the institution was Sangamon State University

Challenge: Two jobs on one calendar

Small college athletic departments often ask people to wear more than one hat and at UIS, it’s no different.

Price’s communications work has a rhythm: pregame promotion, in-game coverage, postgame recaps, then the longer-lead content that keeps her department visible between competitions.

Operations has its own rhythm, which naturally overlaps on the exact same schedule. When both need attention on a Saturday with a home event and two teams on the road, something gets bumped to another moment.

Usually it was the writing. And the writing was what kept student-athletes and the department itself in front of people.

Price has a particular stake in that. She ran cross country and track for the Prairie Stars from 2017 to 2022, came back as a marketing intern, then a graduate assistant, and has led strategic communications and operations since 2023. The student-athletes she covers are competing in the program she competed for.

“In a small college athletics department, there is always more to do than there are hours in the day,” Price said.

Director of Athletics Mike Hermann had been running the same math, albeit from a different seat.

“We have one full-time staff member in communications and the demands of the position exceeded the hours she could contribute,” Hermann said. “I saw FanWord as an opportunity to add technology to the process to allow Libby to be more effective.”

What he pictured first was a specific kind of night. “It could provide assistance on those evenings when she had five game stories to process,” he said. There was a second argument too, one about where UIS wanted to sit relative to the rest of the industry: “I saw partnering with FanWord as an opportunity to be on the front end of technology in this space.”

When writing recaps, she’d keep game highlights in her phone’s notes app throughout the day, then head upstairs after the final whistle and start writing. It was more of a workaround instead of a system. Highlights captured between operational tasks, reconstructed into a recap hours later and published when time allows.

But it always started from a blank page and a list of notes.

Solution: A starting point instead of a blank page

FanWord Assist changed where Price begins.

Instead of reconstructing a game from scratch after a long day, the platform uses her game stat files to get her 90% there in 10% of the time. It surfaces the performances and developments worth writing about and arranges them the way a communicator would, so what’s left for Price is the editorial work: the angle, the emphasis, and the context not found in an XML file.

Her job shifts from bulk writing to editing — and taking care of the parts no stat file can supply: which storyline leads, the energy, the atmosphere, and what the numbers don’t say on their own.

“Much of the initial work is now done for me, so I can focus on reviewing the content, adding my own voice and perspective, and getting it published much faster,” Price said. “It has helped take some of the pressure off the post-game process.”

Having built a faster process for recaps, Price started taking on content she’d previously have avoided when time was short.

“Using FanWord Assist across different types of content has made me more comfortable approaching projects beyond traditional game recaps,” she said. “I feel like I can take on bios, interviews, news stories and feature stories with more confidence because I have a starting point and a more efficient workflow.”

Hermann points to a function of the platform that gets less attention than speed. Working alone means there’s nobody down the hall to catch what you missed on the way out the door.

“It gives her a double-check or proofreader before she posts stories, checking on AP style,” he said.

The platform’s expansion solved a second problem for UIS. “As the platform has advanced, it now assists with player profiles, which is an area where we were falling behind because they can be time consuming to write those by hand,” Hermann said.

In 404 days as a FanWord partner, UIS has produced 239 game recaps, 207 player bios, 56 news articles, and 7 feature stories, with 130 interview responses collected across the department. In total, they’ve saved 271 hours of work time, close to 30 hours per month during the school year.

Bonus: Keeping the whole department in the news

Not everything a department needs to publish comes from a game.

Athletic departments generate news constantly, with things like department updates, new hires, program news, and announcements that never fit into a game recap. For a communicator in between two roles, those stories are the easiest thing to let slide. They’re rarely urgent, and they always take longer than expected.

FanWord’s News Stories feature brought the ability to create these types of stories into the realm of possibility for the Prairie Stars. The feature allows communicators to generate more than 20 different common articles — such as a staff bios, new coach announcements, and ‘player of the week’ stories — much more efficiently by streamlining the process and using departmental editorial standards to keep everything on brand.

Since becoming a partner, UIS has published 56 news articles, turning a category Price used to postpone into something she can move through quickly.

“Before, those types of stories could take a significant amount of time to put together, especially when I was balancing communications with operations,” Price said. “Now, department news is much more manageable, and I can get event announcements and updates out more quickly.”

The result is a department that stays visible between games rather than only on game nights.

“We can do a better job of keeping people informed about what is happening across the department, while also creating more opportunities to highlight our athletes, alumni and our teams,” Price said.

Result: 271 hours saved

UIS has saved 271 hours since partnering with FanWord.

For Price, some of that recovered time goes back into the work. Some of it goes back into her life.

“The time savings now go toward creating more content, managing my staff more effectively and being able to go home and rest after game day,” she said. “FanWord gives me back time that I can use to be more intentional with our content, support my staff and maintain a better work-life balance.”

What Hermann sees from the AD chair is quicker output on gameday, which leads to happier fans, coaches and student-athletes. He’s also candid that UIS hasn’t reached the end of what the partnership could do. Connecting with former Prairie Stars is the piece he’s still eyeing.

“I see great potential for FanWord to assist with alumni engagement,” Hermann said. “We’ve not gotten there yet, but the opportunity continues to knock. I think it will be a great tool for student-athlete alumni features.”

Price’s perspective on the impact of the technology is the kind of thing anyone who’s worked in a small college department will recognize. Her workload now feels manageable again. When given the opportunity to create new, more efficient workflows that allow her and her staff to do what they do best, her advice to communicators at schools like hers is this:

“It’s worth it. FanWord saves time, does some of the heavy lifting and makes it easier to get other people on your staff involved.”

Behind every program is a story worth telling

Athletics communicators at every level are doing more with less.

FanWord Assist is built to help — with sport-specific game recaps for 20 sports, XML and non-XML website player bios, award nominations, news and feature story tools, online interviews, and storytelling tools designed for the people who cover college athletics.

From Division I departments to Division II programs like UIS, the time savings add up.

And the stories are better for it.

See what FanWord can do for your communications team: 
➡️ Request a demo using the contact form below
➡️ Reach out to our CEO directly to talk through your team’s workflow
➡️ Case Studies: Florida Southern — Tulsa — Illinois Tech — Hamline — KCKCC — Stetson — Northwestern College — American Rivers Conference