Back in summer 2011 when I first started designing SportsBoard, I thought that large sports organizations might want to use it one day. When I presented the concept of SportsBoard to several successful college coaches, they validated my vision. Now, three years later, my team and I are proud to share that this vision is becoming a reality!
SportsBoard now streamlines player assessment processes for over 300 colleges, including iconic coaching staffs at UCLA, Stanford, North Carolina, Florida, Duke, Kentucky, Michigan, Cal, Georgetown, Harvard, Clemson, Maryland, Memphis and many more. Our customers are winners, with over 80 national championships to their credit, and they are using SportsBoard to gain a competitive advantage in recruiting, season, strength & conditioning and their camp businesses.
Tom Bowen, Athletic Director at University of Memphis, says: “When you are competing at the highest level, you need every advantage you can get. As a coach, I couldn’t afford NOT to subscribe to SportsBoard, given the potential advantage and upside it offers!”
Join us – the sooner you go paperless, the more time you and your staff will have to coach your players, which should translate into more wins!
SportsBoard is proud to announce its newest and most prominent soccer customer yet, the U.S. Soccer Women’s National Team. Ranked No. 1 in the FIFA women’s world rankings for the last seven years, the USWNT will be tapping into SportsBoard’s revolutionary mobile technology to develop a women’s scouting database.
“We’ve looked at so many programs over the years, but the simplicity and detail of what SportsBoard offers is going to be great for us,” said Jill Ellis, the new USWNT Head Coach. “SportsBoard’s technology allows us to catalogue the development of every player in our scouting network.”
All U.S Women’s Youth National Team coaches and some 40 national team scouts will use SportsBoard to scout and record technical, physical and health-related data.
Many of the perennial powerhouse NCAA women’s soccer programs rely on SportsBoard for recruiting, season and camps, including 22-time national champion North Carolina, as well as 2013 national champion UCLA, Florida, Duke, Virginia Tech, South Carolina, San Diego State, University of Washington and more.
“We are thrilled to be working with Coach Jill Ellis and the U.S. Women’s National Team coaching staff,” said Gregg Jacobs, SportsBoard’s CEO and Founder. “We look forward to exceeding USWNT’s expectations of SportsBoard and to working with similar organizations in other sports in the near future.”
Have you ever done something expecting a certain result, only to be pleasantly surprised by the actual result that follows? That’s what’s happening with SportsBoard Chameleon, our newly-architected and released version of our mobile player assessment solution.
Just look at the list of clients who have subscribed to SportsBoard since releasing Chameleon:
Basketball
North Dakota State University (W)
University of Memphis (M/W)
Nothing-But-Net Basketball
Connecticut College (W)
Florida State University (W)
Purdue University (M)
Nike Grassroots-Westview HS (B)
Nike Grassroots-Christ the King HS (B)
Nike Grassroots-West Linn HS (B)
Nike Grassroots-Mater Dei HS (G)
Nike Grassroots-Westview HS (B)
Nike Grassroots-Newark-Memorial HS (B)
New England Recruiting Report
Santa Clara University (M)
St Johns University (M)
Baseball
St Thomas University
Cal St University - Northridge
Go-for-the-Show
Golf
Future Champions Golf Academy
Ice Hockey
Princeton University (W)
SUNY Cortland (W)
SUNY Brockport (W)
Boston University (W)
New England College (W)
University of North Dakota (W)
Brock University (W)
Planet Hockey
Lacrosse
University of Findlay (W)
University of Delaware (M)
Sherry Sports (W)
Wheeling Jesuit University (M)
University of Denver (W)
James Madison University (W)
Football
National Underclassmen
Soccer
Dominican University (M, W)
Santa Clara University (M)
University of Kansas (W)
East Carolina University (W)
University of Hawaii (W)
University of New Mexico (W)
Holy Cross College (W)
Princeton University (W)
Air Force Academy (W)
West Carolina University (W)
Softball
Penn State
Presbyterian College
And there are many more jumping on board weekly!
For some, the decision was based on just wanted to go paperless. For others, it was more about going paperless AND being able to customize skills and stats.
Don’t get left behind….#getwithit and #gopaperless.
We all learn how to do things better the 2nd time around after we’ve had some experience….no matter what we do, in work, sports, relationships, everything. That same scenario applies to building software.
SportsBoard is proud to announce the launch of Chameleon, the 2nd generation and newest version of its iPad-/iPhone-/cloud-based mobile player assessment solution.
Chameleon represents a complete re-write of our former “Scout” apps we previously created for 12 different sports. Chameleon enables coaches to completely customize their data models for rating skills and capturing stats, all driven from their SportsBoard cloud account so that all iPads being used by a coaching staff contain the exact same data models for recruiting, season or camp purposes.
From our first generation apps, which contained ratings- and stats-based data models we collected from highly-experienced coaches in their respective sports, we learned that coaches have their own unique systems for skills and stats. In line with how closely we work with our customers, we decided that we needed to devise a way to support customizable data models without compromising SportsBoard’s architecture.
So, a year ago we started planning for this, and in summer 2013, we developed it. Now we are adding customers at faster rates than ever before, and we are signing up big customers in sports such as golf and water polo, since it’s so simple to alter the data model for virtually any sport!
Why “Chameleon”? Because Chameleon is flexible enough to support any number of sports, not just the 12 we created apps for. Rather than coding the sport-specific content in the apps like we used to do, we sync down the sport-specific content when a customer logs in. By re-engineering this design, the same app can morph, like a Chameleon changing colors, into whatever sport and stats the user desires.
We’ve got hundreds of college programs on board, now high schools and clubs are signing on for tryouts and player evals. Join them on this crusade to make player assessments paperless and take efficiency to a whole new level. No matter what sport or level you coach, give us a shout to learn more!
When SportsBoard launched its revolutionary iPad- and cloud-based player assessment solution 15 months ago, it didn’t really think about how its customers would split across collegiate men’s and women’s sports programs.
But the data is interesting….. women’s sports programs account for nearly 70% of SportsBoard’s 160 NCAA clients, so the gap is real. This tendency was underscored last month when University of North Carolina Women’s Lacrosse was joined by the UNC’s Women’s Soccer and Women’s Basketball programs as SportsBoard customers.
These programs are all elite in their own rank: Lacrosse just won its first national championship, Soccer won its 22nd championship last fall, and Basketball has captured eight ACC tournament titles and a national championship in 1994. All have turned to SportsBoard for streamlining their recruiting operations and measuring and tracking player performance.
“I have never been a technology person, but the business side of me knows that this is the wave of the future,” said UNC Women’s Basketball Coach Sylvia Hatchell, a three-time national coach of the year who will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September. “I am never too old to learn, and I am wise enough to know that we have to keep up with the latest technology to remain competitive.”
Soccer Coach Anson Dorrance, known for his analytical approach to the sport, has seemingly always been a step ahead of his competitors, on the field and off. So it makes sense that a coach with his pedigree of success wouldn’t want to fall behind technologically.
“This is the future,” Dorrance said. “SportsBoard’s revolutionary app will help us become more efficient in recruiting future Tar Heels and keeping us in a good position to win, every year.”
Jenny Levy, the sixth-winningest coach in NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse history, became the first North Carolina coach to go paperless when she began using SportsBoard’s breakthrough mobile technology last year at recruiting events.
“Ultimately what most college coaches are looking for is a way to recruit more efficiently and effectively,” Levy said. “SportsBoard allows coaches to be more thorough and more efficient with their time.”
“When we started with Coach Levy, I knew we were on to something at Carolina,” stated Gregg Jacobs, Founder of SportsBoard. “I could just tell from the way in which she spoke about the importance of data that she would be a great customer and that others at Carolina would follow her lead. It’s starting to happen, and we are thrilled about it!”
With the first quarter of 2013 now behind us, I marvel at the transformation that SportsBoard is undergoing.
With the signing of University of Maryland’s Athletic Department late last year, we shifted our focus to athletic departments and have discovered a lot of interest there. Now actively engaged with more than 50 college and universities at the department-wide level, SportsBoard’s blend of assessment and contact management functionality for recruiting is really hitting a nerve. And we now offer Softball and Tennis to our family of products, enabling us to support up to 18 different sports programs at all levels of collegiate, and even high school, sports.
During Q1, we also shifted our focus to camps, where we have received substantial interest in our mobile player assessment solutions from a video and PDF evaluation perspective. Camps have always wanted to deliver better evals more efficiently to their customers. Before SportsBoard, these evals were hampered by technology; now, SportsBoard enables camps to capture eval data easily and distribute evals within hours of camps end, not days or weeks, and without adding loads of administrative staff.
This “paperless” crusade we embarked on 18 months ago is gaining more and more momentum every day. The resistance to changing from paper to digital is declining by the week, and it’s exciting to see.
We live in a 24/7 world now. No matter what business you are in, to be most competitive, you need information from which you can make better decisions as quickly as possible. Our mission here at SportsBoard is to enable coaches and camp operators save time, save $$$$, and improve productivity and efficiency.
At SportsBoard, customer service starts during the sales process. If we can’t deliver timely, high-quality customer service during the sales process, why would you ever adopt and use SportsBoard for a process that is so vital to your coaching success?
Customer service must continue after customers subscribe, and it comes in the form of answering calls/emails any time of day. We do our very best to exceed your expectations, not just meet them, but we are not perfect and there will be times when we make mistakes.
That said, we continue to receive great feedback about SportsBoard and how quickly we are able to add new features. Katie Doolittle from Towson Women’s Lacrosse recently said “I can’t believe how quickly you guys added Grad Year to the Export feature. I asked for it one day and it was there the next; you guys are awesome!”
So, our first priority is to deliver solutions and customer service that exceed our customers’ expectations. Step #2 is delivering a product that is continually and perpetually enhanced. Listening to our customers’ needs and enhancing SportsBoard to meet those needs is paramount to our customers’ (and our) business success. We will never be one of those software vendors who “finishes” its products. Every single week we are adding new features and capabilities to SportsBoard to make it the “super-system” for assessment. This commitment is evidenced by the 300% increase in functionality in SportsBoard since our initial release in February 2012!
SportsBoard contains new recruiting features that enhanced our original version, like:
SportsBoard now also can be used for more of the calendar year than just recruiting activities. As a result of signing on Duke Men’s Basketball, we now offer to all of our customers:
For camps, SportsBoard also now offers a way to generate more revenues from camps. Camp directors can collect and distribute video and PDF evaluations for campers within minutes of the end of the camp using SportsBoard. The benefits SportsBoard enables for camps include:
Simply put, our mission is to make SportsBoard so functional and easy-to-use that coaches at all levels of sports can’t live without it. We believe our greatest service to our customers is to provide the absolute best product today, and a roadmap for on-going efficiency gains into the future. We will never sit still on our product.
By doing all of this, we hope to change impact coaches’ lives in ways they could never conceive of before. And if we are successful, then we will have provided a tremendous service.
Shot Charts using “Simple” mode for rapid entry of shot data.
—Pierce Freeman, iOS Developer
Designating games to “watch” on game schedule. After uploading event schedules to your SportsBoard Server account, on Scout-Setup-Games you can designate “watch” games which appear highlighted in green on the SportsBoard Server, iPad app, and iPhone app. The ability to view an entire schedule and quickly identify the highlighted games is very convenient, powerful and time-saving tool during the chaos at any event!
—Stephen Kiraly, Inside Sales
The ability to visually track shooting tendencies as well as a goalies performance against those tendencies. This is a great tool for coaches or parents looking for the upper edge.
—Deanne Brock, Inside Sales
Use the analytics to your advantage to view your top players based on your ratings of them!
—Jack Dagley, Inside Sales
Have “auto-Noticed” on, so when any type of note is recorded for a player, the status changes to “Noticed”.
—Spencer Homich, Inside Sales
Using weights to find recruits that fit the program best.
—Mitchell Cde Baca
Pinch with 5 fingers to close the current application.
—Pierce Freeman, iOS Developer
Keyboard shortcuts for commonly-used sentences/phrases, perfect for text notes in SportsBoard Apps. Once acronyms and their respective meanings have been created, you can quickly plug in the abbreviation and the full sentence will display. Thus saving time spent staring at the iPad screen typing!
To do this go to Settings—>General—>Keyboard—>Add New Shortcut
—Stephen Kiraly, Inside Sales
Now you don’t need to rely on third party software to type smiley or emoji characters as the iOS 5 and 6 include a built-in Emoji keyboard.
To type a smiley or emoji character, tap the “International” key on the keyboard (or touch and hold the key, then slide to Emoji), a plethora of emoji characters are then at your fingertips.
On my device upgraded to the iOS 6, the Emoji keyboard is enabled by default. In the iOS 5, you can enable it in a few steps:
1. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard
2. Tap “International Keyboards” and “Add New Keyboard…”
3. Select “Emoji”
Apple: “iOS: Understanding emoji”
—Deanne Brock, Inside Sales
Closing apps you have open to improve performance (double-tap home button, hold down any app, and hit the red minuses)
Apple: “iOS: Force an app to close”
—Jack Dagley, Inside Sales
Double-tap the spacebar at the end of your sentences to add a period and a space to start the next sentence.
—Spencer Homich, Inside Sales
Settings > General > Accessibility > Invert Colors
Apple: “iOS: Configuring accessibility features”
—Mitchell Cde Baca
SportsBoard is proud to announce its first department-wide customer: The University of Maryland.
As they prepare for their jump to the Big 10 Conference, the Terrapins committed to a large block of SportsBoard subscriptions which will initially be used by the football team and men’s and women’s basketball teams. Baseball, soccer, tennis and others will follow next year.
The department plans to use SportsBoard for recruiting, scouting, player development, player efficiency ratings (PERs) and integrating with their video editing systems.
“We are thrilled to be the first college program to adopt SportsBoard’s revolutionary technology throughout our athletic department,” Maryland Athletic Director Kevin Anderson said. “SportsBoard’s paperless system of recruiting and assessing players will make our coaches more efficient and that should translate to more victories in all playing venues.”
We look forward to helping Maryland take advantage of significant cost savings and efficiency gains from utilizing SportsBoard, and to seeing them blaze the trail for other athletic departments to consider.
