Getting team content from coaches to players

Every upload lands in review first

Every upload goes into the library under Needs Review. From there, coaches check the tags, add coach's notes, and publish when they're ready. Published content shows up in the players' mobile app, and coaches can move anything outdated to Archive to take it out of players' view.

I went with this instead of publishing straight from upload because tagging in the moment puts pressure on coaches and can lead to lost progress. Some coaches want to put all their content in the library at once and sort it later, and this lets them do that.

Helping coaches organize content

Tags are a tree, but coaches only fill in two levels. The file type (Videos, Documents, or Playbook) comes from the file, so they never see that step. They pick a category, then a subcategory.

Images, PDFs, and docs all sit under Documents. Through initial interviews, we learned that coaches typically have PDFs that mix a drawn scheme with written notes, and we wanted those uploaded as they are. Our in-house lacrosse coach advisor helped define the subcategories.

For files with readable text, AI suggests the tags and writes a description. Our backend dev built the reader. It can't read videos, so coaches tag those themselves. They can edit any suggestion before it publishes.

Taking plays off the whiteboard

Early on, a coach told us plays still live on pen and paper or a whiteboard. Putting that in the tool would save time and cut one more platform. So we built a playbook builder: place players on a lacrosse field, label positions, and draw routes with a pencil tool.

Movement is built frame by frame. Coaches move players on each slide, and the mobile app animates between them. We considered recording a drag in real time, but once several players move it gets hard to follow. Frames make it clear where each player was and where they go next. Competitors used the same pattern, which backed the call.

Player notes, sorted by what they're for

Coaches take a lot of notes on their players, and those notes cover different things: how a game went, what someone needs to work on, which college coaches they've talked to. On the roster, each player has a notes drawer with seven categories: Tryouts, Practice, Game, Evaluation, Development, Recruiting, and General.

We went with categories instead of one free-text field so coaches can pull up a player's notes by topic as they add to them over a season. Same idea as the rest of the dashboard: one place to manage the team.