CHICAGO –Davyeon Ross, co-founder and COO of ShotTracker, recently presented the ShotTracker TEAM technology to a group of youth basketball coaches and influencers.
ShotTracker’s TEAM technology tracks ball and player movement in real-time through shoe mounted sensors, tech-filled basketballs, and ceiling monitors. The basketball data startup can track everything from player efficiency ratings and optimal lineups to simple box scores and also provide practice reports to every player and coach as soon as they are done via the company’s app.
With just less than 30 employees, Merriam, Kan.-based ShotTracker works with big-time Division I NCAA basketball teams, has filed almost 17 patents, and boasts Magic Johnson and former NBA Commissioner David Stern as investors.
Now the company hopes to bring its technology to youth basketball players, coaches, parents and the masses.
“We want ShotTracker to be for gyms what Wi-Fi is to coffee shops,” said Ross, who spoke as part of the “Technology: Transforming Youth Sports” panel at the Jr. NBA Youth Basketball Leadership Conference.
“Our ultimate vision is that ShotTracker will power every gym across the world.”
Get The Latest Sports Tech News In Your Inbox!
Ross is confident ShotTracker’s practice and game reports are so easy to understand that less tech-savvy coaches at the youth level will be able to grasp all of the new stats that would be thrown at them. “Data helps coaches have more reasonable discussions with players and parents,” Ross said.
Ross understands parents and coaches fear that using technology to track advanced stats could bring out the worst, most brutally competitive side of youth sports. But Ross thinks having the data and stats can make basketball more fun by further gamifying the sport.
“We try to give the data to communicate the positive,” Ross said.
“Technology is being placed in the hands of these young kids, and they are different from when I played…They want to know; they want to consume this stuff; they embrace technologies.”
ShotTracker’s COO, who graduated with a B.S. in computer science from Benedictine College while playing basketball, spoke about the power and scope of the company’s real-time stats technology.
“It has the ability to show a team’s shooting percentage with more than five passes,” he told the audience. “If you have 18 players and 18 balls shooting on six different hoops, we can still capture all of that data.”
ShotTracker can work on any number of courts, including massive sports complexes with dozens of courts. The technology is able to determine what players matter on what courts and “fence out” the rest.
Ross was extremely sensitive to the fact that ShotTracker’s sensor-filled Spalding basketball felt no different than a regular ball. He said that one of the things he was most excited and proud about was that the NAIA players “couldn’t tell there was tech in the ball.”
Some youth teams and organizations already use ShotTracker TEAM and sometimes choose to include the price of the shoe tags, which cost about $25 each, in the price of a uniform or tournament. ShotTracker also works with groups that use the “roller skating model, and buy 25 tags and have people check them out,” Ross said.
Ross, along with moderator Jeremy Goldberg of LeagueApps, Dr. Travis McDonough from Kinduct Technologies, Anwar McQueen of Hudl, and Cathy Horton Entrepreneur of Sweat X Sport, were invited by the NBA’s youth basketball outreach and participation program to both demonstrate and speak about how technology can and will transform youth sports.