About PracticeStar

Success in athletics requires superior fundamentals on core skills, such as dribbling and shooting a basketball, passing and catching a football, or kicking a soccer ball. Players who master these skills will rise to the top of their sport.

Superior fundamentals, in turn, develop through repetitive practice. A player who repetitively practices a core skill with good technique will develop muscle memory over time, until the player executes the skill to perfection without thinking about it.

Often, the repetitive practice required to develop muscle memory must be done "at home" -- meaning outside of organized team practices. A coach can use team practices to instruct players on fundamentals, but for players to develop muscle memory, players need to practice the skill at home.

PracticeStar facilitates this at-home practice. Coaches define the drills that they want players to do at home, give assignments to players, and use PracticeStar's coaches' dashboard to monitor player progress in real time.

For players, PracticeStar turns at-home practice into a friendly competition or game. PracticeStar motivates players to work on fundamentals in several ways:

  • Leaderboards. For every drill a coach creates, the players are ranked on a leaderboard that is visible to the entire team. Players are motivated to work on fundamentals so they can rise on the leaderboard.

  • Prizes. Coaches have the option of defining prizes that will be given to players to reward them for hard work. For example, the coach might award a gift certificate to the top 3 players who spend the most time working on a drill over a season. Players are motivated to compete to earn those prizes.

  • Assignments. PracticeStar makes it easy for players to track their progress. When a coach creates an assignment, PracticeStar automatically emails the assignment to the players (or their parents/guardians). The player can check off the assignment as "complete" by clicking a link in that email.

PracticeStar can also be used to run off-season competitions. Teams can use PracticeStar during the off-season to retain skills acquired during the sports season and maintain good conditioning.

In short, PracticeStar helps coaches and players by facilitating the at-home practice necessary to develop superior muscle memory on fundamnetal drills. We hope you enjoy using PracticeStar!