The concept for SportsBoard Scout came to Gregg Jacobs five years ago as he watched his son try out for his club soccer team.

“The coaches were completely overwhelmed,” Jacobs remembers.  “They were doing the best they could to make decisions about which players belonged on what teams.  It was challenging, especially when all they could look at was their hand-written notes on their clipboard.”

But once Apple developed and launched the iPad Jacobs put his own idea for a digital clipboard for coaches into motion. 

Jacobs started West Shore Technologies, Inc and in eight short months West Shore’s revolutionary scouting solution is taking off at all levels of sports – pro, college, high school and club.

Endorsers of Jacobs’ vision include the U.S. Men’s National Soccer team, Scotland’s powerhouse professional club Celtic FC along with several prestigious club coaches, all of whom understand the enormous value of the SportsBoard Soccer Scout. 

“The response we are getting reflects the demand for computerized efficiency tools in coaching,” said Jacobs. “We’ve merged the simplicity of the iPad with sophistication of server-based enterprise software solutions running in the cloud, and coaches are quickly realizing they can spend more time analyzing players and making decisions and less time on busy work required to input the data for the same analysis and, hopefully, the same end-result.” 

Thomas Dooley, the U.S. Men’s National Team’s assistant coach, believes that SportsBoard Soccer Scout has arrived at precisely the right time and that soccer is ready to fully embrace technology. 

"This is the first software I've seen for a hand-held device that would expedite player evaluation in a quick and simple manner,” he said.  “I've seen Soccer Scout and it would work very well at all levels, especially College and Club where coaches have so many players to evaluate at one time and need to track players over a period of time in order to measure their progress."

In addition to making waves throughout soccer, West Shore Technologies has also developed software for basketball, lacrosse and volleyball, and it will soon begin rolling out scouting iPad apps for baseball, football, softball, hockey, field hockey, and rugby.

“SportsBoard will change the way scouting is done, which will change sports forever,” Jacobs said. “I’d like to think West Shore Technologies could, on a very small scale, do for coaches what Apple Computer has done for the consumer.  And we intend to leverage Apple’s success to create our own.”

 

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