Play On — A New Spin on Coaching

Excerpt republished with credit · Section: Propel Pro

Taking a new spin on coaching, with a few quick clicks on a new app called Propel Pro, the process of finding a coach for your budding athlete is becoming easier. Launched earlier this year, the remote coaching platform offers a national online marketplace for athletes to connect with elite and professional-level coaches. Propel Pro offers virtual training, complete with video performance analysis, telestration annotations and live coaching calls.

The idea for Propel Pro grew out of ice hockey dad Daniel Levy's difficulty finding a goalie coach for his son.

"It just dawned on me, how is it possible with the internet, in today's world, that I can't get a hockey goalie coach online to work with my son on drills?" says Levy, CEO, who co-founded the business with his brother Jason Levy, the company's COO.

"The way the world works today, there isn't always another chapter for these professional athletes (who get injured or retire). There's this untapped market of coaches that we can tap into and then match them up with athletes who want training. You really have the demand and supply on both sides of it."

From a simple dashboard on the app, coaches create a profile, set their own rates and availability, and monitor seamless payments. Athletes, from high schoolers aiming for a D1 scholarship to younger children looking to refine their skills, search for coaches based on their needs. They can schedule either a live, virtual one-on-one coaching session or use the "coach on-call" instant messaging and video feature at any time for a session before an upcoming game or practice.

The platform features "video exchange" in which athletes upload video footage to the app from a game, practice or drills. Through a built-in video editor featuring annotation and voice-over tools, their coach will analyze it, telestrate the footage, breakdown plays and provide personalized instruction. The platform's interactive capabilities also include whiteboarding, side-by-side video comparison and real-time drill re-creation.

The platform supports all major sports. The coaches include high-level college players and professionals, such as former NBA player and head coach Eddie Jordan and current New York Mets pitcher Kevin Herget. Propel Pro is in the process of onboarding 8,000 athletes and 700 coaches from clients such as the Manhattan Soccer Club and the Vermont Soccer Association, through which Propel Pro will support the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program.

Propel Pro operates on a revenue-share pricing model, ensuring coaches earn more than the platform. Future plans include offering college advice for athletic recruitment and adding specialty sports, such as cricket and javelin. Levy also wants to partner with school systems to offer an alternative for boosting coaching resources. The goal of Propel Pro is not to replace in-person coaches, but to enrich the coaching experience for athletes, while providing coaches with new revenue streams, Levy says.

"A coach out in Arizona that is sitting at home for most of the day waiting for his students to get out of high school to train them, he can now train athletes in New York that got out of school three hours earlier," Levy says. "It's really an opportunity for both sides of the platform, and on the coaches' side, to build a business for themselves."