Athletics Australia throws its weight behind PLAYBuilder
The PLAYBuilder app has made a global splash since being released last year.
Developed in Canada by Momentum IT Group and Sport for Life, it has become an integral part of sport and physical literacy organizations across North America. Now, thanks to a new partnership with Athletics Australia, it’s also being embraced Down Under. The curriculum app provides coaches and instructors with the tools and lesson plans they need while also giving them the opportunity to create and share their own.
“Athletics Australia was looking to develop an app or a web-based platform to house our athletics program content to make it easier for our coaches to have access to resources when coaching out in the field. The idea was to make our program resources accessible through a phone or tablet wherever the coach was delivering the program, with the aim of ensuring consistency of program content and enhancing coach effectiveness,” General Manager of Growth and Development Adam Bishop of Athletics Australia told Sport for Life.
“We had a clear plan of providing content outlines and incorporating video of each activity, so that the coaches could get a visual reference of the activity, as well as following the program of activities, setup, and equipment requirements. In the process of considering building this service, we stumbled across PLAYBuilder.”
Athletics Australia is a national sport organization representing over 50,000 athletes, coaches and officials. They needed an adaptable solution that could work in multiple sport contexts. Bishop and his team liaised with the Sport for Life team, requesting a demo, and quickly realized that the underlying system delivered the exact functionality and level of customization they required. That’s when they pulled the trigger, entering into a license agreement and beginning to amass their program content.
Their plan is to roll out PLAYBuilder to their accredited coaches by late 2019.
“PLAYBuilder is an excellent platform because its makes it easy to build content and, in turn, make it accessible as an educative tool for coaches or for use in a live coaching environment to enhance coaching efficacy and effectiveness,” he said.
Sport for Life’s overarching mission is to develop physical literacy and improve the quality of sport worldwide. Through knowledge mobilization platforms such as PLAYBuilder, tools and resources are accessible for organizations to bring physical literacy development in their communities to new heights. Collaboration is a key Sport for Life value and the opportunity to work with national sport bodies internationally will allow us to learn from their methods, and develop a more comprehensive and coordinated approach to delivering quality programming at a scalable level.
We believe collaboration makes systems better, both here in Canada and anywhere else on the globe.
“Quality sport and physical literacy experiences require careful, thoughtful planning that takes into account all the elements of our Long Term Development in Sport and Physical Literacy pathway. By using PLAYBuilder, organizations like Athletics Australia can ensure they are providing their athletes with developmentally appropriate activities delivered at the right time through implementing variations of their own development strategies specific to their frameworks at the same time” said Sport for Life CEO Richard Way.
He’s thrilled to see the app being used in exciting new ways.
“Sport for Life and Momentum IT Group originally built the PLAYBuilder app to serve a specific need of The New York Road Runners to ensure quality lesson plans on a large scale of hundreds of coaches delivering to over 200,000 youth annually,” he said.
“Now, many organizations across Canada use it regularly, and soon Australia will experience everything it has to offer. We have been excited by the enthusiastic uptake PLAYBuilder has received thus far and are looking forward to developing physical literacy across Canada and worldwide.”
