iPractice builder allows coaches to formulate practice plans (left) based on instructional video from the Championship Productions library (right).
Championship Productions, an Ames-based company that specializes in instructional video and literature for sports coaches, helped release a new iPad app earlier this month as part of the company’s efforts to develop new channels for distributing its trove of instructional content.
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Championship Productions teamed with Justin Labagh, the men’s basketball coach at the City College of San Francisco, and San Francisco-based developers to create iPracticeBuilder, an iPad app that allows coaches to build and store practice plans that incorporate videos from the Championship Productions library. The app, which is currently tailored to basketball coaches but will eventually be available for all sports, costs $24.99 and is available for purchase in the App Store.
The Championship Productions library contains instructional video for close to 20 sports and features exclusive content from notable coaches like Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and Geno Auriemma. The company has added about 300 new videos to its library in both 2011 and 2012.
Bill Bergan, who then was the coach of the Iowa State University track team, started Championship Productions out of his basement in 1976. Initially a provider of instructional books, the company shifted to producing mostly VHS tapes in the mid 1980s and evolved again, to DVDs, in the early 2000s. Today, the company employs 25 people and, with the release of its first app, is in the midst of another major makeover.
“I think this is the direction everything’s going, so we certainly want to be there,” Lonnie Kragel, the company’s product development director, said today in a phone interview. “I think we have probably the best content in the world, so we want to make sure it’s available to people how they want it, when they want it, on what device they want it.
“It has value intrinsically, but I think if you can deliver it in a way that’s meaningful and useful to people, they’re going to be more responsive to it.”
Credits: Screenshots from iPracticeBuilder in the App Store.
