During high school, as a baseball player with friends across the sport, I noticed a severe inefficiency in how top talent was scouted and found. I knew several players who should have been recruited by colleges in seconds but were struggling, sending hundreds of highlight videos to coaches, while other kids with worse film were getting scouted and receiving offers. The way to reach coaches seemed extremely ancient: package yourself into a video, then email a bunch of them. Some players would create highlight videos and constantly promote themselves on YouTube and other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, wherever coaches lived.
Athletes at this level are trying to go professional, so why was there no professional network for athletes, the same way LinkedIn is for everyone else? A place dedicated to students posting their highlights, putting all their relevant information in one profile, and keeping up with players and friends across schools. And for coaches, a far easier and more efficient way to find top talent and get the data they need to make actionable recruitment decisions. That was MOSD: an iOS and web application for doing exactly that.
- Modeling an athlete-first profile: positions, weight, GPA, and school sit alongside the social identity, so a coach gets recruiting-relevant data at a glance.
- Organizing highlights with a sport-specific taxonomy (lifts, tackles, sacks, class year) so coaches can browse a player the way a scout evaluates one.
- Designing a full social experience (home feed, search, posting, video highlights, and profiles) purpose-built for the athlete and coach relationship rather than a general audience.
MOSD was built as an iOS app first, with a companion web application, centered on rich athlete profiles with a featured highlight section and categorized content tabs.