It’s mid-July and fall sports are less than a month away from reporting. Planning for this year’s student-athlete programming is in full swing so with that in mind, we want to provide you a brief update on Game Plan and a look at what’s ahead for us and our college athletics offering.
Game Plan is more focused than ever on our mission – guiding 100% of athletes through 100% of their journey. As the only platform that integrates mobile first education, career services and mentorship, all uniquely for an athletics organization, Game Plan is seeing first hand how it is impacting the journey.
Our customers include over 70 athletics organizations, including 20 new college athletics departments, as well as professional athletics organizations like the NBA and KC Royals and sponsors like Wells Fargo and Enterprise Rent a Car.
As Game Plan passionately studies the athlete experience, our goal is to help advance the standards of student-athlete development:
- Provide “at your fingertips” access to world class educational lessons across every subject matter related to the student-athlete experience in one, common platform.
- Progress from “measuring participation rates” to measuring an athlete’s educational growth and development across specific subject matters. Measuring development is now here.
- Enhance athletics sponsorship through the creation of career opportunities for student-athletes.
- Engage student-athlete alumni nationally through scalable, sustainable mentorship programs. Unlock the power of your athletic alumni.
Student-Athlete Education and Development
Game Plan has partnered with leading experts in the fields of:
- Academic success
- Allyship – new!
- Athletic identity – updated!
- Career development
- Diversity and inclusion – new!
- Financial education – updated!
- Healthy relationships – updated!
- Health and wellness – new!
- Life skill development – updated!
- Sexual violence prevention – updated!
- Sports wagering and integrity in sport – new!
Our goal of providing our customers a comprehensive library of educational resources motivates us to seek partnerships with the field’s leading subject matter experts. In turn, Game Plan’s ability to engage thousands of collegiate student-athletes monthly through our learning management system attracts the best and brightest minds to deliver their lessons through Game Plan.
In addition to covering a myriad of topics, the Game Plan platform allows schools to create custom, branded courses. This allows administrators to further engagement with their own content, voice and brand. Custom content has been a huge area of growth inside of Game Plan, with schools covering subjects such as:
- Freshman onboarding
- Nutrition & diet
- Culture & history
- Compliance topics
- Alumni development & many more
Schools all over the country are experiencing higher efficiency and effectiveness while building upon in-person engagements.
Next Level: Measuring Development
For the spring semester 2019, on a monthly basis, over 50% of the student-athletes in Game Plan participated in eLearning and or assessments. To put that into perspective, the average DI athletics department hosts 11 events annually for which, participation rates for the student-athletes range from 6% to 21% (Game Plan’s 2019 Industry Report).
As Game Plan continues to reach new levels in engaging the student-athlete, we are introducing the next phase of student-athlete development, measured development. Game Plan’s new pre and post eLearning measurements introduce new ways to benchmark the development and growth of a student-athlete across a range of topics.
The first curriculum with this design is Game Plan’s Sports Wagering and Integrity in Sports Curriculum. Throughout the school year, you will see Game Plan organizing its eLearning curricula to the new measured development model.
Career Services
Game Plan’s Career Marketplace manages an athletics departments career opportunities for their current and alumni student-athletes all in one place. Athletics departments can now move away from email management to new forms of career measurements, including job and employer views, job applications and career invitations.
Partner athletics departments, like Illinois Athletics, are activating sponsorship opportunities within Game Plan with corporate sponsors and alumni alike. This fall, you will continue to see growth of Game Plan’s employer sponsorship offering, enhancing career opportunities for current and alumni student-athletes.
Mentorship
Game Plan’s Mentorship Marketplace is not only gaining momentum as an opportunity to enhance the current student-athlete experience, but as an innovative way to engage alumni student-athletes.
Varsity Clubs and Alumni Development professionals nationally are working with Game Plan to maximize their value with alums, all while helping current student-athletes in their journey.
This past school year, mentors nationally have been on-boarded and are actively engaging student-athletes through Game Plan.
For the athletics department, they now have insight to their alumni, measurements on mentorship participation and a new feedback loop to improve the overall student-athlete experience, both from a current and alumni’s perspective.
Summary
Game Plan works with over 1,000 college athletics teams nationally providing comprehensive student-athlete development solutions. In 2019 alone, over 20 new college athletics departments have joined the Game Plan platform. Our mission is to help guide 100% of athletes through 100% of their journey drives us to provide our customers the most innovative tools available to fulfill our mission.
If you are interested in learning more on our updates and plans for this coming academic year, please contact us!
