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NetWork — Building Digital Infrastructure for Community Basketball

Inspiration

I grew up playing AAU basketball, then high school, and later rec leagues through my twenties. No matter where I played, the same problems followed every league: schedules lived in someone's head, rosters were scattered across group chats, payments were tracked manually, and finding a quality court in a new city was surprisingly difficult. One experience that stuck with me was sitting in a Houston hotel lobby after Google Maps directed me to a CrossFit gym instead of a nearby outdoor basketball court. That frustration became the seed for NetWork.

Basketball is built on teamwork, communication, and trust. Ironically, everything surrounding the game is often held together by spreadsheets, text messages, and volunteer effort. I wanted to build the digital infrastructure that the sport has been missing.

What I Learned

This project reinforced an idea I've believed for a long time:

The problem isn't the court—it's everything around the court.

The real opportunity wasn't another sports app. It was creating a platform that removes operational friction while strengthening local communities.

I also learned how valuable existing open datasets can be. OpenStreetMap already contains thousands of mapped basketball courts with information about lighting, surfaces, and accessibility. Rather than recreating that data, I focused on making it accessible through an intuitive conversational interface.

Finally, I learned that community software succeeds when it integrates into tools people already use instead of asking them to adopt yet another platform.

How I Built It

NetWork is designed as a Slack-native application that simplifies every aspect of running youth and recreational basketball leagues.

Core features include:

Team communication inside Slack
League scheduling and calendars
Roster management
Court discovery powered by OpenStreetMap
Media galleries
Polls and announcements
Premium gym and court booking
AI-powered assistant for finding courts, answering questions, and coordinating league operations

The architecture combines modern AI with traditional web technologies:

Player
    │
    ▼
Slack @NetWork Agent
    │
    ▼
MCP + AI Agent
    │
    ▼
FastAPI Backend
    │
    ▼
SQLModel
    │
    ▼
PostgreSQL (SQLite during development)

A Salesforce managed package mirrors the application's data model, allowing organizations already using Salesforce to integrate NetWork into their existing operations. The same backend is also exposed through MCP, making it compatible with AI assistants beyond Slack.

The business model is intentionally simple:

[

\text{NetWork}

\underbrace{\text{Free Court Finder}}{\text{community benefit}} + \underbrace{\text{Premium Booking}}{\text{sustainable revenue}} + \underbrace{\text{Open Data Layer}}_{\text{cities & recreation departments}} ]

The free tier serves players everywhere, while premium features support gyms, leagues, and organizers.

Challenges We Faced

The biggest challenge wasn't technical—it was deciding what not to build.

There are countless features that could be added to a sports management platform. Instead, I focused on solving three recurring problems:

Making court discovery effortless
Eliminating spreadsheet-driven league management
Keeping all communication where organizers already spend their time

Another challenge was designing an application flexible enough to serve multiple audiences simultaneously—players, parents, coaches, gym owners, league commissioners, and eventually municipalities—without becoming overly complicated.

On the design side, creating a brand identity that communicated sports, community, and technology took many iterations. The final concept combines athletic imagery with modern digital symbolism to represent a connected network of players, courts, and communities.

Looking Ahead

NetWork is named after what it ultimately becomes—a network of networks.

Every court, player, team, league, Slack workspace, and AI agent becomes part of a larger connected ecosystem. My vision extends beyond league management. I want to help communities discover public spaces, organize healthy activities, support local recreation, and give cities better insight into how their facilities are actually being used.

If a young player in a city I've never visited can simply type: