Inspiration
Allison, who brought the idea of Pickle to us, noticed that as a former softball players and umpire, softball coaches had a lot of responsibilities both on and off the field. She wanted to build a tool that would make coaches' jobs more efficient, in turn leading to better team results and smoother setup prior to games.
What it does
Pickle is a companion app for softball coaches. It allows them to keep track of the players on their rosters, view advanced statistics, and build rosters for each game. It also centralizes drills, equipment deals, and upcoming regional tournaments found online.
How we built it
We built our frontend using React Native, which allowed us to efficiently make a cross-platform mobile design. The backend was set up with Python and Fastapi, and data was stored in a SQL database. Testing was done with Expo, a platform that allows developers to see their changes in real time.
Challenges we ran into
React Native was largely unfamiliar to most of us, so learning the language enough to build the app to have an appealing aesthetic took time and many repetitions. Server set up was also tricky as it is difficult to keep our backend running and communicative with only our personal computers.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We felt that we made outstanding progress through only 3 weeks of work. Given the breakdown of what Pickle was meant to be, we were able to add and improve many of the original features planned for the app, and did them in a close to professional manner.
What we learned
We learned how much is involved in web/mobile development because so much was packed into our prototype. We also were able to coordinate and execute most, if not all, of what we had planned at the start of the sprint by taking care of our individual responsibilities and being adaptable to changes.
What's next for Pickle
We plan to add additional features, like printing a roster card from a handheld printer, which would be close to enough to push a beta version of the app to the public.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.