Inspiration: Our inspiration for Tennis Connect came through our own personal experiences, as we, being tennis players, seemed to have a common problem when wanting to play tennis. Collectively, we found it hard to find courts near us, look for an appropriate partner to play with, and to have a space for the tennis community. To solve all of these problems in one application, we created Tennis Connect.
What it does: TC allows users to find tennis courts through an API implemented through the Google-Maps open source API. In addition, users can find a partner to play with based on multiple criteria such as skill level, age, and even distance. Lastly, users have the option to post and answer questions in the forums tab of our app where players feel a sense of community.
How we built it: We built this app through React-Native, and combined it with the implementation of Firebase/Firestore to store data points and users. We also used an open-source API from Google to add the map to our main Court Maps tab. Lastly, we used a dataset online that contained thousands of tennis courts in the US to add to the app.
Challenges we ran into: The main challenge we faced when building this application was efficiently and effectively looping through our data set to display on the map in the Court Maps tab. If we showed all the data points from the dataset on the map, the application would be very slow, and sometimes even crash, so we had to find a way to loop through the points that were a certain distance away from the user.
Accomplishments that we're proud of: We are most proud of learning how to properly use Firebase to store data points such as users and their information. This was the first time we were using Firebase, and we think that we were able to do a pretty good job of learning and implementing many features of Firebase.
What we learned: We learned how to collaborate effectively with teammates, and we learned the valuable skill of dividing and conquering. Additionally, we were able to communicate with each other in a manner that all of us knew what to work on, and knew the status of each other's progress on the application. Lastly, we were able to learn how to collaborate through programs such as GitHub, and Discord where we made the entire coding process much simpler.
What's next for Tennis Connect: In the future, our goal is to expand Tennis Connect so that it is the main application for tennis players who want to connect with others, and find courts that are near them. In addition, we want to create a proper plan that would allow us to upload this application to the AppStore, which would in turn allow us to look for profitability opportunities. When looking at this perspective, we want to make sure that the name TC spreads throughout the tennis community. We plan on doing this by promoting our app at local tennis tournaments, and possibly gaining sponsorship from tennis influencers who could further promote the app.
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