By John Davis
Community Relations Director
Sports and technology have been combined perfectly with the new MOJO app. Launched during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, MOJO was created to make the role of volunteer coaches much, much easier, while also making sports more enjoyable for the participants and THE parents who support.
MOJO has recently partnered with the Oxford Park Commission to help the coaches of soccer, flag football, baseball, softball and basketball prepare practices in a more efficient, and fun, manner. Those that will be leading OPC soccer teams will get exclusive training content from FC Barcelona. If you sign up to coach flag football this fall, you will be introduced to information from the NFL Flag program. They are just two of the many professional and national sports organizations MOJO partners with. Others include Major League Baseball, Junior NBA, US Youth Soccer, Say Soccer and Project Play.
Tom Arnett, who serves at the MOJO Chief Customer Officer, recently traveled to New Orleans for the NFL Flag Football Summit where 400 flag football operators from all over the country were in attendance. The feedback he received there was full of excitement for what the app can offer.
“We know that it is always a challenge to recruit volunteers to coach,” Arnett said. “Our most recent data shows that volunteers that use this return at six times the rate compared to volunteers who didn’t have a tool like this. We think we’re helping solve this problem of recruiting volunteers and retaining the ones that you can get in the door.”
MOJO is also making it more fun for the participants by providing interaction through technology. A coach can make a detailed practice plan, communicate what is being taught to the parents, and then reward the player for the skills they’ve learned. There is also a library full of information that allows coaches to interact at an improved level.
“Ninety-six percent of the coaches told us that their seasons were a lot more fun and a lot less stressful for them as coaches because they had the app compared to anything they’ve done prior to that,” Arnett said. “Everything is able to customized, everything is age and skill appropriate. We want MOJO to be a place where everyone comes to gather and find what they need. We wanted it to be user friendly. There is also a whole library of content on how to coach their child off the field through social and emotional learning on how to help their kids.”
The two co-founders of MOJO are Ben Sherwood and Reed Shaffner. Sherwood is Rhodes Scholar and journalist. He has worked as Tom Brokaw’s executive producer and has been the executive director of Good Morning America and the president of ABC News. Shaffner started his career at Microsoft then moved into gaming where he served as the manager of Zynga. In 2014, he founded Workpop, an HR technology company that was acquired by Cornerstone on Demand.
“I’ve een in youth sports technology for 12 years and he never met anybody like the two founders. Everything is to their vision,” said Arnett, who has served as the CEO of Blue Sombrero and the General Manager of Sports Connect. “Ben was a huge sports fan and sports has meant everything to him. He realized that when he went to coach his son’s youth baseball teams, he had no idea what he was doing as a volunteer coach despite following the games, knowing the games. He knew a lot about sports, he just wasn’t equipped to teach kids how to learn sports and love sports. He realized at that moment that the volunteer delivery system for sports was flawed. It created a very uneven sports experience for kids. He set out determined to make sure every kid had a great experience no matter what mom or dad was randomly selected to teach them sports. That’s why he left behind his media career and started MOJO.”
MOJO has been active for the past year and a half, and they have been adding more and more sports to the lineup. The production quality for all of the coaching resources is second to none despite the product being so new.
“Our goal is to provide the best coaching resources ever provided to volunteer coaches,” Arnett said. “The kids can get the perfect experience by taking advantage of these resources. Kids have so many choices and it has become harder to get them to play sports and to stay in sports because it’s not fun for them. We want to make sports fun for them, and providing quality training and helping organize the perfect practice plan will help tremendously. We want to be the most customer friendly organization anyone has worked with and be the highest quality coaching resource that has ever come to youth sports.”
Additional information about MOJO, and using the app, will be coming to soccer coaches through their emails over the next few days.