Our approach
Score what you can describe. Practise what you scored. Check it again.
RinkTracker grew out of a club's own marking rubric: nineteen skills, each with a ten-level description of what good looks like, scored three times a season. We kept everything that worked and built the loop that was missing in between.
The rubric
Nineteen skater skills and fifteen for netminders, each scored 1 to 10 against written levels, in three bands.
A club's rubric is the heart of its coaching. Ours began as a UK junior club's marking rubric: nineteen skills in four groups, each with three or four criteria described at every level from 1 to 10. That is more detail than any federation evaluation form we surveyed, and it is why that club's coaches could agree on a score.
RinkTracker keeps that structure and fixes what a PowerPoint could not. Scores are numbers, not pictures of numbers, so the app can show change. Each skill has an expectation for each age group drawn over the scale. And a skill a coach has not seen enough of is marked as not observed, which the original rubric defined but never used.
Clubs keep their own skills, names and colours. Underneath, every skill maps to a shared set of domains, which is what lets the off-ice library, the drill library and the goal suggestions work for any club's rubric.
- Forward skating
- Backward skating
- Edge work
- Speed and acceleration
- Possession
- Passing
- Wrist shot
- Snap shot
- Slap shot
- Offensive with the puck
- Offensive without it
- Defensive with the puck
- Defensive without it
- Driving the net
- Physicality
- Hockey IQ: the game
- Hockey IQ: the rules
- Professionalism
- Leadership
has off-ice exercises with video demos built on the ice
The loop between checks
A score on its own does not make a player better. The weeks between scores do.
After each skills check the app suggests two or three goals from the scores, by fixed rules a coach can explain to a parent: the lowest bands first, then anything that dropped, then the lowest scores, and always one goal that builds on a strength. Each goal is one realistic step, with the rubric's own words for the next level, a drill for the ice and exercises for home.
The family starts on the goal, logs practice, and the player says how it is going. A coach reviews each goal every fourteen days. Every off-ice workout with the right exercises counts as practice on the goal automatically. At the next check, the report shows what the goal did: the score it started at, the sessions behind it, and the score now.
Children's data done properly is not a cost. It is the product.
Families see their own child, coaches see their teams, and a player with their own login sees only themselves. Clubs are the data controllers; parents hold consent; everything that touches a child's record is audited.
Who sees what
Access is enforced by the database on every request, not by hiding a button.
- Every player on their teams
- Scores, goals, reviews
- Medical and emergency contacts
- Who is training at home
- Their own child only
- Progress, goals, reports
- Practice and workouts
- Yes, no, maybe for events
- Themselves only
- Goals, practice, reports
- Their own ratings
- Never coach notes or others
- There is no messaging between users. Communication is structured check-ins and one-way club announcements, which keeps children away from adult-to-child chat.
- Video clips exist only where the family has allowed them, and play through links that expire. Exercise demo videos come from one public YouTube channel and load only when a player presses play.
- Families can download everything held about their child, and ask the club to erase it.
- No under-13 logins. A player's own login needs a parent who can consent, and ends the moment that consent is withdrawn.
Eight things we hold to
- 01
Development, not administration
No payments, no registration, no team chat. It is a coaching tool. Everything in it exists to make a player better and to let the family see how.
- 02
A score is a description, not a verdict
Every level from 1 to 10 has a written descriptor for each skill. A 6 in edge work means the same thing to every coach, and a parent can read exactly what a 7 looks like.
- 03
Age and ability are separate
The scale measures the skill. What is typical for a U10 or a U14 is drawn over the top, so a U10 can score 9 against U10 expectations without pretending to be a U16.
- 04
Not seen is not a zero
If a coach has not seen enough of a skill to judge it, they say so. Not observed is its own state, left out of averages and explained to parents.
- 05
The coach is the author
Templates and drafting help a coach write quickly, but a named coach approves every word a family reads.
- 06
No leaderboards, ever
Children are measured against the club's descriptors and their own last score, never against each other. Team views show averages only.
- 07
The player is in the loop
Players work on their own goals and rate their own progress. From 13 they can have their own login. The coach's rating sits next to the player's.
- 08
The work between checks is the point
Three checks a season say where a player is. The ten weeks between them are where they get better, so that is where the app spends its effort.