pacerlist

A recruiting platform that helps high school runners find the college running program that fits them, designed and built end to end, from brand to working product.

Sports recruiting · 2026 · in progress

  • Brand identity
  • Product design
  • UX
  • Web app
  • Data
  • AI features
A walk through PacerList, from search to shortlist to email.
PacerList school search in a browser: school cards with division, conference, sports and a city running grade, filtered to men's outdoor D1 and D2
Search over a thousand programs, each graded for its city's running environment.
Two browser windows: a school card on its Athletics tab beside the same school on its Academics tab, with the Arts & Media programs open
Athletics and academics for every school, side by side.
Three phone screens: the school list, an expanded school card and the filter drawer
The same search on a phone: the list, a school card and the filters.
The filter drawer open over the school list: division, sports, gender, state, school type, city running grade and academic programs
Narrow a thousand programs to the few that fit.
The signed-in dashboard in a browser: saved schools, personal bests and races logged, the shortlist and recent times
A dashboard that shows where a runner stands.
Two browser windows: the ranked list of saved schools beside the recruiting status menu open on one of them
A shortlist that works like a recruiting pipeline.
Three phone screens: the dashboard, the ranked shortlist and the status menu
The shortlist and its status menu, on a phone.
The projection chart in a browser: race results by grade and a projected line through senior year
Personal bests, projected to a runner's first college year.
Two browser windows: the email drafter form beside the list of drafted recruiting emails
An AI drafter writes a first email to a college coach.
Three phone screens: personal bests, the projection chart and the email drafts list
Progress, projection and email drafts on a phone.
Two browser windows: the How PacerList Works page beside the pricing page
How it works, and what it costs.
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the problem

Picking a college running program is a guessing game. There are over a thousand NCAA programs, the information is scattered across school sites and results databases, and a high school runner has no easy way to see where their times would actually fit on a team. As a head cross country coach I watched athletes and their parents piece it together with spreadsheets and guesswork, even the five I coached who went on to run in college.

the approach

I designed PacerList as one place for the whole search. Runners filter 1,081 NCAA programs by division, conference, region, academic major, and a grade for each city's running environment. Each team's real race times show how a runner's own times would stack up. A shortlist works like a recruiting pipeline, from researching to committed, and runners track their personal bests with projections through senior year. An AI drafter writes a first email to a college coach. The interface is dark and high contrast, with streaks of light like a track at night.

key decision

Show runners real team times, not rankings. Rankings say how good a program is; they don't say whether a runner would make the team or race at the top of it. PacerList pulls each program's race results and shows, event by event, the fastest, middle, and slowest scoring times, so a runner can see exactly where they would fit.

the outcome

PacerList is live in invite-only early access, with free browsing and two paid plans. It was built and shipped over five months of steady releases, alongside my agency work.

1,081
NCAA programs
180+
Updates shipped
2
Paid plans

credits

client: PacerList (my own product)

my role: Founder: brand, product design and development

when: 2026, ongoing

pacerlist.com(opens in a new tab)

more work

see all work