Dribble Up Soccer Shooting App Review

The shooting app feature has been removed from the DribbleUp app. It wasn’t perfect but we had a good time with it in the backyard. It’s too bad that the app doesn’t support shooting any longer but the team decided to focus on the Dribble Up soccer skills features over the shooting functionality. You can read more about how we use the ball to help our players get better at foot skills in our Dribble Up Player & Parent Guide.

The Dribble Up soccer shooting app is out and we had some fun with it last weekend. Until now the ball was good for solo footwork and juggling but the shooting game lets you get better along with your friends or family. You can already match your foot skills against your teammates on the leaderboard but the shooting app is fun because you come together to compete.

Our kids tried it out after getting in some touches in the backyard and had a shoot out against an older player who was training with them. It was his first time using the Dribble Up ball and they had fun showing him how the smart ball worked and challenging their shooting skills.

Dribble Up Shooting Setup

While the kids were going through some drills I setup the app for the shooting game. It took me a bit the first time but it’ll be faster now that I know how it works.

From the home screen of the Dribble Up app you select the Shooting tile and it takes you to this setup screen. Basically it gives you instructions on how to setup the shooting game and also has a video that demonstrates the steps we’ll talk about below.

If you press the “Start” or “Let’s Go” button the app will ask you to scan the smart ball. Typically we’re used to scanning the ball when it’s already in the stand but when setting up the shooting you just hold your phone or tablet in your hand and point it at the ball with the app open and put the ball in the scanning circle. That part was easy, peasy.

Goal Tracking Setup

After scanning the ball you put the device in a stand behind the goal and tap the 4 corners of the goal on the app. We used the new iPad stand Dribble Up came out with recently and it worked pretty well, shown in this photo. It can hold a phone or a tablet, it’s pretty adjustable, sturdy, and it folds up and can fit in your pocket so definitely glad we picked one up.

This setup step is what took me the longest. If you’re kneeling right in front of your iPhone to setup the shooting then you block the camera that’s looking at the back of the goal.

So I had to kneel off to one side of my iPhone in order to see the goal for the next step. There’s a hill behind our goal so we were raised up higher than ground level which made it trickier to angle the phone and setup the goal corners.

As you can see in the picture, the next step is to tap each of the four corners of the goal on the screen. This part was pretty easy, my first tap was too high above the top corner but I simply tapped the actual spot and it reset the goal corner.

One thing I would like is if you could put your finger in the middle of the goal and pinch out to draw a rectangle that covered the 4 goal corners. Would be simpler than tapping each corner but after mentioning that to the DribbleUp team it sounds like they’re working on a solution that would be even easier. However, for the time you tap each corner of the goal to let the app know what area you’re shooting at.

One thing I didn’t realize until after we were done is that I tapped the bottom right corner a little too high. I’ll talk a little later on about how that impacted the shooting game but make sure you get each corner in in the right spot.

After the app knows where the goal is you’re finished with that device, it’ll stay behind the goal the entire time and track the shots.

Contest Device Setup

At this point you need a 2nd device with the Dribble Up app that’s your view into how the game is going, we used a newer iPhone for the tracking (iPhone 8) and an older iPhone (iPhone 5S) for the display. Always use the newer model device for tracking since they have a faster processor and better camera. You’re supposed to be able to use a combination of Android and iOS devices with shooting but we haven’t tested that so we don’t know what the experience is like.

Open the DribbleUp app on the 2nd device and the home screen of you’ll see a green ribbon at the top that says something like “Shot Tracking Device Found – Tap to Connect”. Once you tap the ribbon it’ll open a setup dialog, as you can see in the photo.

This is where you tell the app whether you’re working on your shooting by yourself or doing a shooting contest by choosing 1 or 2 players.

You can also tell the app how many shots you want to take. If you’re shooting on your own probably just pick Unlimited so you can keep shooting as long as you want. If you’re doing a contest you can choose between 3, 5, or 10 shots.

Right now only 2 players can compete at once, I imagine as they build out the game you’ll be able to add additional players. The Dribble Up user shoots first followed by a “Guest” player. It would also be cool if multiple players that had Dribble Up handles could all join the same game.

Dribble Up Shooting Game

Once the setup is complete you’re ready to start shooting. As I mentioned, it takes a bit the first time you go through it but it’s simpler in the future once you’re familiar with it.

Shot Accuracy & Scoring Points

Once you enter in the number of players and the number of shots you’re shown a virtual view of your goal in the app. They divide the goal into 18 different zones and assign a point value for each one depending on how valuable a shot placed in that zone would be.

For example, the highest values are 500 points, both upper 90 corners. To the side and bottom of the upper 90 are zones worth 250. Basically the harder it would be for a keeper to save the shot based on where you place it, the more points you get for it.

The other sections are worth 150, 100, and 25 points. The value gets lower for sections that should be an easy save for the goalie.

Dribble Up Shootout

This view is from the middle of a 3 shot match between GoldenTouch and a Guest player. As you can see Golden Touch is winning, 375 – 350 points, but he’s already taken all 3 of his shots and the Guest player still has one left. So all the Guest needs to do at this point is hit the goal and they’ll win.

After each player takes a shot the app dings and shows where it landed and how many points they player earned for it. When it worked the shot tracking was pretty sweet but we did run into two issues as we went through the game.

Goal Alignment

Earlier I mentioned that I had slightly misplaced the bottom right corner of the goal when setting up the tracking. That meant that shots to the bottom right corner of the goal weren’t registered. It made sense after figuring that out when we were finished but was a head scratcher in the middle of the game. So if you have shots that aren’t being picked up at all it could be that you didn’t set up your corners of the goal properly on the tracking device.

Device Connection

The other issue we ran into was with the Bluetooth connection between the tracking device and the viewing device. At one point it lost connection and we had to start the game over again. My son was happy because he was losing the but other player who was ahead wasn’t happy about it. Our viewing device was an older iPhone, an iPhone 5, so not sure if that had something to do with it. When we first started we chose a 10 shot game and were 6 shots in when the connection dropped.

So when we restarted the game we only choose a 5 shot game so we’d be sure to get a winner in case the connection dropped again.

The two shooters were 11 and 20, you can guess which one had the harder shot. The 20 year old shots registered right away every time but once or twice the 11 year old shot’s didn’t register immediately. In those cases the points weren’t awarded for 10-15 seconds after the shot. We didn’t know exactly what was happening in those cases so we just waited for a bit until the shot finally registered and the next player could shoot.

At one point it kind of reminded me of watching an episode of the EA Sports FIFA Live Challenge, pretty neat. When all the tracking was registering it was fun watching the players go back and forth with their shots with the appropriate amount of trash talking in between.

Shooting App Suggestions

After trying out the shooting feature we sent over a few suggestions to the team at Dribble Up.

1) Add a Miss Button

During the second round my son put the ball totally over the goal so it didn’t register at all and the “guest” player couldn’t shoot because the app still thought it was my son’s turn. So he shot again and hit the bottom right post which didn’t register, probably because I messed up the setup as I mentioned earlier.

Finally he took a third shot and put it on goal. Of course the other player was quick to point out that he’d gotten 3 tries to earn points when in reality he should have earned zero points for that shot. It would be nice if there was a “Miss” button so we could indicate a total miss and advance the turn on to the next player.

I imagine at some point the Dribble Up app will be able to register a total miss by itself but until then a “Shank” button would be a nice feature.

2) Allow Game Resume

After we lost connection to the tracking device from the viewing device and reconnected it would have been a lot better if we could have picked up the game where it left off rather than having to restart.

3) Allow Additional Players

It was fun to watch the two players in their shoot out but it would have been more fun if I could have jumped into the contest as well. I’m sure they have plans for this eventually but it’ll be nice when we can have more than just 2 players in a shooting contest. Would also be cool if multiple Dribble Up handles could join a shoot out rather than just 1 Dribble Up user and multiple guests.

4) Game Start Indicator

This one is pretty small but after you finish setting up your game in the app there’s nothing to let you know that you’re done and that the first shooter should start. Some kind of indicator to start the game would be good I think. Perhaps some kind of visual or audio signal to let the next shooter know to go would be helpful.

5) Record the Shot Data

After we were done playing when we stopped the tracking device you could see all the places on the screen where shots had gone. Not sure if that data is saved anywhere but right now there’s no way to see a history of your shot placement. Would be nice to see a history of games and also where your shots ended up.

Summary

Although it has some bugs the shooting feature is pretty slick and I can see us having lots of fun with it on the backyard goal. It’ll be a neat way to create some friendly competition when we’re working on shooting and eventually have a history of shot placement.

The first time you set it up will take the longest as you go through the steps and understand how it all works together. You do need two devices which could be an issue if you only have 1 phone or tablet. I am glad they set it up to use 2 devices because it wouldn’t really have been convenient to have someone running back behind the goal to look at the contest status.

From what they’ve said you can connect across different types of devices, like Android and iOS but we haven’t tried that yet. I’m glad they used Bluetooth rather than requiring an internet connection to have the 2 devices communicate because a lot people don’t have a connection available at the soccer field.

I can see the shooting app have a functional use in additional to just creating some fun competition. If you set it in single player mode you can certainly use the app to track your shots and work on your shot placement. The app won’t lie to you, you’ll know if you’re putting the ball in the best spots and be able to see if you can do it more consistently.

Unless you’re working on your free kicks or penalty kicks I wouldn’t practice shooting a dead ball. How many chances do you get in a game to shoot a ball sitting still in front of the goal? Good to take a setup touch first before you take your shot to help you train like you play. That being said, it never hurts to practice placing your penalty kicks. I’ve already seen many youth games where simple PK’s are sent wide, over the crossbar, or right at the goalie.

Coaches don’t often work on penalty kicks at practice since there are so many other important technical and tactical topics to cover during the relatively short period of time you’re with the coach. However, if you can make the time at home to train your shot then you’ll give your team a boost the next time they run into a PK situation. When the coach asks who’s up for the pressure of the PK it’ll be easier to step up and face down the goalie.

Overall it’s a cool addition to the juggling and footwork in the Dribble Up app and once they implement some version of the suggested improvements it’ll be even better.