Jason Campbell, Alvin Kennedy and Jeremy Henderson met each other back in fall 2001 at Florida A&M University.
What started off as friends getting together for weekly basketball games would turn them into business partners and founders of a company called JSleeve. Their company has created and designed a wearable sports sleeve that monitors performance diagnostics and records muscle memory of a person’s arm when shooting a basketball.
This should be no surprise, because Campbell, Kennedy and Henderson all received their bachelor’s degrees from FAMU’s School of Business and Industry and Henderson played basketball for FAMU.
Henderson, who originally came up with the idea in 2015, spoke with the Famuan about how the idea for the sleeve and company came from developing and training youngsters in basketball.
“I came up with the idea back in 2015, I live out in Houston, Texas right now and I do a lot of basketball training, coaching and I participate on a youth league basketball board, so the idea kind of came about at that time as I was going through the process of training and developing kids that were a part of the program,” said Henderson. “Shortly after coming up with the idea I reached out to Jason and Alvin just to get an idea if they felt this was a product I could market.”
Henderson said their sleeve isn’t just your average athletic sleeve and connects users to a virtual basketball community within its application.
“It’s far from a regular sleeve, a regular sleeve you just put on for compression and help the elbow with wear and tear but what our sleeve does is it actually has hardware by way of sensors that are embedded within the sleeve that captures the actual data points of your arm moving as it goes through shooting a jump shot,” said Henderson. “In addition to being able to capture the data from the sensors, there is a feedback element where all the data that comes from the sensors feeds into a mobile device, so that mobile device is where all the data analytics can be accessed by the user. The mobile device app also gives users access to the JSleeve community where they can communicate with other JSleeve users with things like king of the court games and the ability to make your profile public.”
Photos courtesy Henderson
Campbell, who also runs a global sports marketing agency called Brand B Sports, has used his connections to receive feedback on the sleeve from professional basketball players. He believes that this sleeve will not only help elevate the game of basketball but other sports as well.
“We have been able to get that type of feedback from WNBA & NBA players about the effectiveness and usefulness of the sleeve. Ultimately, we want this to be a conduit for every basketball player that will allow them to take their game to the next level. Our tag line is ‘Eat, sleep, grind, JSleeve,’ and we really feel like that encompasses the work ethic of all the individuals, the millions of people who play ball and the millions of young men and women out there who want to elevate their game and use data and analytics to create that progression, our roadmap doesn’t just touch basketball but its tennis, golf and a plethora of other sports. Baseball is a sport we feel and know will impact those athletes.”
Chelsea Hopkins, who played in the WNBA and currently plays overseas, says the JSleeve has helped her when it comes to training.
“Any time I’m shooting I always chart how many times I’m making it vs how many times I’m missing. The JSleeve has the capability to do this for you. When you’re wearing the JSleeve, it makes you conscience of your shooting, knowing that you’re being charted. There is so much capability with the JSleeve, the sky is the limit,” Hopkins said.
So far, they have launched a pre-sale campaign on social media and within the first three weeks have received nearly 100 orders. The sleeve costs $170 and access to the app is $10 a month. Campbell, Kennedy and Henderson have pledged to outfit the entire men’s and women’s basketball teams at FAMU with their sleeves.
“This is a revolutionary product, there is nothing else like this on the market, we want people to know that three African Americans from an HBCU have come together to grow and establish a business that’s going to revolutionize not only the game of basketball but other sports as well, where you can effectively accelerate the muscle memory process and we want to try to change the game in terms of being able to monitor your own performance as well as creating an opportunity for folks to have additional increased exposure between scouts and recruit. It will revolutionize the way that they practice, the way that they train and the way coaches’ coach,” Henderson said.
For more information on the JSleeve and the company can be found at https://www.jsleeve.com/ and on social media @thejsleeve.