Coach Evaluations with Penny Homework

Canadian Elite Volleyball Academy — Development Update • April 22, 2026

Coach Evaluations with Penny Homework

What & Why

Give every academy coach a low-friction way to evaluate athletes and have Penny instantly turn that evaluation into a personalized at-home practice plan for the athlete. The platform already has the building blocks (skill evaluation wizard, event-based 6-category rubric, Penny homework generator, coach-event assignments, event registrations, parent emails) — this task wires them into one cohesive coach workflow and opens up access so any verified coach can evaluate any athlete, while still surfacing the most relevant athletes (those registered for events the coach is assigned to) first.

Done looks like

• A coach lands on a new "Evaluate Athletes" page (sidebar entry visible to anyone with a coach role).
• The page shows a primary list grouped by the coach's assigned events: each event card lists the athletes registered for that event with a one-click "Evaluate" action.
• Below the assigned-events section there is an "Evaluate any athlete" search field that lets a coach look up any athlete in the academy by name and start an evaluation from the result.
• When the coach clicks "Evaluate" they pick the form: Skill Evaluation (age-appropriate skill template wizard) or Event Rubric (Technical, Tactical, Physical, Attitude, Teamwork, Coachability). Both forms reuse the existing UIs/endpoints.
• On submit:

- The evaluation is persisted to the existing tables ( + for the skill form; for the rubric form) with the originating recorded when the coach started from an assigned event card. - Penny automatically generates a homework / practice plan for the athlete based on the new evaluation (no extra click required). - The generated plan appears on the athlete's Penny page in a new "Homework from your coach" section, newest first, with the coach's name, the date, and a short summary of which areas it targets. - A parent/guardian email is sent immediately announcing that Penny has new homework for their athlete, with a link to the Penny page.

• The coach sees a confirmation toast and the athlete is marked "Evaluated" on the page so the coach knows who they've already done.
• All routes are authorization-checked: a coach role is required; the "evaluate any athlete" path is logged for audit.

Out of scope

• Per-evaluation email to parents announcing the evaluation itself — the existing daily evaluation summary email continues to cover that. Only the homework email is sent immediately.
• Changing what's measured in either evaluation form (skill templates and the 6-category rubric stay as they are).
• Building a new athlete-facing chat — Penny's existing chat and homework UI are reused.
• Bulk evaluations (selecting many athletes and grading at once) — single-athlete flow only.
• Coach payroll / hours impact from completing evaluations.

Steps

1. Open up the coach-evaluable athletes API. Update the existing endpoint that lists athletes a coach can evaluate so it returns two sections: (a) athletes grouped by the coach's assigned events (joining → ) and (b) a search endpoint that accepts a name query and returns any academy athlete. Add the audit log entry on the search path. 2. Build the Evaluate Athletes page and sidebar entry. New page under with the assigned-events list at the top and the "evaluate any athlete" search below. Each athlete row shows name, age group, last evaluation date, and an "Evaluate" button that opens a small chooser (Skill / Rubric). 3. Wire the two existing evaluation flows into the chooser. Reuse the existing skill evaluation wizard and the existing 6-category rubric form. Pass the originating (when present) so it's saved on the evaluation record. 4. Auto-generate Penny homework on submit. Add a server-side hook that runs after a successful evaluation save: build the prompt from the new evaluation (mirroring the prompt the athlete-side flow uses today), call Penny via the existing AI client, persist the result as a new "homework" record linked to the athlete and the evaluation. 5. Show homework on the athlete's Penny page. Add a "Homework from your coach" section to the existing Penny page that lists the persisted homework records for the signed-in athlete (or an athlete a parent is viewing), newest first, with coach name and date. 6. Send the parent notification email. When new homework is generated, send a single email to the athlete's parent/guardian (using the existing email sender) with a deep link to the Penny page. Skip if the athlete has no linked guardian. Do not send an additional "evaluation completed" email — the existing daily summary still handles that rollup. 7. Tests and docs. Add Vitest coverage for the new API behavior (assigned-events grouping, open search, audit log, homework auto-generation triggered after submit) and a focused page test for the Evaluate Athletes screen. Update with the new feature.

Architectural notes

• Re-use existing tables — do not introduce a new evaluation table. Add a new (or similarly named) table only if needed for the homework records; otherwise extend the existing Penny daily-set storage if it already accommodates per-evaluation entries.
• The "any coach → any athlete" capability must require a verified academy coach role; never expose it to the public or to non-coach roles.
• The Penny generation call must run server-side using the existing AI client and respect any rate limiting already in place.
• The parent email path must reuse the existing email sender and template style (do not introduce a new transactional provider).

Relevant files

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Canadian Elite Volleyball Academy
elitevolleyball.training