Smart Lacrosse Ball Makes Its Way To CES 2025

In 2022, there were 2.1 million lacrosse players in the US. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) had 398 men's and 528 women's lacrosse programs in 2023. For the past four years, lacrosse has been one of the fastest-growing sports in the US.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 7-10, 2025, Get Reps brought their next generation R1 Smart Lacross Ball to the show.

Get Reps' smart lacrosse ball has an electronic brain and uses Powercasts' radio frequency (RF) technology to charge the battery and track performance data, including shot speed, release metrics and reps. It gathers all that data and sends it to the smartphone app for analysis.

The wireless power market is projected to reach US $52.4 billion by 2030.

Joe Pompo, co-founder of Get Reps, said that for the past several years, Get Reps has been working on two critical elements for the ball: data accuracy and durability.

"Early prototypes delivered valuable insights, but developing electronics that could withstand 85,000 Gs of impact while maintaining the natural bounce and feel of a lacrosse ball took time," said Pompo in an email interview from CES.

Pompo says the company's next-generation SmartCore, which they previewed at CES this week, the R1 Smart Lacrosse Ball, brings together professional-grade analytics, a significantly smaller 22-millimeter SmartCore, and Powercast's RF over-the-air (OTA) wireless charging technology, which can deliver power efficiently through over an inch of polyurethane.

"It's ready because every technical hurdle has been cleared, and the result is a battle-tested, league-ready product," said Pompo.

A decade in the making

In 2016, Wilson introduced the first smart football, and Pompo says that the lag in the number of smart balls in the market is almost entirely due to durability challenges.

"Sports equipment endures extreme conditions—impacts, vibrations, weather, and unpredictable player interactions," said Pompo. "Embedding electronics that can survive the extreme impacts of sports is incredibly difficult."

Pompo said it took them nearly two years to perfect this durability alone. "While early smart sports products focused on basic sensor data, we prioritized building a robust, long-lasting SmartCore paired with wireless charging technology that could power devices through dense materials."

"Smart sports equipment wasn't held back by vision; it was held back by physics, and we solved that," he added.

"When we started, other sports already had smart balls on the market—football, soccer, basketball, but during our testing, we realized none of them could withstand the impact and wear-and-tear of real gameplay," said Pompo.

Pompo says Lacross became their proving ground because if their technology could survive the intense impacts of lacrosse, it could handle almost any other sport.

"And for us, it was also about niche dominance," said Pompo. "The lacrosse community is small but fiercely passionate, and adoption happens quickly when something delivers value."

"Lacrosse wasn't just a market — it was the ultimate test bed for our technology," he said.

The tech inside the ball

Pompo says Get Reps' goal has been to deliver a smart ball that feels and performs just like a traditional ball but contains technology that tracks performance data like shot speed, reps, release metrics and ball movement to provide analytics to players and coaches that they can use to enhance performance.

"This performance data automatically updates via Bluetooth to a phone app to provide real-time actionable insights," said Pompo.

The ball has three types of technology: sensors, machine learning (ML), and wireless RF charging.

Advanced sensors with accelerometers and gyroscopes track shots and passes with 1,000 data points per second. ML algorithms help the ball learn each player's unique throwing motion to refine shot speed accuracy and rep detection. Wireless RF charging from Powercast OTA charging technology powers the core of the ball through more than an inch of dense polyurethane.

"Since July 2024, we've refined our machine learning models to improve personalized analytics and optimized our state machine algorithms to measure throwing mechanics more precisely," said Pompo.

Pompo says that its smaller 22-millimeter SmartCore makes it adaptable for every ball sport, including golf. "With machine learning precision, the ball will also be able to adapt to each player's throwing style for more accurate shot and rep detection."

"With the new SmartCore, we're not just showcasing a smarter lacrosse ball; we're presenting a technology platform capable of transforming every ball sport—something that wasn't fully realized in July 2024," added Pompo.

Smart sports balls and equipment

In November 2024, Get Reps signed an exclusive agreement with Kookaburra to develop Smart Cricket and Field Hockey balls using their SmartCore technology. Pompo says they expect those balls to be on sale at the close of Q3 2025.

Pompo says they are developing partnerships for other smart ball products, including a smart hockey puck, smart baseball and softball that can be hit with a bat, and a smart golf ball that will replace expensive simulators and be used in a next-gen version of miniature golf. There is even a smart pickleball paddle in development.