Case Study
How Sidearm Sports Made AI Proficiency a Competitive Advantage
To compete as a digital sports engagement platform, every employee at Sidearm Sports had to be AI-first. This is how they got there.
“When we rolled out Claude Code, my VP of engineering saw a big difference between the people who had gone through the Section training vs. the ones who had not — they were able to adapt much faster and use Claude Code much more efficiently."
By the numbers
90%
of employees at AI proficiency baseline
130
AI use cases identified and in active use
The quick summary
Sidearm Sports partnered with Section to build AI proficiency across their entire organization, starting with the leadership team and expanding from there. George Scott, president of Sidearm, mandated Section for all employees and led by example from day one.
The results came quickly. 90% of employees have completed Section’s Basic AI Proficiency program. They've built hundreds of AI use cases and recently expanded the partnership to include two workshops to give their VPs and directors more targeted guidance on leading with AI.
The impact showed up in unexpected places too. George noted that Section-trained engineers are adapting to Claude Code significantly faster and more effectively than their untrained peers – a concrete downstream signal of what genuine proficiency looks like versus nominal training.
The results came quickly. 90% of employees have completed Section’s Basic AI Proficiency program. They've built hundreds of AI use cases and recently expanded the partnership to include two workshops to give their VPs and directors more targeted guidance on leading with AI.
The impact showed up in unexpected places too. George noted that Section-trained engineers are adapting to Claude Code significantly faster and more effectively than their untrained peers – a concrete downstream signal of what genuine proficiency looks like versus nominal training.
About Sidearm Sports
Industry: College sports technology platform
Company size: 100+ employees
Location: United States
Section use cases: AI-powered coaching, instructor-led workshops
The challenge
Tools without transformation
Sidearm Sports builds digital platforms for premier college sports programs across the United States. Every time they visit a partner school, they get asked the same question: how are you thinking about AI?
The external pressure was real. But internally, the picture was familiar: enthusiastic early adopters in some pockets, people using AI for personal tasks but not meaningfully in their work, and significant variance across teams. George knew without a real standard and real accountability, adoption would stay uneven — a handful of people push forward, others wait, and the gap between them grows.
“The head of the company needs to lead from the front. You should never be asking employees to do something you haven't already done as a leadership team.”
The diagnosis
Without a real standard and real accountability, adoption would stay uneven.
The proposal
The Section partnership
George Scott had been a Section subscriber since fall 2024, before any company-wide program existed. When Sidearm decided to scale AI across the organization, Section was the natural partner.
Section coaching for all employees
Hands-on, highly personalized coaching on AI skills and use cases
Basic proficiency certification
A defined baseline standard every employee is expected to reach
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Use case discovery and creation
Section’s platform surfaces hyper-relevant AI use cases to every individual and helps them build and save custom use cases
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Hands-on, instructor-led workshops
Section is rolling out 2 workshops to activate VPs and managers to lead their teams as AI advances
“Once people knew the Section platform was coming, they were hounding us: ‘When can I get in there?’ Once enrollment was open, I had not even communicated it to them yet they were already in the platform building skills and use cases.”
Why this matters
Lessons from Sidearm + Section
Leadership goes first.
George didn't mandate from a distance. His own experience – the early frustration, the breakthrough, the daily practice – gave him credibility and specificity when he set expectations for others.
Tie AI to performance, and to careers.
Formal review criteria create accountability. Framing AI proficiency as a career skill (not just a company initiative) creates personal motivation. Both together work better than either alone.
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Leaders have to demonstrate the tools, not just endorse them.
Public use of specific tools, with specific results, normalizes the behavior in a way that all-hands announcements don't.
Peer sharing beats top-down communication.
A Slack channel where real people share real use cases and real time savings builds social proof that leadership messaging alone can't create.
Your internal capability is your external differentiator.
For companies whose clients are also navigating AI, demonstrating that your whole organization is AI-fluent is a real competitive signal, not just a talking point.
Make
AI
a practice your team can run.
