YCTSport: A Smart Digital Platform for Enhancing Student Engagement and Sport Management in Higher Education

The increasing need for technologically sophisticated and captivating solutions in higher education has extended to sports management and student involvement. Traditional approaches to organizing sporting events in schools are often inefficient, fragmented, and insufficient for promoting participation. This article presents the design, development, and evaluation of YCT SPORT, an interactive, student-focused digital sport management platform made especially for Yaba College of Technology (YCT), Lagos, Nigeria. Event scheduling, team and player registration, real-time push alerts, in-app messaging, performance monitoring, and AI-assisted personalized suggestions are all integrated into a single web-based interface. Students' autonomy, competence, and relatedness are prioritized in the Self-Determination Theory (SDT)-based system design. The platform was developed using ReactJS, Node.js (Express), and PostgreSQL. Unit, integration, black-box, white-box, performance, and usability testing were conducted with forty pilot participants. Usability testing yielded a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 78.5, indicating good usability. The findings demonstrate that YCT athletics fosters a vibrant athletic culture, streamlines administrative processes, and significantly improves communication effectiveness. This project provides a scalable and replicable methodology for administering digital sports in higher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.