From the Hudl Blog

By Brendan Hall

This girls soc­cer pow­er has long stood out for its devo­tion to film analy­sis. Adopting Hudl’s auto­mat­ed report­ing has only super­charged their abil­i­ty to play with­out thinking.

Before DVDs, before 8mm cas­sette tapes, and well before your aver­age soc­cer team invest­ed thou­sands into dis­sect­ing every inch of the pitch, Todd Kelly was already a film buff. 

But when the Loveland (Ohio) girls soc­cer head coach says ​“you don’t know how excit­ed I was” to adopt Hudl, he means it. 

Version 1.0 of Kelly’s film break­down process a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago was a bear, near­ly wear­ing out the fast-for­ward and rewind but­tons on his VCR. Minutes stretched into what felt like eons as he searched for the right moments to pin down. 

This was a process that typ­i­cal­ly took sev­en to 10 hours of his week. But to take it to the same depth that he does with Hudl? He says that would have tak­en him ​“about 20 to 24 hours”. With Assist reports, he’s doing it in as lit­tle as five.

“We couldn’t do what we do now with­out Hudl,” Kelly says. ​“There’s no way.”

In the days before a match, play­ers get a game-plan­ning pack­et that can exceed two dozen pages, using screen­grabs tak­en from Hudl film. With every data point on Assist reports tied to video, cre­at­ing one is sur­pris­ing­ly easy. 

Need to see how a scor­ing chance came about? Kelly clicks to the mark on the shot chart and takes the freeze-frame he needs. Wondering why they’re so strong in the mid­field? Kelly can open up the pos­ses­sion and pass string charts, see how their attacks built up, and stop where he needs to. No more search­ing blind­ly through an entire half of footage.

This work­flow allows the Loveland coach­es to com­mu­ni­cate robust infor­ma­tion in sim­ple terms. A typ­i­cal pack­et is whit­tled down to five talk­ing points: 

• Three things they need to do well to win.
• Two things they need to elim­i­nate from the opposition. 

And then on game-day morn­ings, head coach Todd Kelly tells them to take that pack­et and ​“throw it in the trash”. They’re done thinking.

No prob­lem, coach. Everything’s already com­mit­ted to mus­cle memory.

Streamlined Corner Kick Reviews

Loveland has a well-earned rep­u­ta­tion for mas­ter­ing cor­ner kicks. And with it, con­fi­dence that they’re nev­er out of a game. So nat­u­ral­ly, this is the first thing Kelly looks at when he gets Hudl Assist reports on his game and scout films. Clicking the cor­ner kicks col­umn on the game report pop­u­lates them all in one neat playlist.

As such, Loveland ded­i­cates expan­sive time prepar­ing set pieces. It’s not uncom­mon to spend a half-hour of every prac­tice on this area, and hours dis­sect­ing them on Hudl.

On game nights, the Tigers may have as many as 16 set plays on their menu, depend­ing on how the defense lines up. That also means play­ers have to be pre­pared enough to know, in an instant, which of those plays to run.

“For us to be able to do that gran­u­lar and that lev­el of detail comes from watch­ing us on film and what our oppo­nents are doing,” Kelley says. ​“So that we can pre­pare our kids, ​‘When you see this, because we’ve seen it on film of our oppo­nents, this is what you need to do, this is what [set piece] you need to run.’”

Pass String Data Makes a Difference

If you were to run Assist reports on Loveland’s 2017 state cham­pi­on squad, you would have found the Tigers were very direct, with few pass strings. This meant at times bypass­ing their skilled mid­field, to take advan­tage of some excep­tion­al tal­ents both at the back and up top.

This past sea­son, Loveland’s per­son­nel sug­gest­ed they’d be able to effi­cient­ly string pass­es togeth­er through the mid­field. But there were some issues. By look­ing through the pass string data on his team, assis­tant coach Dan Donovan made two key discoveries:

1. When the ball was played to a Loveland play­er with an oppo­nent clos­ing down, they were turn­ing the ball over too quick­ly.
   ​“It wasn’t that they don’t have a good touch, it was that the touch was in the wrong place.”
2. Some of their off-ball move­ment was sub-par. Their runs didn’t stretch the defense enough, nor were they timed cor­rect­ly.
   ​“It was still being, you know, stand­ing behind two defend­ers too late, and it caus­es us to have two or three touch­es on the ball-car­ri­er before the per­son was in the window.”

As a result, the Tigers made sig­nif­i­cant changes to their prac­tice reg­i­men to work on those fix­es. The pay­off was anoth­er region­al final berth. And with it, proof that con­firm­ing your hunch­es with visu­al data strength­ens your coach­ing lessons.

That goes for scout­ing, too. Loveland finds that the data on pass strings tends to reveal a lot right away about an opponent’s style of play. 

For instance, if your oppo­nent has few­er pass strings, that means they’re habit­u­al­ly play­ing direct. They’re look­ing to win the ball and imme­di­ate­ly play it for­ward, find­ing their tar­get down­field as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. More pass­es stringed togeth­er sug­gests a more pos­ses­sion-ori­ent­ed, build-up approach. They might knock it around the back line, try­ing to cre­ate pass­ing lanes by draw­ing oppo­nents out of position.

“You have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate all three of those things that are impor­tant in play­er devel­op­ment — phys­i­cal, visu­al, and the emo­tion­al belief.” Donovan says of Assist. ​“That’s how they’re going to work hard at it, repeat it, and not let it become a bad habit again.”

Crawl Before You Walk

The advan­tage of Assist is easy to under­stand. Donovan’s advice to coach­es new to Hudl is to focus first on the essen­tials. That means a two-step process:

1. Understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
2. Plan prac­tices around that knowledge.

Seems sim­ple, right? But it’s easy to get car­ried away at first.

“Just do those two things, before you get to any­thing else,” he says. ​“You just have to try. But I do believe that if you go and think about every­thing you can do, it becomes too over­whelm­ing to start.”

***

Hudl Assist doesn’t just empow­er your coach­ing staff to take your analy­sis sub­stan­tial­ly deep­er — it lets you do it in far less time. These reports are easy to digest. And with every stat tied direct­ly to video, you’ll give your­self count­less hours back while dou­bling down on details you nev­er knew before.

Learn More | Take a Demo

 

By Eric Moses

From the Hudl Blog

Head coach Colton Bryant explains why junior col­leges offer stu­dent-ath­letes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op and still reach the next level.

Regardless of what you’ve heard from coach­ing staffs across the coun­try, Columbia State women’s soc­cer head coach Colton Bryant knows the ​“Division I or bust” men­tal­i­ty is incor­rect. How does he know? It starts with Bryant’s own background. 

When he was a play­er, Bryant com­mit­ted to Kentucky. But an ACL tear lost him a schol­ar­ship to play for them. Turns out, this was a bless­ing in disguise.

Bryant’s mind­set had to change after the injury. He focused on con­trol­ling the con­trol­lable — with Div. I soc­cer now out of reach, he decid­ed to play at an NAIA pro­gram, Martin Methodist College. Two years lat­er, after a third knee injury had him switch from the field to the coach­ing staff, Bryant helped Martin Methodist take home the NAIA nation­al title. He still tru­ly believes it’s the ​“best divi­sion in the country”.

Today, as a coach of a new junior col­lege soc­cer pro­gram (cur­rent­ly play­ing their sec­ond sea­son), Bryant pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for his ath­letes to grow on the field and, more impor­tant­ly, in the class­room. His thinks of his job as a devel­op­er — his task is to push play­ers in all aspects of life and get them noticed by larg­er programs. 

“It’s not just about the sport, it’s about aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, too” said Bryant. ​“In Tennessee, we have the best nurs­ing pro­gram in the state. Not Vanderbilt, not Tennessee, but lit­tle Columbia State.”

During recruit­ment, he tells coach­es and pos­si­ble recruits how his pro­gram doesn’t focus on the lev­el they’re play­ing at. To him, it’s sim­i­lar to work­ing a 9 – 5 job. You need expe­ri­ence. If an ath­lete comes to his pro­gram, they’ll get actu­al, on-field expe­ri­ence at the col­le­giate lev­el. And two years down the road, they’ll stand a much bet­ter chance at get­ting into a Vanderbilt or a Georgia because of it. Makes sense, right?

“Throw out the divi­sion, recruits,” said Bryant. “‘If [Columbia State] com­pet­ed in Division I, would you come here?’ If the answer is yes, then fol­low that instinct over the stig­ma of division.”

There’s anoth­er key com­po­nent to the appeal of junior col­lege soc­cer: tuition and cost of liv­ing. Compare tuition between Vanderbilt and a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege near­by. In two years, a play­er would be look­ing at sav­ing some­thing like $30K while still gain­ing expe­ri­ence. Now he or she can step into a Division I pro­gram, know­ing they have what it takes. They’ve already devel­oped their game and found their nat­ur­al posi­tion. Being $30K less in debt than the per­son lin­ing up across the field is a real­ly nice bonus.

Bryant wants stu­dent-ath­letes to know the truth about junior col­lege-lev­el play — there are end­less ben­e­fits. ​“I’ll con­tin­ue to do the lit­tle things to make my pro­gram more appeal­ing to the naked eye, ­and we will always pro­vide top-notch train­ing to those ath­letes com­mit­ted to us,” said Bryant.

But high school and club coach­es need to be telling their play­ers too. There’s no need to only look for Division I pro­grams. To learn more about Columbia State women’s soc­cer, or get in con­tact with Coach Bryant, vis­it their web­site. 

This article was provided by Coaches Toolbox

A list of personality traits that successful athletes tend to have in common.

You probably don’t agree with all of these and would change the wording on some of them, but my hope is that this stimulates your thinking on how you can more clearly define and list for your athletes what you feel leads to success.

We all have our own definition of success. I like John Wooden’s definition: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Or, you could use some of these as ideas for your athletes in a system similar to Jon Gordon’s One Word concept from his book One Word That Will Change Your Life

A starting point for creating your own list…

DRIVE: Desire to win or be successful; sets and maintains high goals for themselves in athletics; responds positively to competition. Desires to attain athletic excellence.

AGGRESSIVENESS: Believes one must be aggressive to win; will not allow others to push them around in competition.

DETERMINATION: Willingness to practice long and hard; often works out willingly by themselves; persevering, patient, and unrelenting in work habits. Works on skills until exhausted.

GUILT-PRONENESS: Accepts responsibility for own actions; accepts blame and criticism even when not deserved; willing to endure physical and mental discomfort.

LEADERSHIP: Enjoys the role of leader and may assume it spontaneously; attempts to influence or direct others in a positive way.

SELF-CONFIDENCE: Have unfaltering confidence in themselves and their capacity to deal with things; handles unexpected situations well; speaks up appropriately for beliefs to coaches and players.

EMOTIONAL CONTROL: Tends to be emotionally stable and realistic about athletics; will rarely allow feelings to show and performance is not affected by them; not easily frustrated by bad breaks, calls or mistakes.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS: Accepts strong criticism without feeling hurt; can bounce back quickly from adversity; does not need excessive encouragement from the coach.

COACHABILITY: Receptive to coaches’ advice; considers coaching important to becoming a good athlete; accepts the leadership and cooperates with authorities.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: Tends to be exacting in character, dominated by a sense of duty; will not attempt to bend rules and regulations to suit own needs; places the good of the team above personal well being.

TRUST: Accepts people at face value, believes what the coaches and teammates say and does not look for ulterior motives behind their words or actions; tends to get along well with teammates.

The Way to Victory

Victories of life are won not on the fields nor in the marts where the deci­sive struggle takes place, but in the obscure and forgotten hours of prepara­tion. Success or failure lies in the hands of the individual long before the hour of the final test comes.

In the higher fields of success, there are no accidents; we reap precisely we what we have sown and nothing else; they do well precisely what they have prepared to do and they do nothing else well.

The world puts its force into us when we put ourselves in right relation with it: Experience makes us constantly wiser if we know how to rationalize it: Time deposits all manner of treasure in our imagination and memory if we hold the doors open.

Nothing is lost upon a person who is bent upon growth, nothing wasted on one who is constantly preparing for their work and life by keeping eyes, mind, and heart open to nature, people, books, and experience. All things that we have seen, heard, known and felt come to our aid at the critical moment to make our thought clear and keep our illustration luminous, our speech eloquent and inspiring.

This post was provided by Change the Game Project

By John O’Sullivan

Imagine youth sports was a room. On one end of the room, there is a door where everyone enters. At the other end, there is another door where everyone leaves.”

So began a long conversation I had with Peter Hugg, the Head of Football (soccer) for Football New South Wales in Australia, on my recent trip to Sydney. Peter has a long history in the sport, having been involved in three World Cups, three Olympic games, as well as head of Football for Western Australia and high-performance manager for Soccer Australia.

“We spend a lot of time finding ways to get kids to come through the entry door, but we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the burn rate when they get into the room. So many kids just pass right through, out the back door and onto the next thing. We have to put our focus on the kids in the room!”

I couldn’t agree more. And I believe nearly every sport governing body in every sport feels the same way. All but two sports in the US are losing more players each year than they are adding (hockey and lacrosse are the exceptions). It’s not just about getting kids in the game; it’s about keeping them.

How can we keep them? Sports across the United States are currently releasing their version of Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) plans, called the Athlete Development Model in the US. These mimic plans in countries such as Canada and Australia, and they provide an important framework for providing athletes with the right type of experience at various ages and stages of their development.

My worry is that the message of LONG Term Athletic Development gets emphasized and marketed, often at the expense of the one thing that actually keeps kids in sports for the long term: S.T.A.E.

Short

Term

Athlete

Engagement.

In our recent podcast with Dr. Jean Cote, one of the world’s leading researchers into coaching and youth sports development, he said it best:

“If sport was only about skill development…and was not practiced by people who have emotion, and care and are human beings, if they were robots, then you would say yes, just do skill, just do deliberate practice…but the problem is that sport is not only about skill development…and sport specific skill. Sport is about motivation, interest, drive, grit, persistence, and resilience, and those types of subjective skills are very important aspects of elite athletes and long-term sport participation and that is the problem… these thing are harder to measure… so we default to skill, and practicing repetition of backhands…But people are not robots, we have to teach the other qualities that combine motivation and interest. That is what play and diversity of sport will do.”

In other words, before we pour in the long-term deliberate practice aspects of sport, focused on what today’s training will provide to an athlete five years from now, we must simultaneously engage our athletes in the short term.

There is no long-term development without short-term engagement! The two go hand in hand.

I do believe that our sport governing bodies see the importance of this, and the ADM done right, as USA Hockey has done, has led to more athlete engagement, and increased retention rates (they have increased their retention of 9-14-year-olds to 91%!). They are keeping the kids in the room!

So how do we do this? How do we keep our athletes engaged in the short term and developing over the long term? Here are some critical qualities that every experience, on a weekly basis, should have:

Enjoyment: we have said over and over, this is the cornerstone of any long-term participation. Kids, especially young ones, will not voluntarily continue to pursue something they do not enjoy. Telling a 7-year-old “This will matter when you are 18” means nothing. It may be true, but it does not make it relevant to him or her. But working on those aspects of development in an enjoyable manner will keep them engaged. The best way to do this is playing lots of games, and ditching the lines and overreliance on unopposed activities. Let them play, add constraints and conditions, manipulate numbers and space, but let them play!

Developing Competence: Kids need to see and feel themselves improving. We cannot default to “fun games and fooling around” at the expense of teaching. Getting better is one of the primary ways children describe “fun” in sports. A quality, engaging sports experience has to teach technical and tactical aspects of the sport, and help children on the path to improvement and mastery. We can teach through games, add defenders and decisions, and kids will develop competence quicker than blocked, repetitive training of a single skill in isolation. Competence and engagement go hand and hand when done correctly.

Nurturing Confidence: This is one of the byproducts of competence. A child who works hard and sees himself improving gains confidence. That confidence is enhanced, or shattered, by the coaches, parents, and team dynamics (more about this later). Our job as coaches and parents is to ensure our athletes are growing in confidence, not by shouting false platitudes at them, but by helping them have a growth mindset, teaching them to embrace the process of improvement, and never letting our words and actions in emotional situations – such as the ride home – sap their self-esteem and belief. We can teach, correct errors, and still help athletes believe in themselves.

Building Connection: Positive team dynamics are a top “Fun factor” for kids in sport. This means coaches must intentionally and continuously build positive, highly-engaging team dynamics, even in individual sports (see the PGA Junior League in Golf for an example). Great teams drive engagement, and engagement keeps kids in the game. By the same account, lousy team dynamics, infighting, lack of trust, bullying, and the like will never promote long-term athlete development nor will they help engagement.

Giving Kids Autonomy: If you want engagement, kids need to own the experience. We can introduce them to sports, but eventually, the experience must become theirs, and not ours. It must be their dreams, their goals, and their intrinsic motivation to play, not those of the adults. Be aware of your kids’ goals for playing, be in tune with when they might need a break or some time away, and pay close attention that sport is something they do, not who they are.

Providing Time Off: Even professional athletes get time away from a sport to recharge their batteries, heal up physically, and refocus. Time off allows athletes to work on movement, strength, flexibility, and injury prevention. It also allows them to pursue other interests, hobbies, and passions. If a child loves to play a sport, a few weeks or even months of downtime from organized practice and competition will not reduce their love of the game. It will make them really excited and hungry to play again. They might even play some pickup. That is engagement.

Intentional Character Development: It is our job to intentionally teach character through sport, not only because we want kids to have the character to sustain their talent, but because developing character also creates engagement. Sports help develop grit, resilience, integrity, empathy, respect, and other traits that help them find success. When they work through the process and embrace the struggle to overcome an obstacle or learn a new skill, that feeling of accomplishment and confidence is intoxicating. Athletes want more of that. They say “what’s next?” That is engagement.

The introduction of Long Term Athlete Development Models in sports are an important step in integrating the technical and tactical development of young athletes with their psycho-social needs, emotional capabilities, and ages and stages of development. If we want to keep kids in a sport for the long term, it is critical to have a roadmap based on something more than a hunch.

But we must always remember the words of Dr. Jean Cote. These kids are not robots, who simply need programming and technical practice. They are human beings. They are individuals who do not so easily conform to a one size fits all roadmap. They do not develop in a linear fashion. They need interest, motivation, persistence, and enjoyment. We can never, ever forget that within each stage of LTAD, we must focus every day on STAE

Short.

Term.

Athlete.

Engagement.

Great programs, exceptional coaches, and informed parents know that you cannot have one without the other. They know that it’s great to get kids in the door, but that we have got to make that room a great place to be where they want to hang out a while!

So what do you think, can we do both?

Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.

By John O’Sullivan, Founder of Change the Game Project

Coaches, imagine if there was a way to gain insight, understanding, and connection with your athletes by asking a simple question? There is. let me explain how.

A few years back, I coached a talented, yet underperforming sixteen-year-old girl I will call Maddy. She was incredibly inconsistent in her play and often looked very depressed. She was definitely lacking in confidence. Her friends told me she was unsure whether to continue playing or not. After trying multiple ways to help her play the way I believed she was capable of, I called her in for a meeting.

I spent the first 30 minutes of our time together offering my thoughts and suggestions, but as I rambled on and on I could tell she was simply tuning out. Here I was, the highly experienced coach, offering my years of wisdom, and she wasn’t listening.

“Maddy, if you don’t start taking my advice, I can’t really help you. I don’t know what else to say,” I shrugged.

“It’s all good stuff coach, but none of that stuff helps me with my problem,” she replied.

“Really?” I exclaimed. “Then perhaps you better tell me what the problem really is, because I clearly am not helping right now.” I waited for her answer.

‘It’s my Dad,” she said. “Whenever you play me on his side of the field, he is constantly telling me what to do, where to be, when to be there, and I can hear him and see him getting angrier and angrier with me. I think I play a lot better when I play on the side where the teams sit, and away from the parents. At least that way I can’t hear him.”

I thought about it for a second, and she was right. She did seem to play better on the team side of the field. I could honor this request, without affecting the team much. “I can help with that Maddy, no problem at all. Why didn’t you ever say something about that before? I can certainly help you with your position, and more importantly, I can go and speak to your Dad. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“Because you never asked,” she said stone faced.

My heart sank. She was right. All season long, I watched this girl struggle with her play and her confidence, and all I did was get upset and frustrated with her. I tried to solve the problem, without ever knowing the problem. All I had to do was ask one simple question, but I never did.

“What is one thing you wish your coaches knew that would help us coach you better?”

It is the question that changes everything. Not only for the athletes but for us coaches too.

Kyle Schwarz is a third-grade teacher at Doull Elementary School in Denver, CO. A few years back, she decided to start asking this question of her students in order to get to know them better, and the responses blew her away.  As she details in her great book What I Wish My Teacher Knew, and as written about in this great article, the answers to this question open up a whole new level of insight from teacher to student, enabling a deeper connection, and the ability to teach the child, not simply the subject. As some kids wrote to her:

“I wish my teacher knew that my dad works two jobs and I don’t see him much.”

“I wish my teacher knew that I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework.”

“I wish my teacher knew that my dad got deported when I was 3 and I haven’t seen him in 6 years.”

“I wish my teacher knew that my family and I live in a shelter.”

“I wish my teacher knew that I am smarter than she thinks I am.”

Kyle Schwarz has certainly tapped into something here, not just for teachers but for coaches. The more we know about the kids we coach, the better we can serve them as both athletes and as people. When I read her book last year, my first thought was of Maddy and her situation with her father. I thought “why don’t coaches ask this same question from their athletes?”

Recently on our Way of Champions Podcast, Dr. Wade Gilbert, Jerry Lynch and I discussed how this year I started asking the kids I coach to finish the following sentence. We have also been suggesting to coaches at our workshops to have their athletes finish the following sentence, in writing, to be collected by the coach:

“One thing I wish my coaches knew about me that would help them coach me better is…”

The insight this exercise has given me to the kids I currently work with is unbelievable. Coaches who have done this with their teams have shared some of the responses they have received as well. Collectively, to protect anonymity, some of the things we have learned from our athletes are:

“I don’t like to be first in line to demonstrate new things. I usually don’t understand how to do things until I see them once, and it is kind of embarrassing when you ask me to go first.”

“When I make a mistake I would much rather you pull me out and tell me what to fix than yell it out in front of everyone.”

“I get really nervous when I am not playing well and my dad is at the game because he gets really upset in the car on the way home.”

“I don’t like to shoot because my old coach used to yell at me whenever I missed a shot, so now I prefer to pass.”

“I am sorry we don’t stay at the team hotel but my dad says we need to camp to save money.”

“I would practice more at home like you ask me to but last time I went to the park some older kids stole my ball.”

Coaches, the more our kids know how much we care, the more they will care how much we know. When we connect, when we show them respect and encouragement, when we communicate well, and when we listen to what they have to say, we build trust and let them know we care. The best way I have found to be a better listener is to start by asking good questions. And the best thing I have ever asked my players is for them to complete the magic sentence:

“One thing I wish my coach knew about me that would help him/her coach me better is…”

Please try this with your teams, and share with me what you learn. Don’t make the same mistake I made years ago with Maddy, assuming she didn’t care or was simply unteachable. Ask her! I am confident that it will have the same impact on your coaching as it did with mine. Good luck

Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.