Track and Field Toolbox

Every Sport Needs Video

by

It’s not just for football — film can and should be a part of every team’s routine. Athletic director Jameson Pelkey explains how his water polo and wrestling teams use Hudl.

We want all of our varsity teams to compete at the very highest level, and in order to do so, we know that they need to be able to review film.

Everyone knows our football, lacrosse and basketball teams review film during their seasons. But what most people don’t know, is our water polo team is doing the same thing.

Make Video Part of the Routine

Our water polo team already practiced a couple hours a day, five days a week, making it a challenge for head coach Jeff Fiore to fit film review sessions into the regular practice schedule.

They started by taking some time out of their Saturday workouts, or an hour out of practice, to review film. It became routine to record Saturday scrimmages, then review the film immediately afterwards.

Time wasn’t the only challenge. There’s no spot or angle to film from that can get the entire pool in the shot. But setting the camera up in the balcony seating area, above the pool, got the best shot possible. And really introduced the benefits of film review.

The coaches started reviewing how our team was spaced in the water. Being able to review the players’ transitions from offense to defense—a big priority—was extremely beneficial. It also helped the counter-defense significantly.

“It’s been awesome for us because our boys have never really been able to watch themselves play on film before, so we record every game, and analyze it over the next few days,” said Fiore.

Being able to review performance is extremely beneficial.

Get Players on Board

Fiore quickly found value in the ability for our water polo players to watch the film on their own time. Since they can view it as many times as they’d like, then have conversations about what was reviewed the next day, they jumped on it right away.

Those team film sessions during practice started showing their worth too. Our coaches could use the film to show players without the ball how they should be moving, or where they should be placed.

There was no real learning curve for our athletes at all. In fact, now after home games, kids basically start reviewing the film as they leave the pool!

A Resource for Every Team

As St. John’s athletic director, I want all of our teams to be able to access this valuable resource. Every team should have the same capabilities and opportunities, whether it be new uniforms, equipment, film, whatever the case may be.

That’s why we have our fencing, wrestling and rugby teams utilizing video analysis as well.

Our assistant wrestling coach, Ryan Harding, said video has already impacted several areas of his coaching. He uses slow-motion video to analyze positional performance cues with his athletes, and establish strategies for offseason training. He also reviews past matches to prepare for the same opponents in the future.

We want to stay consistent with what other schools are doing, or even be ahead of the game. These are just a few of the ways a few of our teams use video. Our coaches and student-athletes love this learning tool—and as the saying goes, the eye in the sky don’t lie!

Pelkey took over as ath­let­ic direc­tor at St. John’s Prep on July 1, 2019. He joined the staff in August 2006 as an assis­tant var­si­ty foot­ball coach, became a staff assis­tant in the ath­let­ics depart­ment in 2007, and was named assis­tant ath­let­ic direc­tor for grades 6, 7 and 8 in 2015. A native of Barre, Vt., Pelkey holds a B.S. in sports man­age­ment and an M.S. in ath­let­ic admin­is­tra­tion, both from Endicott College in Beverly, where he was a three-sport athlete.


How to Promote Your Athletic Program with Hudl

by

Using our video tools is an easy and effective way to showcase your players and engage with your fans.

Coaches at all levels of competition rely on Hudl to develop their athletes, grow their team and promote their program. Here are ways you can use Hudl to share your team’s best moments and rally the community.

Show off with a team profile.

Every team gets a public profile page when they join Hudl that includes your team’s high­lights, the sea­son sched­ule and your ros­ter of ath­letes, with links to their indi­vid­ual pro­file and high­lights. Now all you need to do is customize your team profiles. Start by adding your school logo as the team profile picture. Once that’s saved, include a tagline to share the team’s philosophy with fans. We’ve seen quotes, hashtags, links to Twitter accounts, you name it.

Get your teams and fans hyped.

Highlight videos are a great way to pump up athletes and fans. Encourage your coaches to create a highlight from their last game to watch as a team. And if they have Hudl Assist, it’s easy to use the stats and reports they get back from our analysts to find highlight-worthy moments. With spot shadows, photos and the right kind of music, they’ll have no trouble rallying everyone together for a win.

Leave the game highlights to us.

Teams with Hudl Assist get access to detailed stats and reports, saving their coaches time to focus on developing their athletes and promoting their team. Hudl Assist teams also get auto-generated highlight reels of their team’s best plays based on their Assist stats.

Note: Available for football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, lacrosse and ice hockey teams.

Celebrate the season.

Take time to remember each game’s best moments by creating season highlights. You (or your coaches) can add team photos or slides with season stats and athlete awards—whatever information is most important to your teams and fans.

Embed a highlight reel.

When you embed a highlight reel, all your fans have to do is click play. Create an athlete of the week series and embed their most recent highlight on your school’s website. Make your own version of SportsCenter Top 5 each week with team or athlete highlight reels. Or tweet the auto-generated highlight from your most recent win with #WinOfTheWeek. The possibilities are endless.

Share it out on social.

With the click of a button, you can share a highlight reel or the link to a team’s profile to Facebook or Twitter. Want to push it somewhere else? Copy the URL and paste it wherever you please—in an email, a text message, Instagram or your school’s athletic website.

Livestream your next game.

Don’t let bad weather, bumper-to-bumper traffic and late nights at the office stand in the way of your players’ biggest fans missing their games. Hudl Focus not only automatically records and uploads your film, but it also streams it so fans, family and friends never miss a home game. You can embed a stream directly on your school’s website or stream them to YouTube. And use Twitter to get your fans watching the livestream like this team did.

Check out our Remote Coaching Guide to get started with livestreaming today.

Following these tips will have you unleashing the full potential of your program in no time. To learn more about how you can use technology to grow and celebrate your team, check out our Digital Coaching Center.


What Coaches Can Do to Create a Positive Team Culture

by

Team culture takes the combined effort of coaches and players. In this blog, volleyball coach Lindsay Peterson explains how coaches can start building the right traditions.

I’ll never forget my first collegiate volleyball game. It was the first time I’d been through the actual warm-up with the team. We did all the normal things; warm up our arms, pepper, work on team defense, etc. 

Then right before our time was done, the seniors pulled us into the huddle and told us there was a chant we always did before every match. A cheer that started off just a whisper and ended as a scream by the end. A cheer that in few words described just how good we thought we were. 

This chant was a ritual—it never changed. Game after game, we spoke those words. It was exhilarating, it made my blood pump, my heart race, and let me know that we were all in this together.

I look back at the moment and realize the complexity of that simple cheer. It was tied to every game in the years I was in that program, including a Division II national title, countless wins and broken records. It’s important to have these positive traditions in your program, whether it’s cheers, chants, dirty sock rituals or the thousands of other things your team could do to get excited about games. I’m a firm believer in positive traditions + positive leadership = positive team culture.

There are two sides to my team’s culture: how the coach and staff build traditions to facilitate positive culture, and how team leaders help establish that culture. In this first blog, I’ll focus on the coaches’ side.

Pre-Season

I had a coach tell me once to always work players extremely hard in your first practice of the year, then at the end of that practice ask them what they want to be known for. I tried it and the results were great. 

Kids are eager to tell you what they think. Now for us, winning and losing isn’t who we are. The things we stand for and how hard we’re willing to work, that’s who we are. Having my players establish “who we are,” and what we want to be known for, is imperative for us to begin our season. 

Most of my teams agree on something close to the same thing every year: tenacious, relentless, competitive, a never-give-up attitude, hard-working, hard to defend, supportive, etc.  Every year will be different because each year’s team is different. Even your leadership might change. But you can sustain team culture in your gym by establishing who you are. 

During the Season

As the season begins and then progresses, make sure you’re establishing consistencies. For instance, before every home match, my team comes in early and sets up the nets. Then they spend the next 30 minutes serving and passing. 

It’s also a tradition for the team to gather at my house twice a year for “practice.” We play games, eat snacks and watch motivational movies. Other traditions could be team dinners, team-building days, themed practices, program game days. There’s a plethora of inexpensive, or even free, activities for your players to participate in that are beneficial for your team culture. 

Make these activities sustainable and worthwhile, and plan them in advance so it’s easy to stick to them.

Post-Season  

The end of the year is almost as important as the beginning. To make sure the culture you’ve been building all year will carry on, use your banquet to remind your players of all the things they accomplished throughout the year. You could even use awards to emphasize what’s most important for a positive culture. 

At Millard North, we give out the Mustang Award to the player who has put in the work and never gave up during hardships. The best part of this award is that it usually winds up being a kid who doesn’t always get the “clout.” 

For example, one year it was a middle who started in the first 25 matches of the year. She replaced an injured Division I hitter, worked incredibly hard, and we went undefeated during the time she started. When it was time for the injured player to come back, she didn’t give up. She continued to give it her all, became a leader on the practice side, and pushed us to be the best we could be. She gave herself completely and didn’t complain one time! That’s why this award is so important to me and to my program culture. 

Positive team culture is a direct reflection of the leadership provided by your coaching staff. Find ways to promote culture on your court and in your program. The long-lasting benefits will be worth all your time and effort.

Lind­say Peter­son has been a var­si­ty head coach for eight years. She played for the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Alaba­ma, help­ing them win the DII Nation­al Cham­pi­onship in 2003. Peter­son has led her Mil­lard North High School team to the state cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment sev­en times, win­ning in 2016 and 2018. She was named one of the top 40 coach­es in the coun­try by the AVCA, and Coach of the Year by the Oma­ha World-Herald.


Cory McCarthy Uses the Power of Athletics to Transform This Urban School

by

Cory McCarthy shares how he used athletics to bring a brighter future to his students and turn this urban school into a city powerhouse.

Cory McCarthy’s younger life revolved around one thing: a single pair of pants. As a child, he used his $5 weekly allowance to turn that one pair of pants seemingly into five pairs. On Monday, he wore black pants. That night he would turn them blue using dye he purchased with his five dollars. By Wednesday, they faded to gray, on Thursday they appeared stone-washed, and on Friday he would dye them back to black.

From a young age, McCarthy had a knack for building something out of nothing. And that’s exactly what he did for New Mission High School.

Life Before New Mission

McCarthy was born on the sunny island of Barbados where he spent the first few years

of his life. At the age of seven, his family relocated to the U.S., settling down in the small neighborhood of Dorchester.

After losing his dad a few years later to a sudden brain aneurysm, McCarthy started playing sports. But he quickly found himself hanging out with the wrong crowd. It wasn’t until coming home one night that he saw how much the stress and pressure of single-handedly managing a family had aged his mother. At that moment, McCarthy decided he wanted to do better—to do more.

He began working for a tutoring program, learning, making friends and staying out of trouble. The teachers and mentors at that program would catapult McCarthy into who he is today. They gave him the inspiration and intent he still carries with him.

Even after walking the stage as a UMass graduate, McCarthy continued working closely with the boys of the tutoring program and wound up coaching their basketball team. Little did he know at the time, but that coaching experience would help him propel a no-name high school into one of the most powerful public schools in Boston.

Unfortunately, the following year, the program lost its funding. But that paved the way for McCarthy being offered a job as a substitute teacher at New Mission High School.

At New Mission

It was the school that no one wanted to touch. It was a tired, rodent-infested facility with no gym, no cafeteria, no elevator—it was barely recognized by the city. But they did have a girls’ basketball team, one that had never won a game, didn’t have a coach and barely had a roster.

That’s where McCarthy came in. After his short stint coaching the boys at his tutoring program, McCarthy agreed to take on the girl’s head coach position.

On his first day, he came in, took charge and kicked two of the best players off the team because of their poor attitudes. He knew it was going to be an uphill battle then and there, but he continued to show up and take care of those girls as if they were his own.

“We’re used to people just leaving us, and it feels like you’re not going anywhere.”

But McCarthy’s dedication showed no bounds. After their first game, with no school busses available, he got them on public transportation and made sure each athlete got home safely. What McCarthy showed them at that moment was something they never experienced before. McCarthy still remembers one of his players telling him, “We’re used to people just leaving us, and it feels like you’re not going anywhere.” after that night.

That was all he needed to hear. He vowed to continue pushing New Mission from nothing into something. Just like he turned that one pair of pants into five.

Building New Mission into a City Powerhouse

Ironically, clothing continued to play a vital role in McCarthy’s life. But this time it was t-shirts. He bought 300 with his own money to start branding the school and his program. He didn’t know how powerful those t-shirts would be, but when he started seeing them around the city he had a feeling this was going to be good.

The buzz he started with those t-shirts led to New Mission’s first taste of success. Shortly thereafter, McCarthy coached their girl’s basketball team to a charter league championship. A team that hadn’t won a game had just won it all. This was huge—their momentum was growing, their reputation was growing, and that first championship put New Mission on the map.

But there was more to be done. New Mission still wasn’t recognized in the Boston Public School league. So McCarthy, along with his principal, went straight to the athletic director and superintendent of the Boston Public School system. After much debate, they finally gave in and allowed New Mission to be part of the league, still telling McCarthy his team would never win a championship there.

The next hurdle? New Mission was still unrecognized as a college prep school, which meant that none of their athletes could receive scholarships to NCAA schools.

The school had to keep growing its success. So he bought more t-shirts. Another 250 New Mission branded t-shirts hit the city of Boston and the buzz got bigger.

The girl’s basketball team continued to thrive, making it to the city championship at the TD Garden, home of the NBA’s Boston Celtics. Surrounded by nearly the entire city, that championship win pushed New Mission even further towards becoming a recognized institution.

With the success of the girl’s team, McCarthy took on the head coach position of the boy’s team. They lacked drive, determination and motivation. But McCarthy stuck with them, just like he had with the girls.

He built rapport by taking them on college visits and to summer tournaments. These trips led to more formative relationships and enabled them to play better as a team. Soon the boys started seeing success on the court too. Their achievements resonated with the city and the community started paying even more attention.

New Mission Today

Coming off the success of their athletics, New Mission changed its academics and became a college prep school. Their students now had an opportunity to receive athletic scholarships to NCAA schools. As of today, they’ve sent 71 boys off to college with over a dozen receiving athletic scholarships and countless more receiving academic and merit scholarships. Over 48 have graduated and the remaining still working on their degrees. As for the school itself? Applications have grown from 100 per year to more than 1100 per year.

McCarthy nearly single-handedly built New Mission into one of the top public schools in the city of Boston. The t-shirts, his relentless dedication to his athletes, it all helped transform a run-down school into a powerhouse of opportunity and success.

Today, New Mission is one of the top public schools in Boston and continues to see success in both athletics and academics. McCarthy’s achievements echo through the streets of Boston and you can feel his impact when he’s greeted by former friends and colleagues.

 


7 Ways Video Powers Your Player Development

by

 

Here are the best tips and tricks for using video to grow your athletes’ skills.

As a team, your success is determined by more than wins and losses. It’s your job to create well-rounded players with correct technique and the ability to make the right decisions.

Not only is it a big undertaking, but time with players is often limited and resources are spread thin. That’s where video comes in. It’s a powerful tool that ensures learning doesn’t end after practice. With a little creativity, video can be the tool to aid your players’ development.

1. Motivate players to watch technique, not just highlights.

To build on the fundamentals, encourage your athletes to look further than the flashy moments. Video can help them adjust their focus to see the bigger picture of the game and their development.

Create playlists for your players to see and improve their technique. Here are a few ways to get started.

2. Grab an iPad and record drills at practice.

Use video at practice to give instant and specific feedback to individual athletes or the whole team. The sooner athletes can take what they see in the video and put it into action, the higher their chances of retaining that information. Plus, if you have Wi-Fi at your gym or field, upload as you record so players can review the video as soon as they head to the locker room.

3. Encourage your athletes to create a playlist of best and worst clips after each game.

When your players have a chance to identify the areas they need to improve before you point them out, it can have a lasting impact. They’ve truly owned the process and the lesson will take root. Have them pull out their five best plays from a game—areas where they made a big play, showed quick thinking or had good technique—as well as their five worst plays. This saves you time, but it also gets athletes to think about their technique and own their growth. You can give feedback on those plays and point out anything they missed.

4. Set pre-game objectives to provide a benchmarks for your players.

We’ve heard from teams who work with each player individually to set specific objectives before every game. It gives players focus in the game and provides direction as they watch video after the game. They can pull out the specific clips that reference their objective and show how they met it or where they fell short. Encourage them to add those clips to a playlist and track that objective over multiple games.

5. Track athlete progression from the first game to last.

Because you can create playlists from multiple games, you’re able to track an athlete’s progression throughout the season to see where they’ve improved and what they should focus on in the future.

  1. Pull clips of a player’s technique at the start of season.
  2. Add a custom label for that player to keep everything organized.
  3. Keep adding clips as the season continues.
  4. Share it with the athlete so they can track their own progress.

6. Quiz your athletes with comments on the video.

Playlists are an ideal tool to pinpoint the most important moments from a game, but comments can help you steer the conversation in the right direction. Use them to ask your players questions about what happened and challenge their perception of the game. Or get creative and have them search for specific things in the video.

7. Create team goals around more than wins and losses.

When the focus is on player development, it can be hard to gauge your team’s growth, especially with a younger team. You also might need to validate your coaching decisions with concerned or frustrated parents. A good way to handle this is to build goals for your team that go deeper than W/Ls. With the goals report in Hudl, you can set benchmarks for team and player progress so you aren’t discouraged if team development doesn’t translate to wins.

You might not be able to roll out all these ideas with your team immediately, but it’s important to start somewhere. When you fuel your athletes’ development with video, the results will speak for themselves.