ITA Learning Project - My Journey from Youth to High School Coach – Post #7

Film Study

Wow, did I underestimate film study by a high school coach. There are two main areas I was not ready for at all.

1. How Valuable It Is
2. How Much Time It Takes

Let’s discuss them in that order. I mentioned earlier that I was worried about making in game strategy adjustments. Since that is not my primary concern during the game, I do most of my strategy critiques after the game while watching film. Anytime I’ve watched lacrosse game films for the past 6 years I have only been worried about my sons. You look at things differently when you are looking at all the players than when you are only worrying about one or two (I know, the quote is a bit off. But it’s close. Give me a break!). After our fist scrimmage, I sat down with my laptop and a note book to compile notes to show the kids. Without making a big deal, I just went to the AV room off the locker room and started reviewing the films. Soon, players started coming in and I had them hooked. Being prepared and showing knowing exactly what I wanted them to see at each step was great. We continued this way for a few contests. There was good information out there, but like I mentioned in last post, not all the kids were ready to receive the info. I had quite a few kids that thought this was Sports Center and just wanted to see the highlights. After my tirade (see the last post), things got different. Kids were asking me I’d have the films posted and if I could review their particular parts and let them know what they needed to work on. That’s where we are now, I’m hounded by the kids until I get through all the films. We’re not consistently applying everything we learn, but it’s getting better.

About the time. It’s a lot of work. For a typical home game, I get to the locker room around 3:45 as the kids come in. I’m checking equipment, touching base with the trainer and kids that are dinged up, making sure the field is ready and other things. Then comes the games, JV and Varsity. Varsity is over around 9:00, then Mike and I debrief. Then I go home and post the films and try to give my initial impressions. Either that night or the next morning, I start play-by-play analysis of the game. To review everything and make the notes, it normally takes me between 4 and 5 hours per game. Then I post my notes, answer any SM or email questions from the players and reorganize my notes to prepare to lead the review with everybody present. Depending on what’s going on, that’s between 1 and 2hours reviewing the films as a team. Don’t take this the wrong way. I love this. It’s just math. That’s 10 – 12 hours per home game day – more if it’s an away game and you factor in travel time.  Looking at it in this light, it’s not hard to see why I underestimated the time commitment.

Let’s talk about the technology I use for this process. First, we use my digital camcorder. I have a basic one that records onto a SD card. I drag and drop off the SD slot so watching films on my laptop in my home office is easy.  Making the films public is a different story. There are cloud-based apps catering to sports teams that allow coaches to upload films and let players see them. These apps also allow us to share films with other programs via privacy settings in the app. The most popular app for this has a bunch of features, but it is expensive. Like $400/season expensive. When you’re coaching a sport like lacrosse, that’s a bunch of money. Helmets for 3 players (which we had to do this year) or a season supply of balls or 3 games of referee’s fees expensive. To get around this cost, we are currently using my personal Microsoft OneDrive account. I set up a shared folder for this year’s films that I shared with all my players. Since they all have emails and laptops provided by the district, this was a good system. By making separate folders for each game, I also can share our films with coaches from other programs. Many programs use the $400/season system, but a couple that I showed how to do it this way kinda liked it, so maybe we might be shifting things a bit.

I started to do all this on a Google drive, but the free accounts only come with 15GB of storage and that fills up QUICKLY with .mp4 files for 48-minute stop-time games. I already have a Microsoft 365 subscription for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that comes with 1TB of cloud storage, so that’s what we are using for now. I give up easy collaboration between Mike and I on roster and stat sheets using Googles apps, but I don’t need to ask the AD for any money for computing storage at this point.

As I make my notes, if I am in a hurry to show kids things, I use twitter to let them know what I saw. Otherwise I just let them know that my notes are available (again using twitter) and they should be prepared to review them at the next practice. During team time, I use a basic LED projector to show the films straight off my laptop. We don’t have a any of the fancy projectors in the athletic complex, so I picked up a cheapo one at BestBuy for around $100.  We need to keep the lights low, but that seems like a good trade-off considering the $500+ price of the brighter projectors.

Holy Cow, that makes me tired just rereading it. But really, I love it.