Where is that tape of the Serbia-Canada Game? Coming from a former water polo player and coach who represented Canada, Israel and several club teams in numerous national and international tournaments: having readily accessible game footage is integral to the success of a team. With the emergence of Media Asset Management (MAM) solutions for sports, logged footage gives teams, players and coaches a definite advantage over those without a Sports MAM.
Let us go through a typical Sports MAM scenario to see how coaches can utilize this technology to improve the performance of their players as individuals and as a team.
Forming a Team
When forming a professional or national team, scouts visit various club teams to record footage of players in action. The scouts then ship the footage to interested coaches so they may evaluate whether the players would be a good fit for their teams. With a Sports MAM, this footage can automatically be uploaded to the system from anywhere in the world and made available to coaches on a web portal. Once the footage has been catalogued online, coaches can conduct searches for the specific profile of a player they want to recruit. For example, the coach searches for a left handed player, who scored at least 20 goals last season, made over 30 assists, has five years of experience and is under the age of 25. The results of the search will give the coach video on all actions of any game logged in the system that matches the query.
Improving Player Performance
During practice, assistant coaches film players during exercises and scrimmages. Players watch the film in order to analyze and correct bad habits or make adjustments in relation to certain players or opposing teams. Using a Sports MAM, coaches can pull up all footage captured of a given player during practice to see if improvements were in fact made. Visualization is key to the success of any professional player, and with a sports MAM, visualization is made easy, with access to all footage of games or practice available on a player’s mobile device.
Preparing for a Game
Prior to games, coaches spend hours searching through past game footage looking for key plays and tactics of the opposing team. Most sports organizations have statistics systems, such as the NHL HITS system. This information can easily be fed into a Sports MAM system and associated by time code to all footage of a game. With this data, coaches no longer need to rummage through hours on tape. Using search templates that utilize glossary capabilities, all coaches have to do is enter a few search parameters and find all key plays from the camera angles that have been ingested into the system. They can then sort through the different plays by specific players, actions or other conditions, which helps coaches conduct research for improving team performance.
Game Day
Before a game, the team gathers in the locker room or hotel to discuss the upcoming match. Along with drawing plays on a board, coaches show highlights of their opponent’s performance as well as the tactics used in gameplay. This enables the team to focus on methods to defend against attacks and target defensive weakness during offense, and for goalies to find “tells” in players in order to predict where he/she shoots during a penalty.
Post-Game
Regardless of whether a team wins or loses, going through footage after a game is fundamental to learning how to better oneself or the team. With a few search parameters in a Sports MAM, players and coaches can diagnose every play of the game in order to focus on these during practice and to improve tactics in future matches.
The coach is key to ensuring individual athletes and teams as a whole focus on improving skills, working better together and putting effective strategies into practice. Never before has a coach been empowered with the ready access to media assets that inform, demonstrate and guide the team in being the best they can be.
To see how Dalet business solutions for sports teams and facilities can help you win, visit the Dalet Sports Pack product page.
