Del Mar Sharks Partner With SportsBoard for Player Stats
Youth club Del Mark Sharks are taking a new approach for collecting player performance data as they partner with SportsBoard based out of the Bay Area. Director Shannon MacMillan has provided an opportunity to ditch paper assignments and embrace the technology revolution that will allow coaches to remain focused on field.
Youth Soccer News: As director of the Del Mar Carmel Valley Sharks, Shannon MacMillan has spearheaded a technology revolution within the club soccer community in Southern California.
The Sharks have begun integrating digital technology, powered by Bay Area software company SportsBoard, into the club’s curriculum to track player development, give their players meaningful feedback and ultimately, improve their performance.
“SportsBoard is a great online platform to get feedback to our families. It simplifies the process for the families to track their player’s development and is also a great tool for the coaches and club when it comes to team selection,” said MacMillan. “All of our Sharks coaches, especially those with more than one team, were very pleased with the ease SportsBoard brought to the player evaluation process.”
The necessity to provide families with the progress their players are making is key and remains a vital part of the DMCV program.
“We like to give feedback to families so they know where their players stand and so we can track progress and see development over the course of the year,” MacMillan said. “Switching to SportsBoard’s online platform is a lot easier for the coaches. It’s a simple way to get information to families quicker.”
Before SportsBoard, many DMCV coaches with multiple teams would hand write up to 60 comprehensive player evaluations.
“It would take coaches forever,” MacMillan said. “Now, they can knock them all out in a day.”
Seth Brown, the club’s director of IT, said ditching paper assessments is revolutionary in the club soccer world.
“No one else is doing anything like this,” said Brown. “Paper evaluations used to go into a box and never come out. And no action was ever taken. Now with SportsBoard, we have stored data, which is constantly being used to improve everyone’s level of play. It ensures players are moving in a positive direction and weaknesses are being addressed.”
SportsBoard’s evaluations rate from 1 to 5 players across a variety of categories, including technical and tactical abilities, character and intangibles such as leadership and interacting with teammates.
“It’s definitely a more scientific way of rating players and placing players on certain teams,” MacMillan said. “With these new tools, we can now more definitively say: This is the top crew.”
Players aren’t the only ones being held more accountable under SportsBoard’s digital platform. All 27 coaches will be given SportsBoard performance evaluations once or twice a year.
SportsBoard is just beginning to establish itself at the youth soccer club level, but the company has been entrenched in college soccer for several years.
More than 80 NCAA soccer programs use SportsBoard’s iPad and iPhone app for recruiting, including 13 women’s teams that qualified for this year’s NCAA Tournament.
San Diego State women’s soccer team got the ball rolling four years ago by adopting SportsBoard’s groundbreaking mobile technology. Many of the top women’s programs in the country are using SportsBoard for recruiting–College Cup participant USC, Florida, Utah, Harvard, Auburn and Texas Tech. Other local women’s soccer programs using SportsBoard include NCAA tournament teams Pepperdine and UCLA.
Founder and CEO Gregg Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience in software, and as a life-long sports fan and competitive player, he knew there had to be a better way to harness the power of technology to help soccer. His vision of what was possible — with the help of his talented team — resulted in a completely digital system that captures and makes usable key metrics of player assessments …. and so much more.
What can technology do to help? Check out a sample of an anonymous digital evaluation here.
