Data Visualization For Student Athletes

March 26, 2024

Coach Rob Brokaw—Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Casteel High School in Queen Creek, Arizona and the 2021 NHSSCA National Strength Coach of the Year— was collecting an immense amount of athlete data. And like so many other strength and conditioning coaches, he was spending too much time in Google Sheets and Excel.

Using RokDaisy AMS | Coach Brokaw Top Three Takeaways

1. Efficiency in Data Management: Coach Brokaw was initially overwhelmed by the amount of time spent managing athlete data through traditional methods like Google Sheets and Excel. The transition to RockDaisy represented a significant shift towards efficiency, allowing him to quickly access, visualize, and interpret athlete performance data, saving time and streamlining the process of data analysis.

2. Customized and Impactful Visualizations: RockDaisy enabled Coach Brokaw to create personalized, easy-to-understand visualizations of performance data. The system’s ability to color-code data and highlight personal records allowed for immediate recognition of achievements and areas needing improvement, facilitating a more focused and informed training approach.

3. Strategic Decision-Making and Future Planning: With RockDaisy, Coach Brokaw can now focus more on strategic aspects of athlete development and program improvement rather than getting bogged down in data management. Looking ahead, Coach Brokaw plans to leverage the system further to enhance holistic athlete evaluations and continue to evolve his coaching practices aligned with data-driven insights.

“For every strength coach, it’s like a badge of honor how much time you spend in Google Sheets and Excel,” exclaims Coach Brokaw. “There are some terrific formulas out there that guys are creating, but man, we spend a ridiculous amount of time on it!”

“There are some terrific formulas out there that guys are creating in Google Sheets, but man, we spend a ridiculous amount of time on it!”

— Coach Rob Brokaw, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Casteel High School

When Coach Brokaw found himself spending 20 minutes looking for one of his athlete’s vertical jump statistics from a week ago—not sure if the athlete even did the vertical jump—he knew it was time for a change.

High School-Specific

In 2023, Coach Brokaw discovered RockDaisy just as the company launched RockDaisy AMS PRO, an athlete management system tailored specifically for high schools and universities. Intrigued, Coach Brokaw initiated a free trial of the system. Impressed by its capabilities and the customized features it offered, he was convinced of its value and decided to integrate it into his coaching regimen.

“It was a huge eye opener,” he explains, “In comparison to other platforms, the API integration was slick, and customizable.

“If I asked for a dashboard, they’d have it for me in 15 minutes, and if there was anything I didn’t need, then it was really easy to filter that out.”

— Coach Rob Brokaw

Upon testing RockDaisy, Coach Brokaw immediately realized it was the solution he had been seeking to simplify data visualization and highlight crucial insights. Reflecting on his previous practices, Coach Brokaw shared,

I used to spend hours creating CSVs, wishing for a more straightforward process. It involved downloading vast amounts of data, filtering it, and then trying to fit it into graphs and charts.

After all that effort, I’d print it out for the athletes, only to find it forgotten at the bottom of their backpacks.” RockDaisy’s intuitive platform promised an end to such inefficiencies, offering him a more effective way to communicate valuable insights to his athletes.

The truth is, student athletes just want to know one or two key things they have to work on.  “Student are all about that one big metric,” explains Coach Brokaw. “Maybe you need to work more on your sprint, your elasticity, your vertical jump.”

Whatever the metric, the athletes need to see it visually in order to understand where they’re currently at, and where they’re trying to get to. “Otherwise, they just do the workout that their buddy next to them in the weight room is doing,” notes Coach Brokaw. “They need to understand that he needs to get stronger so he’s doing squats, and you’re doing jump workouts because you need to get springier.”

“RockDaisy helps surface key insights and visualize them for the athletes to easily absorb.”

— Coach Rob Brokaw

Endless Use Cases

Coach Brokaw utilizes RockDaisy to effectively visualize data, highlighting his athletes’ performance. This visualization proves beneficial for both athletes and coaches alike.

Athletes appreciate seeing how their performance compares to the average, understanding whether they are boosting or pulling down the team’s (or their position’s) average.

Utilizing RockDaisy, Coach Brokaw can color-code an athlete’s individual performance to reflect how it aligns with the larger group’s average. Performances above average are marked in green, while those below are indicated in red.

The same approach can be applied to individual trends. Athletes’ metrics can be compared against their own historical performance, with the results color-coded to indicate whether they are above or below their personal average. Personal records are distinctly flagged for easy identification.

Furthermore, these reports can be seamlessly cross-referenced with other data, such as training attendance records, to analyze how variations in their training regimen – whether excessive or insufficient—are affecting their overall performance

“Having that visualization helps us see how we can get better every week,” explains Coach Brokaw. “Just being able to present information in an appealing way has helped us big time.”

“Just being able to present information in an appealing way has helped us big time.”

— Coach Rob Brokaw

Coach Brokaw can also send his coaches certain dashboards, and they can pull their respective team data and easily visualize it. For example, if he wants them to see the last 30 days of bench press data, he’ll share those dashboards. The offensive line coach can quickly pull up how much the offensive linemen have been bench pressing, and immediately see how players are trending based on the color-coding system.

Coaches can also set their own unique parameters. For example, the offensive line coach has something called a ‘momentum factor.’ This is a player’s body mass plus their personal record in the fly 10. The goal is to determine which offensive lineman can create the most momentum—this is who they’ll use in the backfield to push the offensive line forward and make room for the running back in a 3^rd-and-short situation.

“RockDaisy’s data insights enable our coaches to increase playtime for specific athletes whom they might not have otherwise considered.” Maybe it’s an athlete who’s 20 pounds lighter than our heaviest lineman, but can run faster and he’s able to create a bigger hole. RockDaisy helps you see stuff like that, so that’s been a lot of fun!”

“RockDaisy’s data insights enable our coaches to increase playtime for specific athletes whom they might not have otherwise considered.”

— Coach Rob Brokaw

Future Plans

Coach Brokaw is already strategizing on how to utilize RockDaisy for future data insights more effectively. His immediate objective is to establish performance benchmarks and incorporate them into the existing dashboards. For instance, he is considering setting a benchmark where his offensive linemen need to squat 1.7 times their body weight. He plans to use color-coding on the dashboard to visually represent each athlete’s adherence to these standards. This approach will make it straightforward for the offensive line coach to monitor progress and ensure that all players meet the set performance criteria, making their advancements clear and measurable.

“This guides the training, so athletes, coaches, parents, all know what the goals are that they’re trying to achieve,” says Coach Brokaw.

The next piece after that would be a holistic evaluation of the athlete, including where they stand today and what they need to work on. Coach Brokaw stresses the value of including their physicality, technicality, psychology, and more. “We need to see the whole picture of the athlete—where should they be spending their extra time?”

And that is what Coach Brokaw loves most about RockDaisy—the platform’s ability to free up his mind so he can think strategically about his program, rather than simply chasing the latest short-term metric.

“Being able to spend time analyzing data vs. recording and presenting it really makes a huge difference. Now I’m spending time making our program better, instead of just seeing where we’re at.”

— Coach Rob Brokaw

About the Casteel High School

Casteel High School is a junior high and high school in Queen Creek, Arizona, the fifth public high school operated by the Chandler Unified School District.

The Casteel High School community believes in the unlimited potential of the human spirit and the extraordinary value of hard work

For more information, visit them at their website.

Follow:

@strngthcoachrob | Coach Rob Brokaw: 2021 NHSSCA National Strength Coach of the Year

About RockDaisy LLC

Built by sports data experts, RockDaisy’s superior Athlete Management System (AMS) provides a powerful competitive advantage to sports organizations throughout the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NAHL, NHSSCA and other elite sports leagues around the world. For more information, visit rockdaisy.com

Contact Information:

Chris Tanck
RockDaisy LLC
info@rockdaisy.com