Growing an Athletic Program (and Your Career) with Video

Since the beginning of ASU announcing a NCAA Division 1 hockey team in 2015, Andrew Matheson began working in a supporting role on the coaching staff and introducing video analysis tools to the fledgling program.

“One of the first things I started to use was iCoda on my iPad as I would sit with our director of operations and help him in whatever way possible, and during games it was tracking ice time on the iCoda and we would then use that for players to watch their shifts with the coaches,” said Matheson. 

Matheson’s role not only helped ASU compete in D1, stepping up after a period of dominance in the ACHA hockey ranks, it also developed his career - he is now Director of Operations for ASU Hockey. 

“Little did I know, the more I was trying to help our program director, the more he really helped me learn the ropes and find a passion for something that would help me stay involved in the game after I had to stop playing due to my hip surgeries,” said Matheson. 

“During the first two years I primarily just got my feet wet and tried to absorb any information on how to help with operating a team but the one thing I always gravitated too was doing video work because it made me feel like I was playing a valuable role on the staff and it was instrumental in preparing me for my job today as the Director of Operations.”

NCAA Division 1 hockey is a high level of competition for ASU and with that tougher level of competition comes the need to prepare more professionally for a higher level of play. Since their introduction to D1, ASU have used Sportscode as their preferred choice for performance analysis in the hockey arena.

“Sportscode is not only powerful video software, particularly in the college hockey setting, it’s also a tremendous opportunity to engage students interested in hockey,” said Matheson. 

Let’s dive into the ways in which ASU uses Sportscode for their hockey analysis. We take a look into what a week of analysis in the hockey department looks like.

“Here’s how we use Sportscode: At the beginning of the week, or even on the return trip home from a game, we download the game footage to pre-scout using a simple but efficient code window,” said Matheson.

“This window allows us to get all of the basic statistics that our coaches like to look at, and having that one extra set of hands on board with our student coach having the ability to code allows us to get four games easily clipped up by Monday morning for our coaches to look at and develop plans for the upcoming series.”

 The ASU in-game workflow:

1.  Track detailed statistics and events, including coding and labeling to generate data for reports to take place during intermissions.

2.  From this labeling, generating two output reports that are distributed to staff post game. Output windows are extremely effective once the scripts are labeled correctly and a powerful tool to track any data point your staff desires.

3.  Integration of our player video cuts via Coda synced with our existing database to show time on ice, along with the ability to have the cuts handy for the players to review with our coaches the following day.