A California high school uses instant replay to review plays in seconds and make game-altering coaching decisions.
Alex Pierce openly admits it—he didn’t see the adjustment when it happened.
Neither did the other coaches at Los Osos High School (Calif.) in their game against Silverado last season. But because they had instant replay, one assistant in the press box noticed Silverado’s punt return scheme left them open to a fake. He delivered the message to Pierce on the sidelines, and the head coach grabbed an iPad to check it out for himself. On the next fourth down, Los Osos caught Silverado napping and executed a perfect fake punt.
“That was an in-game adjustment that I wouldn’t have made previously,” Pierce said.
This is just one example of the difference Hudl Sideline made for Los Osos. With iPads in the press box and on the sidelines, the Grizzlies picked up on some tendencies and mistakes that were being made in real-time.
Pierce constantly catalogues plays in his brain to check at halftime, and if the situation needs to be immediately addressed, he finds an iPad to review it. The assistant coaches gather with players when they come off the field and go over what happened in the previous series.
“We’ll bring the kids over on the sideline to review plays and we’ll go over adjustments we need to make for blitz pickup or missed assignments,” Pierce said. “We’ll come back to a play and they can see it right then as opposed to waiting until Saturday morning or Sunday. We can sit there and watch it and they can make the adjustment.”
“Seeing is believing. You can tell a kid something, but they’re thinking, ‘In the game, I thought I saw this.’ When you show it to them, you say, ‘I don’t know what you thought you saw, but this is what actually happened. It’s proof.”
Pierce pairs Sideline with Hudl Assist to truly maximize his coaching capabilities. Assist saves the Los Osos staff time by breaking down the data and getting it to them days earlier than they had it previously, allowing Piercehim to get started on his game plans earlier in the week.
Once Friday night arrives, his players are better prepared to make whatever on-the-fly adjustments Sideline uncovers.
“We dive a little deeper into third-down tendencies and down-and-distance tendencies and blitz recognition and those types of things as opposed to spending the first couple of hours putting in data,” Pierce said. “Now we’re spending the first couple of hours looking at third down or formation recognition.
“I think it helped us prepare the kids better. I would send the offense the third-and-long defensive clips. Stuff like that helped the kids prepare. Would we have gotten to it eventually? Yes. But would the kids have gotten the information as soon? No. It would usually take a couple of days.”
See how Sideline can be a game-changer for your team.