The Hudl Focus Outdoor camera uses cutting-edge technology to capture every moment auto­mat­i­cal­ly, so you can get back to coaching.

 

Getting reliable video for games is a big challenge for coaches and teams. 

Hudl Focus Outdoor uses a powerful algorithm—trained over hundreds of games and thousands of hours of video—to pinpoint the ball, players, officials, the scoreboard, and more. This is the heartbeat of our player-tracking technology

This algorithm is central to solving top issues coaches face when capturing video.

Who’s filming your next game? Do you have to assign a member of your coaching staff to operate the camera, essentially losing their expertise during the action? Is it a student-manager or JV player? A parent? Does the filmer know what you need—or want—recorded over the course of the game? 

These are only a handful of the questions coaches have to answer on their quest to record each game. 

One American football coach told us he created a 14-page manual that instructed student-filmers exactly how to record a game from start to finish, from setting up the camera, filming plays, and getting scoreboard shots to aid post-game tagging.

But then that student graduates. Or goes to play on their own team. Or pulls out their phone mid-game.

“The machine never gets tired. Its significant other never texts,” said Martijn Berger, Hudl’s Director of Hardware Engineering. “It has one mission in life: to get you your video.”

Hudl Focus Outdoor is that machine.

Today’s sports have never been faster. Athletes are stronger and more athletic than ever before. But Hudl Focus won’t fall behind.

Our camera uses four lenses working together to create a single image. It simultaneously sees the whole field while also using player tracking technology to follow the action. 

But training Focus wasn’t enough. We had to put the lenses to the test—the camera had to take the field. 

Over the past year and a half, more than 200 schools across the country tested our cameras and offered some brutally honest feedback.

Through increased testing, training and user feedback, coaches provided crucial insights to refine the algorithm. They helped push Focus past the finish line. You’ll never miss a moment because the camera consistently follows the action.

With Hudl Focus Outdoor, American football teams can run a double-reverse pass knowing Hudl Focus won’t bite on the fake. Soccer teams who intercept a pass in front of their goal, spurring a sudden counterattack, can rest assured Focus is keeping pace.

With our refined player-tracking technology, the smart camera knows when, where and who to record. 

No more missed plays. No more distractions. Like you, Hudl Focus Outdoor is locked on the field until the final whistle blows.

 

Hudl Focus Outdoor is available as part of an athletic department package. Contact us to learn how to secure your camera.

THE FORMULA FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAM BUILDING

Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete

Here’s a simple formula that should provide you a clear way to grasp high performance in the area of team leadership. High involvement plus high commitment equals high performance.

So, what does all this mean for you? Well, high involvement means you need to nurture the involvement of every team member. Did you get that—every team member. Each and every team member needs to engage with the leadership development process by bringing a high level of energy and focus. Only when you have high involvement can you entertain the idea of high commitment. Simply put, if you don’t have high involvement you can’t have high commitment, and if you don’t have high commitment you’ll never see high performance.

If you select only a few team captains you’ve willingly and knowingly chosen low involvement. Those student-athletes not selected to develop as leaders will not care much about the process of leadership development of their peers. They’ll clearly say by actions and non-actions, “Why bother, there’s nothing in it for me.” You’ve chosen not to get them directly involved and commitment comes from being involved.

Those student-athletes you’ve chosen as team leaders might show high commitment to leadership and leadership development. Why not, it benefits them. But you are still left with the reality that you don’t—and logically can’t have—high involvement with only a few chosen participants. Thus, you’ll never achieve high commitment nor high performance.

However, if you choose to involve everyone on the team—a leader in every locker—you have a chance to attain high commitment. By placing leadership practice and opportunities in the hands of every team member, you involve everyone. And depending on the quality of programmatic development you have a chance at achieving high commitment. Ahhh, once you get high commitment it is very likely you’ll get high performance.

This isn’t some mystical process. By deploying a leader in every locker approach your players are highly involved with an opportunity to become highly committed. Your challenge is to get them to willingly invest their minds and heart into the team leadership development process, building skills and competencies that lead to high performance. So, to wrap up this leadership bite here’s the formula once again: High Involvement + High Commitment = High Performance.

Leadership Lessons from John Wooden
Dr. Cory Dobbs, The Academy for Sport Leadership

It’s Been Decades Since “Coach” was on the Sidelines but His Commitment to Character is as Relevant as it Ever Was

March is known for its madness. A time when team greatness is revealed. March is also a time when the best baseball players in the world go back to work— fine-tuning the fundamentals of their game. College basketball’s greatest coach was a tour de force for principled leadership and success. Great teams and fundamentals are of vital importance no matter what your endeavor, no matter what time of year.

Do you need proof that leadership is not about style? The legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden suggests that leadership is influence derived from one’s character. For Wooden, the ideal leader is someone whose life and character motivate people to follow. The best kind of leadership derives its capacity from the force of example, not from the power of position or personality.
Much of what passes as leadership today is nothing more than manipulation of people by sticks and carrots—threats and rewards. That’s not effective leadership for the long-term. Authentic leadership seeks to motivate people from the inside, by an appeal to the head and the heart, not by use of command and coercion. Compliance seldom, if ever, leads to authentic commitment.

Wooden influenced players through his character which he displayed in everything he did, from the way he recruited student-athletes to the way he taught them to put their socks on.

For Wooden character is the essential element necessary for great leadership.

Steve Jamison, author of best-selling books on John Wooden and Bill Walsh, has spent the past fifteen years working with Wooden on various books on leadership. He teaches Wooden’s principles to business leaders at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

“The reason he resonates with people, relate to him is as a teacher, leader, coach, he was extraordinary and as a person he was even more extraordinary. That’s a tough combination,” Jamison said.

Jamison began working with Wooden to organize and distill his wisdom for coaches and leaders in any industry. At the time he couldn’t find a publisher because most thought Wooden was no longer relevant. As one publisher told him “Coach Wooden is a little dusty on the shelf.”

Character, however, is never a quality to be shelved. Coach Wooden, as Jamison said, “Didn’t seek players who were characters. He wanted players that had character. Character was something that he felt essential to being a good performer, a good leader. Much of the problems we see today we can lay at the foot of leaders that have little character.”

When You’re Through Learning, You’re Through
Coach Wooden practiced life-long learning—as you would expect from a great teacher. Jamison, a leadership expert and educator said, “A lot of leaders get to a position with a lot of authority and power, it’s very easy to become overconfident and arrogant and think you know it all. John Wooden never made that mistake. He was very secure in what he knew but he never stopped learning. Never stopped looking for answers.”

“How willing are you to learn?” Jamison asks. “That doesn’t mean just opening a book or taking a course but how willing are you to challenge your beliefs and the way you do things, examining ways to improve. How willing are you to entertain new ideas? Whatever your level of success, self evaluation is important.”

Jamison said Coach Wooden simply asks leaders “How can you improve if you don’t have the ability to analyze yourself?” Jamison backed up this declaration from Coach Wooden by offering a story that exemplifies his commitment to self-evaluation.

“In Wooden on Leadership, Jamison explained, “ he tells the story of getting to the 1962 semi-finals of the NCAA national championships where UCLA played Cincinnati, the defending nation champs. They lost in the last seconds. On the flight back his assistant coach Jerry Norman says to him ‘coach you know we got some guys coming in next year (Goodrich/Erickson). You know, maybe we should look at bringing in the full court press.’ John Wooden knew what it was, he’d tried it his first two years at UCLA.”

“Maybe it’s time to revisit the press, said Norman.” Wooden, secure in his self, listened to his assistant. The next year UCLA pressed full-court. And the rest, as they say is history.

Wooden on Teaching: The Little Things Make the Big Things Happen
“One of the great abilities John Wooden has and had was his ability to take a complicated issue, distill it, so that, as he said, that ‘little things make big things happen,” said Jamison.
“In my view, what it was that he did to teach leadership, and it’s not complicated, he behaved like a leader. He acted like a leader. The primary teaching tool he used was his own life as an example,” Jamison commented.

Coach Wooden was a proponent of the principle that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. According to Jamison, “John Wooden had an effusive way of letting players know he cared. His practices were ferociously intense. There wasn’t any slack in practice where you could hang out and shoot the baloney. He found time at the beginning when players were coming onto the court to take a moment, to pull someone aside as they were ambling over to the practice and ask about how things were going. ‘How’s your mother.’ ‘How’s that history class going.’ He did this to show his sincere care and concern for his players.”

 

Pyramid of Success
Coach Wooden’s primary teaching tool has been his leadership model as distilled in his Pyramid of Success. Jamison commenting on this influential model for effective living said, “His definition of success isn’t about big, it isn’t about power, fame, fortune, and prestige. For him the highest level, the highest standard of success is making that effort to become the best that you can become whether it is a coach, teacher, student, member of a team.”

Success, as Coach Wooden says, is the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.