University of Kentucky Women’s Soccer

Located in Lexington, Kentucky, the University of Kentucky is home to a NCAA Division 1 program competing in the Southeastern Conference. Kentucky women’s soccer team uses Catapult Vision video analysis platform to evaluate performances across practices and games.

Leading the charge for the Wildcats’ use of Vision is assistant coach, Jim Chapman. He specifically uses Vision to analyze player and team performances with the intention of improving tactical decision-making and athlete feedback.

Video Analysis Simplicity

Like many teams, the Wildcats’ soccer program already had a video solution in place, but they’re using Vision because of its simplicity.

“Vision was a more simple way of collecting information in how we looked at it,” Chapman said. “We love the simplicity – we set up our categories and tag accordingly to it.”

“It’s a great analytical tool. We evaluate the game, for our game model, the key steps of transition – that’s exactly what we tag. We cut certain bits of the film, we can cut individually, the next step of my own learning is starting to implement more of the editing and highlighting features.”

Switching To Catapult Vision

The Wildcats’ use of Catapult Vision was driven from an unlikely place for a video analysis tool: it’s sports science department. Given the University of Kentucky was already using Catapult wearable technology, its adoption of Catapult Vision was driven by Chris Morris, Director of Applied Sports Science, responsible for developing and implanting the best practice strategies to reduce injury risk and enhance readiness, performance and recovery for the Wildcats’ football team.

With the goal of “coming under one umbrella and for all sports at Kentucky to do the same thing, we’ve found it to be much more simple to use and the effect of all the other tools that certainly highlight the benefits of using it,” Chapman said.

Benefiting The Athletes

The Wildcats have a unique vision for where they see their performance analysis plans.

“With Ian [Carry, women’s soccer Head Coach] and Chris, we have bigger and better plans now that we’re using Catapult Vision for the integration with our wearables, and our future plans for how we develop our athletes.

“The players are getting the benefits. They can see things a lot better, and understand things a lot better. The school is starting to recognize the efficiencies between multiple technology platforms, and bringing together wearables and video.”

 

Interested in finding out how Catapult can help your team find its competitive edge? Get in touch, today.