Tech Touchdowns: How Apps are Revolutionizing High School Football

High school football teams are using pro-level technology and getting excellent results. Hudl, the digital scouting and film analysis company founded in Lincoln, Nebraska in 2006 was cutting edge a few years back but now is standard in every winning program. Today, over 140,000 teams use Hudl's software in practice and games. The use of technology in high school football is only speeding up and here are a few of the next-level tech that winning programs will be using soon.

Team Nation Sports

Team Nation Sports is a gamified approach to teaching football players more about the sport’s fundamentals, schemes, as well as the contents of their playbooks. Learning the plays on their cell phone makes doing so much more accessible to athletes and it doesn't feel like studying or work. Their football IQ, play recall and position memory improves while playing the included games.  The gamification is taken to another level because players can see how they rank against others at their position, or the entire team, in their knowledge of the game and their areas of responsibility.

Coaches set up the system to use the information that is important to their program, complete with their own plays. film clips and custom lessons. This is made easier by integration with Hudl. Coaches then use the resulting data to better understand how prepared the team is and identify the aspects that need more focus.

Stevin Scott, Assistant Head Football Coach at Florida 7A State Champion St. Thomas Aquinas is a believer, "...kids come in and I get them to download the app. If they get on Team Nation, that's the quickest way to learn the plays. If you learn the plays that's one less excuse of why you can't get on the field. "

Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young is part of the founding team. The adoption of Team Nation is exploding and their promotional department highlights state championship winning teams across the country who use the system. (website)

Optimum Grading

Optimum Grading is another app that is doing big things for high school football programs. Optimum Grading provides a fully customizable platform for high school coaches to grade and evaluate their players' performance while watching film. The players now have access to instant feedback so they understand what they're doing right or wrong on each play.

SuccessFund

How do you pay for all these new gizmos? Most public schools and even some of the private ones, do not have funds to pay for all the new tech. Traditionally, these 'extras' are covered by fundraising. That too is changing. There are a lot of apps and services out there that purport to help with fundraising but many of them are expensive up front or take a large portion of the revenue collected. SuccessFund is different.

SuccessFund does not charge districts or booster clubs. There's no up front or monthly fee, and they don't take a large portion of the revenue either. But it does cost money to process payments, so to cover that, SuccessFund has a transparent transaction fee. In order to make that sustainable for schools, SuccessFund gives donors the option to cover the transaction fee. Because 92% of people cover the fee, the cost of running a donation-based fundraiser ends up being less than one percent! That's cheaper than swiping a credit card. SuccessFund automatically records and tracks all the details of each and every transaction so you can have easy access to the information you need. They even track results by student so you can monitor their engagement. 

In addition, the system allows you to add national fundraising campaigns from companies like Krispy Kreme donuts and Jamba Juice with just a few clicks. For schools that do unique fundraisers (like our weekly coaches show podcasts,) those too can be integrated quickly with just a few clicks.

Another big bonus is the ability to say yes to Venmo and other modern payment types, online or in person, by making them district-approved options. Maybe that's the best part - SuccessFund aligns with the district so that everything is above board. So not only do you raise more money, but you do so while keeping everyone else happy along the way - especially parents! (website)