Why Track Athlete Development?

Coach, how has my [insert skill] progressed so far? What can I work on to improve [insert skill] before the end of the season?

These are a couple of common questions that you often find athletes asking you. However, without tracking athlete development, it is challenging to communicate to athletes how they are progressing.

Rather than relying on muscle memory to gauge progress and provide accurate feedback, tracking athlete development throughout the season is essential.

This blog dives into the top 5 reasons why every coach should be tracking athlete development, irrespective of age & division. We also explore how SkillShark’s athlete evaluation software enables coaches to seamlessly track athlete development throughout the year—without any complex calculations or headaches.

Thorough Athlete Feedback

At the end of the season (and oftentimes during the season), an athlete will often ask you, “How has my [insert skill] improved?”

Resorting back to handmade notes (if you even had the time to take any down) are difficult to draw conclusions from due to its inconsistency & limited detail. With SkillShark’s individual development reports, coaches can simply track athlete development by:

1. Creating an evaluation event (i.e., tryout, mid-season evaluation, winter clinic etc..)
2. Inviting evaluators
3. Entering athlete scores through any mobile device
4. Analyzing player data using SkillShark’s auto-generated reports.

Now, when an athlete asks for feedback on a particular skill, coaches can refer back to that athlete’s individual development report. Athletes will have a better understanding of how they are developing within a certain skill while coaches will have better clarity.

Positional Adjustments

As your season progresses, you might witness an opportunity for one of your athletes to excel in a different position. While this decision shouldn’t be made lightly, tracking an athlete’s progress in specific skills can warrant this tactical adjustment.

For example, suppose after conducting two basketball clinics and scoring athletes, one of your athletes has drastically improved their shooting ability (i.e., layups and pullups). With this progression in mind, you position this player as the shooting guard for the remainder of the season.

SkillShark’s individual development report

Maintain Athlete Motivation

“You have greatly improved your hitting contact & mechanics on ice. Keep up the good work.”

This above snippet of positive feedback can improve an athlete’s motivation in the short term; however, it lacks one key aspect: proof. Athletes desire tangible proof of their progress in order to reinforce their dedication to the sport. In this case, tangible proof comes in the form of evaluating athletes at multiple points throughout the season and sharing visual proof of their progress (with the help of SkillShark reports).

In the image above, a coach has scored an athlete on “Lay Ups” at 3 evaluation events during the season. With more than half the season left to go, an athlete is able to visualize their progress and set specific goals for the remainder of the season.

Personalize Your Training

Tracking athlete progress helps you better understand what skills specific athletes might need to improve on, so you can then adjust your coaching strategy accordingly. Beyond position adjustments, think about what drills you can incorporate into practices or what “homework” you can send athletes home with to help them improve..

For instance, suppose you notice mid-way through the season that a few of your volleyball athletes have slightly declined in their ‘Cut Shot.’ Moving forward, you decide to incorporate more attacking/spiking drills into practices.

Improve Coach/Parent Communication

What is just as important as athlete feedback? Providing feedback to parents.

Parents are the lead decision makers of whether their child will re-enroll for subsequent seasons. In order to make this decision, they want to know how their child has progressed. Have they improved throughout the season? More specifically, what skills have they developed and to what extent?

On the other hand, even if their child hasn’t drastically improved throughout the season, parents still desire visualized data (i.e., graphs) to comprehend which skills their child needs further improvement on.

Wrapping Up

The next time one of your athletes asks you how they have progressed, you will have the historical data in place to show them their improvement.

Interested in an easy-to-use application to track athlete progress? SkillShark’s athlete evaluation software is an all-in-one tool for coaches to score athletes, monitor their development, and share detailed progress reports.