Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Elite Clubs National League was founded in 2009 and continues to lead by daring to do things differently, embedded with grit, collaboration and tenacity – all things learned from the beautiful game. The ECNL protects and propels the integrity of the game and everyone it impacts by facilitating the perfect symmetry of excellence and humility, exclusivity and accessibility, freedom and community. We believe that challenging everyone to rise to their best creates game-changers that live well, long after cleats are unlaced. Born out of the belief in a better way. Continued in the ever-evolving pursuit of excellence.
Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
Connecting ECNL Players to the Pros with Data and Video feat. Hudl | Ep. 137
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ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken welcomed Matt Mueller, President of Hudl, to Breaking the Line this week to dive into everything about the video streaming platform and the partnership between Hudl and the ECNL.
The Breaking the Line crew dives into Hudl’s start with Nebraska football, how the company has expanded into nearly every amateur sport, how Hudl and the ECNL continue to expand and grow video capabilities and access and what the future holds for both organizations.
It’s a great discussion about the power of video and data in sports, and how both are leaders in their respective fields.
As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.
Welcome And League Headlines
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the May 20 edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, featuring ECNL President and CEO Christian Labers, and ETNL Vice President and Chief of Staff Doug Bracken. Today, Kristen and Doug visit with one of their key and influential partners, Huddle, and their president, Matt Miller. The Huddle platform offers several core features and products: video capture and live streaming, performance analysis, recruiting and highlights, and athlete monitoring. Huddle is used by more than six million coaches and athletes across 40 plus sports, ranging from youth and high school programs to collegiate and professional teams globally. To learn more about their specific services for teams, athletes, and organizations, visit HUDL.com. That's Hudl.com. Or even better, listen to this podcast, and we will get to all things HUDL after we go around the league. It's been an incredible week for the East NL as the league officially welcomed 14 clubs into the East TL and 46 clubs into the East L Regional League. Well, the free East TNL will launch 11 new leagues and expansions for next season. With these additions and expansions, there are now four East TNL conferences that have the complete East NL player pathway, competing in pre-Easton L, East N Regional League, and East TL. They are Ohio Valley, New England, North Atlantic, and Northwest. Congratulations to Ethan Underwood, a 2009 East NL athlete from Sporting Jacks Academy, who signed with the club's USL championship side at Sporting Club Jacksonville, marking the first Academy product to sign a contract with the first team. East NL Boys also saw two professional debuts for some esteemed alumni. Pittsburgh Riverhounds Youth Academy player Warren Agastoni made his professional debut for the Riverhounds on Saturday, April 26th. He signed a professional contract with his hometown club, took the field as a 17-year-old, the youngest player to ever debut for the Reigning USL champions. And former Richmond United East Lational Champion Nicholas Simmons made his professional debut for FC Dallas on April 20th. Nick came off the bench against Minnesota United before earning a start just days later against Seattle. Former two-time national champion at Solar FC products Steel Strong had an incredible performance over the weekend for Dallas Freddy FC in the women's super league. Strong scored two goals at a bunch of club's ticket into the playoffs where they will face top seed at Lexington FC. This weekend, the pre-ECNL hosted its inaugural pre-Champions Cup, where 18 champions were crowned in the U-10 B-12Hups for boys and girls. The pre-East L Boys winners include Central Washington Sounders, Roadrunners FC, Florida Premier, Gretna Elite Academy, Kansas Rush, Al Camino FC Salinas, Crystal Lake Forest, and Capitol FT. And the Pre-East Now Girls winners include Crossfire Academy, St. Louis Scott Gallagher Elite Navy, Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals, Utah Royals FT Arizona, Colorado Rush Academy Blue, Max Fitz Turf, La Roca FC, and Utah Surf. Congratulations to all our inaugural pre-EastNL Champions Cup winners and every club who made the first pre-East NL season such a great success. This has been around the league, and now I turn it over for a great discussion with the president of HUDO to Christian Labers, the president and CEO of the East
Meet Hudl President Matt Miller
SPEAKER_00NL.
SPEAKER_04Thank you very much, Dean, as always, for that fantastic introduction. And here we are again, Mr. Bracken.
SPEAKER_05Yes, we are. The weather is getting warmer. Lots of soccer being played and rapping, getting getting close to postseason.
SPEAKER_04Yes, we are, and we have been uh a bit negligent in our podcast release date consistency, which we will greatly improve moving forward. So apologies for the people who count on the bi-weekly release on Wednesdays because we have failed you over the past couple of weeks due to a variety of travel and other very, very important reasons, of course. The reach is growing by the day, and it's partially because we have such luminaries as we are about to introduce here to this podcast. Very excited here to have Matt Miller. And Matt, if you'd like to introduce yourself and uh give us the elevator speech, the 30-second dating round about yourself, I think we'll have a really good discussion about what you do and what we're doing together.
SPEAKER_03Hey guys, well, uh, you know, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be part of you all, you know, get it back on track with the uh the Wednesday releases. Uh, you know, let's uh let's get after it. But uh, you know, I'm I'm uh I'm the president of Huddle. I've been at Huddle for uh almost the entirety of the company's life. I've been here just uh around 19 years. Uh I'm a uh from I grew up in Texas, but uh graduated high school in Nebraska, went to the University of Nebraska, uh started as an engineer, done just about every job here. Uh my athletic career, uh to I played soccer growing up, uh my whole life. Uh, but uh my skills uh I I ended playing high school uh soccer and probably should have ended maybe a little bit earlier than that. Uh but uh you know now I'm uh I'm a dad chasing around two kids who play uh club soccer in the E CNL piece. And uh, you know, I'm fortunate that they got their uh their soccer skills from their mom uh and uh or their athletic abilities from their mom.
SPEAKER_05They say that's where you get the athletic ability, and that apparently you get your looks from your from your dad.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, I I hope they got their looks, their athletic ability, the brains, all the stuff from the mom. I'm just happy to to be a part of the journey.
SPEAKER_04I think we all we all I'm trying to figure out what le what that leaves for you to have contributed to this, you know. The mustache, maybe for my son, uh you know, the ability to grow a mustache. That's uh maybe that. Humility. Maybe you've contributed the virtue of humility.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, uh Matt, tell us tell us. I mean, uh Huddle is such a such an important partner uh of ours. Give us the what you guys do and what you're you hope to accomplish.
SPEAKER_04Uh well maybe Doug, let's back up, like all the way back to what tell us about Huddle, like the starting of Huddle, what Huddle started at, where where it has gone over the years, and then we'll come up to modern times here. But uh, you guys are a pretty gigantic company at this point, not just in soccer. Um, I'm not sure what the vision was when it started 19 years ago. You could probably say something similar to us of like, well, the vision wasn't that big to get where it is today, by the grace of God. But here we are, but maybe start there.
How Hudl Started With Nebraska
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so Huddle's uh we just had our 20th anniversary, actually. We just turned 20. Uh, and you've got to rewind your brain back 20 years ago to think about uh what the world was like then. Um, you know, Netflix was still shipping you DVDs in the mail. Uh and you know, people used to go to Blockbuster. Blockbuster was open on the corner. Yeah, exactly, right? Uh and the way sports video was handled outside of a facility, if you know, maybe you had a video camera and you could hook it up to a TV, uh, but it was DVDs. Uh, and DVDs was the best way that you would, you know, maybe take video outside of a facility if you were gonna go home and watch it, if you're you know, a pro team, uh, or if you were gonna send videos to get recruited, uh, you would burn a bunch of DVDs uh and send it to teams and hope they watched it, hope they had a DVD player that you know read your specific format of DVD. Um we came in and said that there's just a it was just really inefficient. We watched teams, uh specifically Nebraska football is where we got our start. Uh, we watched Nebraska just be really inefficient with the way that they uh made DVDs for their players. They're making 150 DVDs a day for their team uh and asking players to watch them at home. Uh and it just it created all sorts of uh time inefficiencies, right? Finding a specific play, rewinding back, uh finding the player that you wanted to watch over again. And so we came in and said there's some.
SPEAKER_04So you you guys started with Nebraska football specifically?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Nebraska football was our first customer. Uh we came in to them and said, Tom Osborne days? Uh no, it was Bill Callahan, actually. Uh Bill Callahan just came in from the Raiders and uh, you know, having come from Oakland at the time, had a higher expectation of what technology could be. Not only is it an NFL customer, but also having been in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, said like there's a lot of really interesting ways to impact sports teams via tech. And he pushed us on this, and and we came to him and said, like, look, we can make you so much more efficient around the way you utilize video. Uh Nebraska bought in. They were a great customer to us uh and really unlocked uh you know our journey through football, um, not only on the the college and pro space, but we saw a real opportunity into the high school football space. Uh and as we started to grow around high school football, we realized that every sports team has the same challenge, right? How do I maximize the output of video and use that to train my athletes more effectively, to help them get noticed in the community, uh, and to help them get recruited. And so we've really built our entire tech stack to try and bring video and data together to help every athlete get the shot they deserve. Uh, and so while it started with football at Nebraska and kind of grew through high school, now we serve uh over 300,000 teams around the world, some of the biggest brand names you know, uh the the you know, the soccer teams that you sit on your couch and watch on uh you know Sunday morning or Sunday or Saturday, down to the team that plays in the field pitching court around the corner from your house. We serve over 40 sports. Uh, and our goal is really to help, you know, again, every athlete get the shot they deserve. And for some of them, that means professional careers. And for many of us, uh it means making your varsity team, right, at your high school uh and finding and learning all those lessons from sport that are really valuable resiliency, determination, dedication, teamwork that can be valuable for us at you know at any stage in our career.
SPEAKER_04Twenty years ago, so we're talking circa 2002. Doug, I don't know what you were doing in 2002.
SPEAKER_05I was starting Ohio League Soccer Academy, actually.
SPEAKER_04All right. All right. I was I was in law school and coaching a lot. But 2002, starting in football, starting with Nebraska. Obviously, I assume you leverage out across football in college probably into other levels of it. When did soccer come online as a
Why Soccer Video Is Harder
SPEAKER_04business line?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was so it was early on when we were talking to high schools that that soccer teams were coming to us. Uh you know, one of the interesting things in this journey is probably about 2009, um, when we started talking to high schools really effectively, and we would land with football teams and then grow through other sports inside of a high school. And the soccer teams would come to us, they said, like, we have problems. But one of the unique parts about soccer is uh capturing video is just so much more difficult, I think, than many sports. Uh, especially when you think about the club space. And, you know, you've got a field with no infrastructure around it. There's not stands, maybe the bleachers, but you know, you've got parents with pop-up chairs sitting there on the sideline and and getting a giant tripod up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, around on that time, tripod was advanced technology in 2002 because there was a lot of the shaking hand dad doing film for college highlights.
SPEAKER_03And so for us, we we really kind of hit that that point with coaches where probably 2009, 2010, we were we were really trying to explore it. Soccer really started to explode for us internally around 2013 when we said, okay, we know how to think about um flow-based video and not clip-based video. So think about football, right? There's a start and stop in between every play, right? The the whether it's a touchdown or a tackle or you know, whatever frame you want to use, there's like an eight to 10 second clip of video. Uh and we had architected our system in that way. Uh, but as we started to serve other sports, basketball and soccer, we know we noticed that we needed to serve something that was more long form and could handle and just pull the key moments out of you know, one contiguous video file. Uh, and so we started to see good growth in probably about 2013 into soccer. And in 2014, we made a big expansion outside of the United States into uh we opened our first office in London and signed our first Premier League customers and brought them on board. And and really that was when soccer became a huge part of our business, was that kind of 2013, 2014 business or timeline where we felt like we had a good solution. The technology had kind of caught up to a point where a tripod would work, you could control it. Obviously, it's not all the way to the automated capture component it is today, uh, but it was an opportunity for us to to bring our solutions and and efficiencies around video and data and unlocking new levels of insights to to soccer
From Video To Analytics At Scale
SPEAKER_03teams.
SPEAKER_05You started with the video piece of it. When did the data side of it kind of start to connect? Yeah, the analytics side of it start to connect with the video side.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, from the very beginning, we've always thought about video and data as an unlock together. I think one of the most challenging things with video is uh you give people this content, and you know, imagine uh you know you've got a soccer game and okay, cool, I've got 90 plus minutes of video. Now what? Uh help me go find those key moments fast. And so we always gave tools to coaches to go find that data and video on their own. It was really around 2014, 2015 that we decided, hey, we can actually give, you know, generate some of these data points for them. Uh and we started to generate the analytics for our teams. Previously, it was you put in the analytics, we'll give you nice reporting features that would come out of this, but you had to go through and do all the work on your own as a coach. Uh and and if you think about our journey, tagging. You're talking about tagging. Tag the data on your own. That works really well for a football team when you have one game a week and you're on a cadence that is every Friday or Saturday or Sunday I play. I have this whole built-in process that does that. Uh I'm pretty sure. Yeah, exactly. You can do a lot of work. If you're a uh, you know, a soccer team on a club capacity, you might have six games a weekend, right? Or five games in a weekend and another game in the week, or you might be coaching multiple teams and you've got lots going on here. Uh, there's just not the the time in between matches to do this. And so producing data and analytics uh in that like kind of 2015 range uh for our teams became a core value we could provide to teams. So not only did you get the video, now we give you the data so you can find those key moments fast and really start to to leverage the value that you're getting out of this and change it from just being, hey, we have all the video, go look at it, to here's all your touches, here's the key moments we want to find, maybe here's the set pieces they ran against us, what should we know about this or where were our our defensive deficiencies uh and being able to pull that out. That was a big unlock
Building A Full Player Through Line
SPEAKER_03for us for sure.
SPEAKER_04I want to back up a second because I think it's helpful because we're gonna tie all this information, which is really background and context, to specifically what we're doing together and why this matters for the people listening, the parents with players, the coaches, and all that sort of stuff, because there's stuff we have been doing, and then there's some new stuff we're gonna talk about that's really, really exciting. But to give us scope on why our relationship with you, I think, is important to the player and to the club, and we skipped over it very quickly. At this point, you guys are partnered with some of the biggest clubs and leagues in the world, with uh the Premier League and La Liga. You are embedded within college men's and women's soccer. Uh, you are used within the US Soccer Federation and the national teams. Right. And now with ECNL, and our our partnership obviously goes back five or six years, something like that, you are obviously very much integrated in the biggest and best youth soccer competition. So to draw the the line, the red line, as they would say, your video and your analytic platform can now tie from a player starting from youth through college, through youth national teams, through professional leagues across the world, where all of that data and video for that player in their journey, and then the ability to compare across platforms, whether on a team basis or a player basis, all lies within that big cloud of huddle data. That's probably not the best way to say it, and you could probably say it better, but is that is that an accurate statement?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, Christian, I'm just gonna have you come run uh run our partnership discussions for us because I think you nailed it. Uh no, it's uh it's a you you you've got it there, right? We are we want to be a through line that can give you uh your video and data and help you advance throughout your entire athletic journey, right? And so that might start from a very early age of just seeing, you know, how to touch the ball or what spacing looks like to, you know, a uh you know, a professional career and how you are uh playing against a specific style of play or uh what the opposite formation is going to look like and how you're going to defend against that and play against that. We can help uh and we have tools that are built to help you at each stage of that journey. Uh and they obviously get more sophisticated at each step because what an eight-year-old needs is different than what a professional team needs. Uh, but we are really excited about being able to help you on the scouting side, uh, in terms of your game and your preparation and in terms of recruitment side. Uh, and now uh even more recently around the athlete performance side, how do you train more effectively? How do you stay healthy? Uh, and how do you unlock the next level of your performance from a physical perspective? There's just so much that we can offer at every stage of the journey. Uh, you know, it's uh it's really exciting.
SPEAKER_04The other piece to that is is obviously there's other there's other companies in the market that have various products, whether they're cameras or whether they're analytic. There's not really a direct comparison to I think what makes you guys unique, which is the integration of analytics and video, and then the scope at which you are within our sport, right? Because watching film and getting analytics is a really positive thing. You guys do that, but then the ability to compare, contrast, benchmark, look at that, whether it's through league exchanges, whether it's through pulling data of various games and comparing levels, which we've talked about internally. When you say, Well, let's compare analytics between a top-level ECNL U17 boys game and a Division I NCAA quarterfinal or something like that, and then compare that to various levels of the Pro League to see what is the data difference in terms of performance. That scope of services, I think, is relatively unique to what you guys provide, which is why this for us, this partnership made so much sense, right? Because we're not looking then just at one snapshot in time of players, we're looking at the ability for these players to be pulled, you know, to go along through through their career and have this data available to all the people who are looking, first from an identification and recruitment perspective, but then also from a player development perspective, as you look from you know, player at this snapshot in time to the same player in a game at a different snapshot in time, in theory, you have that ability for the all those video to be there from high school to college to beyond. And I think that's a really, really cool thing. And without sort of burying the lead here a little bit, what we're trying to do is replicate more and more of the services and the quality of services that you tend to associate with college and beyond in terms of data and video, with what we are now able to provide to the youth soccer club and to the best youth soccer clubs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think you nailed uh the the value prop here, top to bottom, we can offer this. And I think one of the most unique things is that we have figured out how to do things at scale. So when we attack a solution, right, and we say, like, hey, there's this real need in the market, um, we don't say, well, okay, uh how do we make this work only for the MLS or the Premier League? Uh we say, how can we make this work for both sides? So how does this value add for the Premier League, uh, the MLS, college soccer, and you know, club sports like ECNL? Uh, and what can we do top to bottom that connects this entire value chain so that you can unlock all the insights you said, right? It's a common data spec that serves an athlete all the way through. So you can see, hey, here's how this athlete developed from the time they were 14 to 16 to 17. So now if I'm a college coach, I can say, okay, I've seen their development journey. This is super interesting. If I bring this athlete in, I know that uh they're they have shown a constant improvement every year. Uh in our system, I believe we can unlock more from them. I can also benchmark them and say, if I brought this athlete in today, here's how they would compare against other division one athletes now. Uh is this somebody who can step on the pitch and contribute today? Or is this going to be a project that uh that I need to invest in, a development project for a year or two before they're there? Uh and that's really valuable insights, right? Uh that's what it helps, it helps an athlete land at the best location for them, right? And it helps a coach make a better decision. And if we can help unlock those insights all the way down into the ECNL, where you start to really connect these things and say this whole pool together has the same video and data spec. There's so it sounds very technical, but the actual outcomes of that become now we can provide you know elite level insights at ECNL for the E CNL all the way up and down. We can help these athletes land at the best location for them uh as a college player or professional player. Uh that becomes uh you know incredibly valuable for the league and for the players inside the league.
SPEAKER_04I mean, Doug, what also if I take a step back on this, I remember, you know, when we were way back at the beginning of the league, the industry has changed so much. The technology has changed so much. I mean, at the beginning we had a video or a streaming partner, but it was at a time where you still needed like scaffolding to get a camera up. Right. And so whether that and that you know, it sounds silly, but that was probably ten, twelve years ago, you know, and then you see this creation of far less complexity, but wow, this thing called a giant tripod. You know, something that goes 20 feet up in the air, but you know, people had to turn the tripod, right? And so then you were still you were still somewhat uh tied to a camera operator who was of marginal, you know, probably quality. Because I still remember looking at videos where the camera operator kind of fell asleep and the ball goes off the screen, right? Then you go to these cameras that see the whole field and track the ball. Then you go to the integration of data, which started with clipping. And I remember sitting with an iPad at some point, clipping and worrying about, hey, when I hit the the tag, how far back in the video do I set the tag and how far forward do I set the tag based on what the tag is associated with? Now that is being done more and more through AI. You talk about manual burning of highlights on CDs to manual cutting of highlights and you know, probably something like iMovie, to now ability to pull highlights, you know, again through AI. The speed of change in this area is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_05The first challenge then was like capture, right? How do we get it effective? So and interestingly, you get it, now you get it, and you're like, okay, what what do I do with this? Like, how do I use it, right? I was like, what do I, you know, how do I do this effectively, you know, with players? And then you know, now to Christian's point, man, it's just exploded into and what what's great about it is you've taken something that was so time consuming and so so manual and so imperfect, and when you add some data points to what you're looking at and things like that, I think that's the thing that allows a player to go, oh, okay, and now I kind of understand and I put the pieces of the puzzle together.
SPEAKER_04Doug, when you when you say that, I mean, it's uh you and I both probably did this at various stages, but I think it will if I had to if I had to just approximate the time it would take to clip a game and prepare film, I would say it took if it was a 90-minute game, it took twice that to go through the game and clip it. And that's before you then organized the clips, you know, deleted the ones you didn't like because you had better ones, and then created something that was supposed to be moderately, I don't want to say entertaining, but it had to have some sort of entertainment value to a player to keep attention, uh, on top of the informational value. So to clip one game was probably a three-hour endeavor from start to finish. And even at the beginning of our partnership, which was like, I don't know, when was our partnership started? 2021? Even at that point, what we're about to talk about and the ability to do automatically was, you know, not even within the realm of possibility in 2021 with respect to analytic data and easy access to analytics and associated clips to the analytics. I mean, we're talking about making that easier for the coach to look at it and and then teach the player, making it easier for the player to the especially the intrinsically motivated player to look at their own film and and pull things easily and quickly, and then making it easier for the the scout to go look and find and pull things very, very quickly. I mean, really the efficiencies in all of those, education, whether that is coach-oriented or player self-oriented, and identification, and then to say nothing of tactical team preparation, the efficiencies in that are off the charts now.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, I was a college coach in the 90s. I mean, I spent an inordinate amount of time with a double short short player with a VHS player, like trying to stop and start. Yeah. So yeah, it's it is uh it's amazing how quickly the technology has exploded.
The Hard Problems Of Youth Capture
SPEAKER_05Well, I was gonna ask you, what as you guys have kind of gone along this this path, like what have your what have the biggest challenge has been for you guys?
SPEAKER_03Gosh, uh there's so many challenges, and I think they're fun challenges, right? They're exciting things that get me out of bed every day.
SPEAKER_04Besides, besides finding really good partners like these. I mean, I know that's the hardest thing.
SPEAKER_03Oh, look, once once we uh we've you know Rachel and our team have done a great job of and you guys have been awesome partners. So the that part is not a challenge, which is a good news. Uh but the uh, you know, you think about um all the stuff that you guys just just talked through, right? That is the journey we went on, right? So uh soccer teams needed more efficient ways to use video and data. So how do we capture it? Right. And so how do you build a portable camera that goes away from some you know, dad or mom on the sideline filming with their iPhone or a massive tripod to something that can be automated? And then how do you handle the scale and difference of fields, right? Um, because it's not not everybody's playing on really nice turf uh at a really nice facility. Sometimes you're out on a you know sloped grass pitch that's uh the line markings aren't very good and the goals are weird, and you've got seven fields right on top of each other. And how do you capture high quality video uh that then you can run your analysis against, right? Is that we can produce data. And how do you train an AI algorithm to handle the different various conditions that are coming at uh your system, right? So uh one of the things we've learned early with AI and computer vision was it's really easy if you're talking about Premier League video, right? Uh everybody's in the stands and you can have a consistent viewpoint, and there's you know 20 stadiums that you need to hard wire. Right, exactly, right? It's uh and you've got a consistent viewpoint and consistent uh layer. Uh and then you take this to an ECNL club and they might play at seven different facilities or 10 different facilities. And uh uh, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that is the fact.
SPEAKER_04It's youth soccer.
SPEAKER_03Right. So, how do you build a system that scales and serves youth soccer uh at high quality? So a lot of our challenges become very technical on that front. Um, how do you help someone? How do we build systems that scale with the variety of inputs uh and deliver high quality data at the end to unlock all the things you guys said? So, how do I unlock this so that my son can go in and very quickly filter down to all of his touches and say, okay, I want to watch all of these things. I want to watch all of uh, you know, all of my uh challenges here and where are the ones that I knew I messed up two or three different times, how can I find those very quickly? That uh being able to deliver that value at scale uh is one of the biggest challenges that we're constantly pressing ourselves on. And uh, you know, we're not perfect yet, uh, but we're really excited about the progress we've made over the last, even the last two to three years uh and where this is gonna go. Uh and then the other side is how do you how do you just continue to move the the starting line forward? Right. You said this before it was first I need to capture video, then I need to tag it, then I need to prepare some playlists. So we can constantly chip away at those things, but like what's next? Like, okay, uh, how can we use AI to deliver coaching insights back to every player? Even if you're a coach and you have customized curated playlists for every player and things that you want to do, you still may not have time as a club coach to go through each one of those things and give detailed information to your players. Uh, you know, how can you uh but how can we provide a system that maybe gives them some insight? Like based on these things, here are some skills you should talk to your coach about, or here are some things that we noticed from the way your team plays that you should uh, you know, you should consider in terms of uh pushing yourself on. How can we help move those things forward so that we provide more value to athletes, more value to coaches, more value to teams on this journey? Those are real unique challenges. And you want to make sure that your AI system isn't, you know, providing things that are uh counterintuitive to what the coach wants or would say. So like those are those are really unique, fun challenges that we get to tackle. And we do that in partnership with our teams and partners like you every day. That uh to me, those are uh those are awesome and fun things that get us out of bed every day, but for sure big challenges.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I I want to talk now uh and get very specific on what we do together and where that where that's going. Um before I say that, you know, do your last comment. I think another cool thing is you are able, because you're working with national teams, you're working with top-level pro clubs and leagues, you're able to take learnings from that level or use cases from that level and really look at how do I scale that down appropriately to youth, right? With it to create a similar value proposition, which again, you can't do unless you're working with some of the best analytic NVIDIA people in the world, which you are, right? So that gives a sort of a lens to focus through to ensure that what we're actually talking about executing at a youth level level is informed by use cases at the highest level, right? And that that separates the you know something that is cool and something that is interesting and helpful because they're not necessarily the same. So I'm gonna look at what we do together from from sort of two lenses sort of the short term, the now, and then the long term, some of which is gonna come to execution fairly quickly, and some of it is still gonna be a little bit uh vision casting. But so the now, what we've tried to do with with you guys, just so everybody gets a scope of what you do and why it's valuable
What ECNL And Hudl Deliver Today
SPEAKER_04to them. Number one, um, all of our recruitable event games, right? So these are in the recruitable age groups, which are different from boys to girls, are showcase events. Every single field has got a huddle camera on it capturing the film of those games. And it goes and it gets uploaded into a league exchange. That is giving everybody the ability to have game footage. Those games for many are the best games or some of the best games of the year in front of coaches. So coaches that are there can go and re-watch and c and look at them. Coaches who are not able to attend can log on to the league exchange to see that. So that's a huge value add. Saves people from having to fly across the country with their own camera, set up their own tripod, deal with all that sort of stuff, keeps us from having a forest of tripods on a soccer field, which is its own problem. Within that, those games are also live streamed so that people who want to watch them live can. Those games are, to be transparent, live games are behind a paywall, but they're available at no charge seven days after the event because we want to make that film available for everybody who wants to use it for identification and development. And you guys have been, I mean, live stream is hard. You talk about it's one thing in a stadium with hard lines and whatever they do to boost signal. It's another thing when you're in a cornfield in Iowa and eight fields and everybody's on there scrolling on their doom loop with Facebook. Um, and you've you've tried a variety of things to continue to improve the consistency of the live stream experience. Um, but that's a really, really cool service for people. You do the national selection games uh at both these ECNL and the Regional League, which are, you know, the, for lack of a better word, all-star games of our best players. Those games a lot of times also come with a commentator, which is really cool, and some visual packages that go on. So when you look at those games, you it kind of feels like you're watching TV, you know, and those are on, hence the brand ECNL TV. Uh so you guys are are behind that. The broadcasts for the national championship games that you guys do, and I know at some of those times we've had multiple cameras involved in some of that to further heighten that experience. There's certainly Dean Linke, the voice of soccer, he's gonna love being called on this because he's Dean, um, calling a lot of these NSGs and the national championship games. Obviously, in two weeks or so, we have the ECNL uh Everton International Tournament powered by the coach's voice. It's a long name for a big event, but those games are all gonna be live streamed and available free. So uh anyone can log on to ECNL TV to watch those games and see the best of American soccer versus some of the biggest academies in the world, which will be really cool and hopefully the beginning of more ability for people to see that. And then we have uh our ECN ECNL in action series, which is our monthly highlights of top plays of goals, saves, and other awesome plays, which uh we do in conjunction with you guys. There's some user-generated or submitted content as well, which is awesome. So we do all of those things now that really kind of get the product out for people. The League Exchange, which is for clubs to upload their home games to a master library. So all these games are available for two purposes. One, for colleges who want to go and look at a player. Maybe they see a player and they can go look and say, Hey, did what I see on this day, is this consistent with this player a month ago? You know, or a month later, they can go on and see a game in a different environment against a different opponent. And also for clubs who are preparing tactically to be able to look and say, Hey, I want to see how this team plays. So we have all of that stuff going on right now. And then before I go to the next step, am I missing anything in that, Doug or Matt?
SPEAKER_03It's a laundry list of great stuff we partner together on. I think you got it. Uh, you know, we're excited to uh to continue to provide value and and continue to make all those things better, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But you know, we do a lot of really exciting stuff together. Uh I don't know how long you spent five minutes, I think, we'll uh detailed in the list. It's uh shows you how deep and how exciting this partnership is uh for us.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I I guess if I pivot now, you know, one of the things we always talk about when because there we have uh a very long list uh or a almost a daily, if not uh certainly a weekly list of people who want to partner with us for one reason or another. And one of the things that we look at within that is what is being provided here as a product or a service. Is it valuable? Does it add value to the player club team experience? Video is one of those things, as we've talked about, there's so much technology now in youth soccer. A lot of it is not used effectively, to be honest. You know, because you talk about, you know, people with all the wearable tech. And when you look talk about wearable tech and you start talking about heart rate, and you're talking talking about different zones of intensity and running distances and all that sort of stuff, you need some pretty sophisticated biounderstanding or physiological understanding to make use of that data, much less to translate it into soccer terms. We've been very adamant about not wanting to partner in areas that don't add value, but you know, just because it seems cool, that it's not a good reason for us to do a partnership. The video piece, obviously, what I outlined adds tremendous value for those that want to use it. And what we're trying to do now, if I switch to sort of vision casting and the changes coming forward, is make it easier and easier for that video to be used in an effective way. And I would say there's two ways of that. One is ECL in action and the highlights and the ability to pull highlights from more places. There's nothing better to show that this is the highest level of soccer than to have the soccer in front of you that you can watch. Because people can write great articles and they can do all sorts of BS with respect to puffery and hyperbole, right? But when you watch the film itself, you can see the quality of the game. And so, number one, that's a testament to the teams, clubs, athletes that are in it. Number two, it's a really cool and inspiring thing for players and teams to see themselves celebrated for doing really cool things. And I think that's not, you know, a minor issue to celebrate the athletes for what they achieve by being able to say, look at what this player did in this moment. This is really, really cool, and get it out into the world. And then the other part is to take all of that video, and there's huge value if we if we zoom from the other end of the continuum from the individual player and their use from development or identification or the team, there's huge value to having video at scale, right? And video at scale then starts to be able to provide learnings, especially if it's associated with analytics and trends and data that we can then use and turn that into understanding what is the tactical level of play, where are the strengths and weaknesses at various age groups or overall within the country, because we actually can speak about the country when we're getting video from every state in the country almost at almost every level. And so the changes, and I'll just I'll shut up after I lay it, lay this out.
Auto Uploads Plus Wyscout For ECNL
SPEAKER_04We are there's two big changes coming here in the in the future. Number one is to reduce the the challenge and demand of loading the video, and that is that Huddle customers using Huddle Flex cameras, the video now will automatically upload into the leak exchange. That is a huge problem solve. There's no more go back home, plug this in, upload, download, upload, whatever that process is for you. Now that's gonna be done automatically for you by the camera, eliminated all of that. That is gonna make it easier to get video. It's gonna make it, it's gonna reduce all sorts of obstacles, it's gonna increase the amount of video that's there. That is a by in and of itself, by reducing friction, huge positive. The next thing is with all of these games, and this I think is kind of you know still a little bit unbelievable to me, is that with all these games now, we're gonna be able to have Y Scout analysis of all of these uploaded games. And there is no more detailed analytic platform in the world, to my knowledge, than Y Scout. And so that type of data is now gonna be available for all of these uploaded ECNL games. If you combine those two things, what it's positioning, and now I'm gonna jump another 100 yards forward, is it's positioning us to actually begin to look at coach education, coach development, and analysis of American youth soccer with unprecedented amounts of data that's never been there before to highlight where are we doing well, where are we not, where is there appear to be a need for better coach education or better player development beyond all the identification stuff we've talked about. I think this is really, really cool. So those two things Y Scout for all of the games, automatic upload. These are for the newbie, who's you know, maybe this doesn't sound as big of a deal as it is, but for those of us who've been in the space and who are dealing with all of this, this, these, these are unbelievable changes. I I'll I'll stop now, Doug. I know you have thoughts on this, and I'm sure Matt, you can tell us more about the details that we we haven't addressed.
SPEAKER_03You uh you summed it up uh really well, Christian. You know, we're really excited about uh, you know, continue. I said this earlier, move the starting line forward, advance the starting line so we can provide more value across the whole ecosystem. We've been testing this uh throughout the spring. I think some of the events you mentioned, we're actually running these tests live where our cameras automatically upload uh into the Huddle Leak Exchange, but start a lot of those processes right away. So it kicks off your data to SysPlus and it sends it into the Y Scout database. So it removes steps for coaches, which is really valuable. But the beauty is all the things that come back. So now, not only are you going to save time, you're gonna have an additional layer of data. Y Scout, if you're not familiar, you summed it up, but it is the largest soccer database in the world. Uh we capture uh every when we talk about competitions, right? It's leagues, competitions, all the data is aggregated in this place. This is the tool that MLS clubs live in every day, that Premier League clubs live in every day, that colleges use every day. And rather than making them go somewhere else to find ECNL content, it's all there. So is there scouting players? Now I can sit here and compare, you know, professional players through college players through ECNL players, and I can look and say, what is my recruiting pipeline look like? What is the, you know, where players I should be watching? Maybe not now because they're 16 but or 15, but maybe as they age up, I should have my eye on this player and see what's happening. And you can do that with advanced metrics that really have only been available for professional teams. We're bringing that down into the club level. And so we're really excited about what this can mean for every stage of this, not only in the recruiting journey and having everything together, but from a player development perspective, from a coach development perspective, uh, and to your point, Christian, from a from a market-wide perspective and understanding with real data and video, uh, where are we doing well and where are areas that we need to improve? And being able to like have the macro view and the micro view all in one location is just going to be so valuable for every player inside of this ecosystem. It's a really exciting time, uh, and it's something we're really excited to partner with ECNL on. You get you all the first league uh at the club space in in North America to do this. Uh, and so we're excited to uh to pilot this with you all and show just the the true power that uh you know ECNL and Huddle can uh have across video and data and how much value we can bring to everybody inside the ecosystem.
SPEAKER_04I mean, if if I jump and let's jump into uh Utopia Land here for a second, and let's assume at under 17, as we would hope, every game is uploaded from conferences, every showcase game is is uploaded by Huddle directly at our events, which means we have every game in the ECNL in America at under 17 that is available in this database that is then available to be why it will be Y Scouted. We would actually be able to say by data, this is the player. Who has won the most duels in American youth soccer at under 17 over the past six months, year, one month? This is the player who's played the most passes into the final third with success. We'll be able to look at and highlight those players, identify those players. I mean, that's a huge you take so many people talk so much about scouting and you know subjectivity and all this other stuff. There is truth to that. And then there's a lot of data analytics that I think are, you know, not helpful. I mean, you look at some of these technical things that are being done without context of a game. We'll be able to actually take data and analytics within the context of the game, within a known level, and be able to look at players and rank them by region, by age group, by all sorts of different factors. I mean, it's an unbelievable opportunity for us from a league perspective to make the sport better, to say nothing of those players from to be able to see where they're at, share and celebrate where they're at with coaches and with teammates.
What Wyscout Means For Families
SPEAKER_04It's a really, really exciting thing.
SPEAKER_05Our audience, you know, probably there's a a large swath of them are parents. And so I think it probably makes sense to just take a deeper dive into what Y Scout is and what is what it provides for players and families, so that they kind of get that idea. Obviously, as coaches, we know we know all about it. But um, so can you give us a little of that?
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, Y Scout uh the, you know, I said this earlier, it's the largest soccer database in the world, but what does that really mean? Uh, we aggregate all of this video and data together, but it is tagged in such a manner that as a as a coach or as a team, you could go in there and say, like, I want to see all of sporting Nebraska's U17 games, right? And I can aggregate and see everything that happens there. Or I could say, Hey, I want to go in and see all of uh my son Braylon Mueller. I want to go see every touch Braylon Mueller has, and I want to see every pass he's played uh into the attacking third. I want to see every line breaking pass he's had, I want to see every duel he's had uh and and see what he's done. And so it gives you the ability to kind of navigate through the video very quickly and then immediately find across multiple games all of the content that you're looking for. So instead of being like, okay, I know this lives here and this lives here, or this is in the Huddle League Exchange, I can pull these three games and look at it, it just immediately gives you all of the ability to find the content you want very quickly and then navigate through it fast. And the beauty of, you know, Christian and Doug, where you're talking about statistics and rankings, we think of this as it provides an objective layer to uh to the way the game is played, right? So it's often just a starting point. Yeah, you you all know this the same way I do. Just because somebody has great stats doesn't mean they're the best player. Uh, you know, just because somebody, and and the inverse is true, somebody might not have any uh any stats, uh, but they might be the most important player on your team or you know, stats that that show out on a box score. Uh, but using these kinds of information, advanced analytics that we provide, we can help you find players who make, you know, hey, show me somebody who's made a ton of line breaking passes uh and let's just take a look at that, or show me somebody whose expected goal rate is very high and show me all of the strikers across ECNL that have an expected goal rate at this rate. Uh now we can start to filter that down and say, like, okay, let's go look for players who are doing really great things. Uh, and and Y Scout just simplifies that entire process. And then teams can bring that back into Huddle where players live, where they build their highlights, um, where they can bring those coaching pieces together, all that data just flows right back in on top of the video and becomes such a uh it just feels like one ecosystem, uh, but it just unlocks this next layer of analytics, really, again, that have been limited to teams at the professional or college level before, partly due to cost uh and partly due to infrastructure around it. But because we can bring all this video and data together, because we can unlock things through all these master showcases, because all the video will just automatically flow into that platform, we can deliver this at scale to the ECNL and provide value for parents and athletes in a way that they've never had access to before.
The Real Why Behind Uploading Video
SPEAKER_04I'm a big why guy. You know, I was always the kid in school. Then I when I was told to do something, I'd say why. You know, like if I'm told to study this thing, why? What when when am I going to use this? I was probably not popular with some of my teachers because of that. I would say the same thing about video. And I think there's a lot of people who say, well, why are we uploading all this video? Who's looking at the video? And if the answer isn't, well, here's what we're doing with the video, it begs the question, why are we doing this with the video? And so what we've done, and I and I think you know, the size of Huddle is a big piece to this because you know, with all the staff you have and the resources you have, you can move very, very quickly. But now what we're able to do is say, why upload the video? Because every coach in the world will be able to see you, number one. Number two, you'll be able to, with a few clicks of the button, pull down whatever you want to look at about yourself as a player. And number three, people across the league and across clubs will be able to use this to help you be better with this education and the statistics available and the ability to link it straight to video. I mean, you're putting a Y so that the amount of uploaded video that is used in terms of education, development, and identification is going to go through the roof compared to people who just put video up there. And if you looked at it, you'd say, well, has anyone ever accessed that film and looked at that film? But everybody did a lot of work to get the film up there. And I think that, you know, I go back to partnerships that add value versus just things that sound good. Having video sounds good. But if there's not the ability to do things with it, the why, then there's there is very little value to the work there. And I think these changes and these things that we've done since 2021 to provide more and more video and access to players, to now adding even more services to it at no additional cost is really dramatically changing the why of your of why you are putting this video up there and why people should be accessing it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, I we tell people this all the time like video is a foundational teaching tool. Uh, it is just forget you know, scouting and recruiting for a second. Um, we want to help every athlete unlock, you know, the their potential in everything they can learn from sport, right? And and for many of the uh the especially ECNL athletes, that is further on than ECNL, right? Into something uh past that. Uh, but for you know, for some athletes, it's just getting to play longer. So you get to learn more and take more out of sport, right? So I always use this as an analogy. I pick on my son a lot. I've told this story a lot. Uh, when he was 10 uh in a match, he got called for three illegal throw-ins in one match. And as a 10-year-old does, he comes off the field, the pitch, and he's like, Dad, those refs are stupid. They didn't know what they were doing. But it's because he was trying to do some sort of like weird angle throw that he had seen, and it was putting and he was lifting his foot. Uh, but we had an early huddle camera. So I was able to go in and show him, hey, here's here's why they were calling it. Your foot was coming around, and the torque you were creating was lifting your foot off the ground. Super simple. Took me five minutes to pull this out for him. I don't think he's ever had an illegal throw-in again since then, right? Like it was uh just a simple teaching moment. But you know, I can give you that. Uh it's like kind of funny as a 10-year-old, but those are the things that you need to do. It's like you have athletes, uh, they're playing hard, right? They're adjusting on the fly in the moment. As a coach, you're seeing this stuff bring bringing video and data together to unlock hey, here's something we saw on the pitch. Like, let's go find the video moments of this. We can coach you very quickly here. And that would have taken you hours and hours and hours of preparation before. Now we can deliver that to you in seconds. And for the best athletes, they're going to get a whole nother level of elite analysis that they can use to push their game even further. But even the, you know, the athletes who won't go on to play at college or won't go on to play the pros, this is gonna give them a chance to make that starting spot on their varsity high school roster, right? Or just play longer and the top teams of ECNL and just continue to get more out of sport. Uh, there's just so much value we can provide across the whole ecosystem here that uh that just gets us really excited.
SPEAKER_04And we look to provide value to the clubs as well. What this, Doug, and I'm I'm speaking on the cuff here, but what this does is now that we have all this type of data available here uh coming up very shortly, it's gonna put some incentive on us to build out a bigger technical department to use that ourselves. And then use that by putting out technical reports to our coaches to help them understand and see, because again, that's doing work for people and saying, hey, this is what we see, or technical people we could bring into the league, what we see in American youth soccer as a strength, what we see is an area that needs to be improved. And here's video evidence to support that, that then you can tie to a variety of other coach education things. And, you know, I I could see a world, and you know, I'm totally spitballing here, but this is how it happens, where we take these analytics in this video, we identify an area, then we go into coach's voice and we say, let's put together an education program for this, that then we push out through the ECNL Coach Education Center, and we can say we identified an issue that is factual and objective and supported by video and data. And then we created a training platform to help address that issue. That's unprecedented opportunity to change the game. You know, that that is what we talk about when we talk about being the best youth sports experience in the world, is actually using the scale and scope that we and our partners have to do things that nobody else can do in American youth soccer. And I think it's not hyperbole to say nobody else can do that in American youth soccer at this point. And we're positioned to do things like that.
SPEAKER_05Matt, from your perspective, just look into your crystal ball and what what's the future look like, not only with our partnership, but where you guys are headed uh with stuff.
Future Insights From Tracking And Fitness
SPEAKER_05If you can, I know I know it's hard because it changes. People ask me all the time, where do you see CNL in five years? And I'm like, I have no idea, but I know it'll be different.
SPEAKER_04More scarves on the wall behind our.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let's uh let's go. Uh yeah, no, the some of the basic stuff is easy, right? The um what the stuff I'm talking about with Y Scout and auto uploads, that stuff's coming this fall, right? Like uh I don't even have to look five years out. Uh that stuff is coming for teams now. Uh, but when you look to the future, I think we get really excited about um, you know, partnering with with people like you to say, you know, what where are you seeing youth soccer going? What are the what are the challenges that you're running into that we can help solve? And then what are we seeing at the professional level that we can bring down um into this space? So uh to give you an example of of things that we're thinking about at a holistic level, um, one of the biggest challenges right now is uh it's really easy to tag events that happened or that are on video, but it's a lot more challenging to tag things that aren't on video or didn't happen. So, to give you two examples for this, imagine it doesn't matter what camera you're using, whether it's somebody filming on their own or whether it's ours or somebody else's, it often just follows the ball, right? And that's what it should. You want to follow the action. But what happens if uh the ball moves in the attacking third and the defending, you know, that that back line doesn't move onto camera? Are they in the right position or not? Uh are they loafing as they like don't get up that you know they should be coming up quickly? How do you provide coaching insight and analysis around that? Uh and how do you unlock um full insight into where players are at positionally at every moment during the uh, you know, on the pitch, even if the they're kind of off camera, uh at least from what you see. Uh and so we're looking at how we can produce you know new levels of insight to say, um, you know, here's what the tracking data looks like for all 22 players on the pitch. Uh here's how you should think about moving yourself into position so that when the ball does come out, you're ready to recycle it back in rather than you know trying to sprint and get to a spot. Uh we see that at the Premier League, right? And we see this at the elite levels of soccer. They're they're doing this now. Uh, how can we bring that down into the ECNL? To give you another uh level of insight, uh, we really uh are looking at how we can bring and unlock new uh new insights around training data and and actually athlete performance on the pitch. Uh and so uh, you know, we talk about wearables. Uh it's it whether or not you have a wearable, I want to know how far an athlete ran in a match. So I'll pick on uh my son, Braylon. He he knows I do this, so it's fine. Uh I do this all the time. He runs a lot uh during a match, you know, uh over seven or eight miles uh in an average match for him. And uh he gets tired near the end of a match. And we have a tracker on him and we can see that. And so your first instinct might be like, okay, well, you don't have as high of a sprint speed later in the match. Um, so let's take a look at uh how we can train you to just be, you know, have better endurance. Um but instead of doing that, uh we we paired it with video and we realized that he was sprinting from the back line up sometimes when he just needed to be jogging and he was wasting too much energy at times. Uh and what we actually needed to do is not train him to run longer. We needed to train him to run smarter. So, how do we teach him, hey, this is when you should be sprinting, this is when you should be jogging, these are the, you know, the these are the pieces that we would think about your physical uh training on the pitch and how that translates into your performance uh tactically. And those levels of insight are really challenging to unlock today, right? You might see, you might have physical data and you have video, but what we're really excited about is how we can start to bring this together so that now when you think about an athlete, they've not only been trained tactically. Hey, I can see all of my challenges, my duels, how should I perform? Uh, but maybe here's how I should be positioning myself on the pitch, whether I'm on camera or off camera, to see, hey, this is where it's at. This is how I should think about my training and fitness and endurance. Um, and so that I think there's just a whole new layer of insights uh that we're excited to provide and you know, uh help athletes through that journey, right? It's different for a 13-year-old than it is a 17-year-old, than it is a 22-year-old. And being able to work with great partners like you who are saying, hey, here are the insights we're seeing. Uh what what challenges or what ways can we solve this? Uh I think that makes us really excited. Uh, and it's why having a great partnership with uh with ECNL is really important to us.
SPEAKER_04That reminds me of the uh, and I'll twist it a little bit, the Kroyf quote of the fast, unintelligent player just can go farther in the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, I think that's uh that's it's a hundred percent correct, right? And so it's like, how do we get you, how do we teach you to be in the right spot at the right time uh so that you can receive the ball when it comes through or that uh you're there to challenge the right way. Um those are those are uh those are really challenging things to teach. Uh it's not impossible, it's just challenging. Uh and I think we can provide is is better.
SPEAKER_04It's an interesting point as well, because there's gonna be, I think, challenge in learning how do we take something that and make it appropriate to a U18, but then also make something, a variant of that um or a subset of that helpful and appropriate for a U13, right? Because they're not the same. You don't need a U13 pouring over things like that. That's that's another challenge for another day. Having all this available for for all of the film is is step one, and that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_03I mean, ultimately, you know, when we look at a partner like ECNL, it's and and you all have articulated this already, it's you've you've built a great job as a league, but like how do we help you be more than a league? Like, how can we help enable that, right? Because I think it is so important uh for us to continue to develop the pipeline for US soccer. Uh, you know, obviously we have the World Cup coming here, and that's gonna be very exciting, but we how do we continue the momentum past that to just be even more? And I think you all are going to power that more than we are. Uh, we well, hopefully uh we're the technology tool that uh that helps you unlock that. But but when we're looking at where things are going, uh, you know, a partner for us is how do we help them achieve their goals uh and find great ways to do that. So that's something that you know, again, that's why we're really excited to partner with ECNL.
A Dad’s View Of The ECNL Journey
SPEAKER_05As we kind of uh wrap here, I had to uh pivot because you are a dad who has a son who plays in our league. So you have that experience. Tell us about your uh ECNL experience.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, ECNL is so fun. Uh, I've been very fortunate uh through my uh my son's uh club soccer journey to have been paired with great families, uh people that I've enjoyed having a good beverage with uh during a training session or in between games. Uh, you know, people we've watched our kids grow up together. Uh, you know, great coaches along that journey. Um it's been fun to see uh, you know, as a dad, uh I'm not uh I I tell my kids, maybe maybe I'll start here. Um I tell my kids I'm your dad. So you are at a deficit from a professional soccer career before you ever step on the pitch. Uh like we're all in that. We're all in that.
SPEAKER_05Christian tells his kids that too.
SPEAKER_03Uh and so I'm just like, okay, so understand that's where it's at. Uh I don't have the mindset of, oh man, my son's the next Lionel Messi. I want him to maximize and enjoy it. And if that means college and the next levels, great. If not, okay. Uh, but what's been really great about uh the the con the level of competition being great at ECNL is that it constantly pushes him. He knows that every match he's gonna have to go perform his best. But watching him mature from being a young kid to, you know, he's finishing his junior year of high school right now, 17, uh, seeing that maturation and how he thinks about the game, how he thinks about uh preparation, how he thinks about recovery, how he thinks about engaging with his team, how he thinks about video. I've just watched him reach a level of maturity that I wish I had at 17. And I think all of that actually has come through uh his time in ECNO and the competition in the level he's gotten and the coaching that he's had. Uh and so I I couldn't have asked for a better experience. Uh and you know, hopefully we'll see where it uh it goes to the next level for him. He's uh in his you know college recruiting journey, and I'm trying to help him out the best I can with that. And uh, you know, we're really fortunate here at Huddle to have lots of connections that uh that can you know help him in a different way. Uh, but it's a uh it's been an amazing journey. And uh, you know, I'm looking forward to this next season as uh you know, kind of his last season we'll uh in ECNL, we'll figure it out from there.
SPEAKER_05It's awesome. I got the pleasure last night of going to TQL Stadium here in Cincinnati and watching Leonel Messi score three goals and two assists. And all the metrics about running are out the window because he doesn't run. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04He runs when it matters. He runs when it matters.
SPEAKER_05Yes, yes, he does. It is uh it almost feels inevitable. You know what I mean? It almost feels inevitable.
SPEAKER_04Almost almost as inevitable as the Bracken Brainbuffer.
SPEAKER_05That's true. That's true. That's a
Bracken Brainbuffer Better Coaches Or Data
SPEAKER_05great segue. Well done, you're getting better at those. Good job. So, Matt, at the end of uh every uh podcast, which I'm sure you already know because I know you're an avid listener to our podcast, we ask a qu uh the Bracken Brainbuffer.
SPEAKER_04First time, long time. First time officer, long time listener.
SPEAKER_05And so it's a question that's sometimes funny, sometimes more serious. Uh when we have esteemed guests like yourself, I try to you know put some real thought behind it. I am going to uh hopefully have a good one today.
SPEAKER_04This is probably gonna be mandatory listening across all HUDL platforms and customers, I imagine. For sure.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so here's my question, and Matt, obviously, as our as our guest, you get to answer first. The question is if you had to choose one of these, better athletes, better coaches, or better information, which changes youth soccer fastest? Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_03Uh that's a great question. For youth soccer, I think it's uh better coaches. I think my answer would be different if you're asking me about pro teams, but but uh put that aside for youth soccer, I think coaches have the ability to unlock um just uh more, right? They're the multipliers. Uh it is uh they can take a uh they can maximize the output of every athlete, and the better the coaches are, uh, the more they can unlock from them. Uh obviously, you know, players can help you win more, but to me, the thing that's gonna make youth soccer better, the thing that's gonna make US soccer better in the long run is better coaches.
SPEAKER_05It puts him pretty high up in the ranking of our listener. That was a good uh that was a good answer. I'm gonna go to Jacob Bourne, our esteemed producer, see what he has to say about this uh this particular question.
SPEAKER_02So I agree with Matt a lot, but I think it goes one step further. I think better information is key because better information leads to better coaching and better players. So I think if there's one thing that we have to change, it's better information because that just trickles down to everything.
SPEAKER_04Jacob, I'll just add in a wrinkle.
SPEAKER_05I know. Like this podcast, we're providing information. All right, Labers, what do you got? I'm gonna go with better coaches.
SPEAKER_04Coaches are the foundation. That doesn't that doesn't even always mean better in teaching. It can be better in understanding kids, better in understanding learning. Um that is also not a criticism. I think we're all trying to be better. And actually, it goes back to what what we are trying to provide through this relationship with the the video and the data to support better coaching, the the coach education center, which again, as we are the only league or the first league that will have this type of data from the field, we are also the only league in America that has mandatory coach education digitally available to help improve coaches. Um, and I think as of this point, we have seven, almost 7,000 coaches a year going through the five hours that we do. That's not because we just like to make shit up for people to do, it's because we believe in constantly improving, and so I'm gonna I'm No, say better coaches.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Um I agree 100%. It's better coaches. Um particularly.
SPEAKER_04This is a leading question, Doug.
SPEAKER_05Asking coaches who would have we have to make ourselves feel important uh in this process. No, I think I think all of you guys said said uh good stuff about it. I just think you just have at the youth level particularly, um you just have such uh an impact on the trajectory of players and both both as players and people. I mean, I think we would all here look back at the coaches that we had when we were growing up and the impacts that they had on our lives one way or the other. So I think anything we can do to continue to raise the level of coaching in this country will will equal uh we'll get that back uh in spades in the development uh side of it. Um it is it's a challenge. We're a big country with a lot of people playing sports and a lot of coaches to train and that need to learn and you know all that stuff. But I think for sure coaches are better coaches are the key. So we I think we all generally agree, which is which is nice.
Wrap Up And Listener Question Invite
SPEAKER_05Which is nice.
SPEAKER_04We appreciate having you on here. I know this has been a long time in the works. I can't imagine a better time to do it right before all this stuff goes public, and the ability to explain why it all matters, it which can be hard to do in a press release, but hopefully we've done this in a way that's actually exciting to people. We really value the relationship we have, and you got a great team at Huddle, and kudos to Rachel, who's been our our lead from day one on that, and we all enjoy working with her and and all the people that she has on her team. So thank you for what you guys have done, and and we look forward to continuing to grow with you.
SPEAKER_03Likewise, Christian, Doug, really appreciate you guys having me on today and uh our continued uh partnership around this and looking forward to uh some events here uh over the course of the next few weeks and then uh big launch this fall.
SPEAKER_05That's a wrap, Doug. Yes, we will be back in two weeks, strictly sharp, absolutely sharply in two weeks uh with our next uh podcast. And uh we're getting close to playoffs, so there's gonna be a lot of logical stuff to talk about. But Matt, thanks again, and uh see everybody in two weeks.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, guys. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast. And remember, if you have a question that you want answered on Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast, email us at info at theetnl.com.