BILLINGS — One by one, Billings Skyview girls soccer players file into the small equipment shed on their practice field at High Sierra Park and load a small sensor into a docking station that’s slightly bigger than a laptop.
The data in those sensors immediately begins downloading to the cloud, and usually by the time Falcons coach Cameron Icenoggle gets to his office — it’s just a short drive to the school from the practice field — he can call up all that information on a computer and begin to digest it.
One of these days, he and his coaching staff might even figure out what it all means.
“We’re novices, still,” Icenoggle said with a smile. “We’re getting better.”
Icenoggle is being a bit self-effacing. He and his staff can decipher the data. How to implement it, and how much to use, are mainly the decisions they grapple with. There is so much data that the Excel spreadsheet used to house each player’s information from just one practice session extends to column FS. For those of you not familiar with Excel, that’s 175 columns worth.
Following each practice, players from the Billings Skyview girls soccer team place the sensors that tracked their practice into this machine, which downloads the information to the cloud.
It’s way more information than Icenoggle wants to impart to his players. So, for the last two years, he’s given them two basic data points after each practice: Load and intensity. The data basically shows how hard each player worked, and for how long.
When Icenoggle initially brought the technology to his team before last season he was met with a variety of reactions. Some players were indifferent. Some were hesitant. And some, like Charlize Davis, were excited.
Davis, a senior, described herself as a “stats-oriented person.” So the more she can break down her performances beyond just goals or assists, the better.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get to use this until this year in games, but it was still pretty cool looking at the practices and seeing the work rate and all that,” said Davis, who recently signed to play for Rocky Mountain College. “I think it’s really beneficial, especially for the underclassmen now that get to use them in games and really dive into their game.”
Whatever a player wants to know about her game, it’s in the data. How hard were her passes? What percentage of time did she use her left foot compared to her right foot? How much time was the ball on her foot? What was her peak speed? How many miles did she run?
On and on it can go.
Each practice session’s results get posted on the wall of the equipment shed. If a player wants to know more than the simple load and intensity data points, they can ask.
Billings Skyview girls soccer coach Cameron Icenoggle prints out a color-coded data sheet of each day's practice and posts it inside the team's equipment shed at its practice field.
Sophomore Rae Smart is the Falcons’ playmaker, an attacking midfielder whose job it is to create opportunities for her teammates. In soccer parlance, she’s a No. 10. So she likes to know how many touches she’s had in a match and how long she’s on the ball.
The longer each touch is can mean a variety of things. Among those could be that Smart isn’t making quick enough decisions, or her teammates aren’t making themselves available for her to distribute the ball quickly and effectively.
“I kind of base my game off of ‘was I on the ball enough,’” Smart said. “Because as a 10, you’ve got to move that ball. So if (the data) says I’m not on the ball, it’s not really a good game for me. I obviously was doing something wrong. And maybe the team just couldn’t find me that game or we’re stuck in the back (line).”
Wearable technology for game use was recently OK’d by the National Federation of High School Associations and the Montana High School Association followed suit just before the fall season began.
So for the past few games, the Falcons have been wearing the devices in live matches. The sensors are housed in a small plastic case, kind of like a key fob, and fit inside a silicone harness which wraps around a player’s soccer shoe.
The sensor is located toward the heel, fitting snugly just under the ankle bone. They’re not a factor in play, according to Icenoggle.
Icenoggle has leased the equipment from playermaker.com at a cost of about $100 per player for the past two years, though that agreement is expiring. He said he expects to renew the lease, which is paid for by extra fundraising by Icenoggle’s program.
The Billings Skyview girls soccer program has been leasing wearable technology for two years, and coach Cameron Icenoggle expects to re-up when the lease expires after this season.
Wearable technology has been around for some time at the professional, college and even club levels in many sports. But until the most recent decision by the national high school organization, the devices have been treated the same as jewelry, meaning they couldn’t be worn on the field during games.
But it was time to roll with the changes, MHSA Executive Director Brian Michelotti said. The MHSA will look at future technological requests on an individual basis.
“We’ll continue to work with the national level to make sure we’re in alignment with how they are doing things,” Michelotti said, noting that a few soccer teams in western Montana have been approved to use Trace technology in their programs. “As we progress forward, we just have to make sure that (the systems) can’t be used in-game to provide a certain level of advantage and there are no safety issues towards participants.”
Though Icenoggle’s Falcons are off to a good start (5-1-0), the coach doesn’t see the technology simply as a way to be tactically better. For example, the staff can look at the work rate data and use it to guide practices.
Or, if a player’s work rate or speed rate has decreased over a period of time, is more rest required, or is she hiding an injury? All the data is great; again, it’s figuring out how to use it.
“The eye test is what we coaches run off of,” Icenoggle said. “And we can be wrong. … Maybe some of these (practice) sessions were way harder than we thought, or way lighter than we thought.”
The bottom line, Icenoggle said, is to find the best fit and role for each player to put them in a situation to succeed. He points toward the walls of his school home room, where hanging are soccer scarves from Montana State Billings, Briar Cliff University, Colorado Mesa and Wisconsin River Falls, all programs that have signed Skyview players over the years. One from Rocky is on the way, thanks to Davis, and Icenoggle wants to see more.
To help in that end, a player can quickly sync her tracking data to her HUDL video highlights, another technology that programs in multiple sports have used for several years. That way college recruiters can not only see the plays a player is making, but put some context behind it.
“We take pride in getting players to the next level,” Icenoggle said. “We can justify the cost (of data tracking) because it’ll help our girls go to the next level. We really think that’s going to be true.”
Gloss