Main Image: USL

By Ethan Joyce

Brett Luy realized it was odd to imply that he wanted to see an officiating call questioned. As the United Soccer League’s president of competition and administration, the ideal scenario is a perfectly called game by referees, letting the players provide the impact moments in matches.

But that changes when deploying a new support system for said officials, like the USL will be doing with its Football Video Support (FVS) pilot for the final seven games of its interleague competition between Championship and League One teams, the Prinx Tires USL Cup.

“This is a weird thing to say, but I’m hoping we get the opportunity to utilize the technology,” said Luy, chuckling.

While Video Assistant Referee (VAR) is now a household abbreviation, FVS is more a recent addition to soccer. It’s so new that FIFA is still evaluating it as a potential alternative support method for referees (this pilot is part of that larger FIFA effort).

Here are a few key takeaways from my conversation with Luy about FVS and the USL.

How it works, and how the USL will use it

FVS usage is scaled down and clear-cut compared to VAR. It can only be used to review four situations:

• Goal/no goal
• Penalty/no penalty
• Direct red cards
• Mistaken identity (the wrong player is cautioned/sent off)

A goal scored, Luy explained, will be automatically checked by the fourth official’s review on a field-side tablet. Other situations will require the match’s head coaches to request a review through the fourth official. Coaches will receive two requests per match during this pilot, which starts with quarterfinal knockout matches next month and continues through the Prinx Tires USL Cup title game.

There will be no challenge flags thrown or challenge balls punted on the field, sadly. “A little less ostentatious, I guess, for this footballing world,” Luy said.

FVS’s biggest benefit? Cost savings

Part of FIFA’s drive to test FVS is the desire for more affordable officiating support systems outside of VAR. For the smaller leagues around the world, VAR’s price (which can be in the mid- to high-seven figures for leagues) is a significant investment to make on tighter budgets. FVS is also supportive of venues set up with fewer cameras. Both cases reflect the USL’s needs, which support nearly 300 teams throughout its various levels of men’s and women’s competition.

“Even if we wanted to go that [VAR] route, we wouldn’t have the requisite bandwidth within the ecosystem to be able to accommodate that just from a strictly numbers perspective,” Huy said. “So when you create something like this that eliminates that mitigating factor, I think it’s very positive for the game and something that can be very positive for us as a league.”

An added benefit to this FVS deployment? The USL will get to rely on existing partners Spiideo and NEP Group, which it uses for its camera system and broadcast production.

Why it makes sense for the USL

This move comes as the USL prepares for an impending promotion-relegation setup in 2028, when the USL Premier debuts as the top of a three-tiered pyramid featuring the USL Championship (second division) and USL League One (division three).

Luy sees this as a natural evolution for the USL as officiating decisions could eventually impact clubs moving up or dropping down at the end of the year.

“With promotion-relegation conversations happening and talking about matches of consequence increasing throughout the regular season here and in the not-so-distant future for us, we feel like the time is now,” Luy said. “We’re going to create a dynamic and a paradigm where … you really up the stakes when you’re talking about people going up and down and the fluidity of a pro-rel system.

“Getting as many of those calls right and getting on the front foot here — it felt like the right time to accomplish that task.”

By John Portch

While often grouped together, research and innovation are distinct but interconnected activities.

“‘Research’ is providing and creating new knowledge in a specific area, which is relevant to the theme in hand,” said Dr Robin Thorpe. “Where ‘innovation’ comes in is the implementation and how that applied new knowledge creates value for the environment.”

Thorpe, who has worked across multiple elite high-performance environments, was speaking and presenting at a virtual roundtable for members of the Leaders Performance Institute entitled ‘Where does research and innovation sit within a high-performance strategy’.

Knowledge alone, he continued, does not lead to innovation. “How can we actually embed processes and human behaviour aligned with some of this new knowledge and value it may bring?”

Building on that question, he explained that confusion around research and innovation often stems from a misunderstanding of what he sees as four connected but distinct stages:

1. Research: Creates knowledge
2. Innovation: Applies knowledge to create value
3. Implementation: Embeds change into everyday practice
4. Performance impact: Improves outcomes on and off the field

Organisations can go wrong by jumping straight to technology and bypassing the critical stages that connect knowledge to performance.

As he brought the rest of the table into the conversation, Thorpe posed a series of provocations:

• Most organisations invest more in technology than they do in innovation.
• Research should solve operational problems, not academic ones.
• Innovation is rarely limited by ideas; it is usually limited by implementation.
• Buying technology is one of the least innovative things an organisation can do.
• The success of innovation is determined less by the quality of the idea and more by how effectively its value is communicated.

In reflecting on where organisations succeed and where they become stuck, the table identified four challenges facing research and innovation across elite sport:

1. The tendency to start with the answer instead of the question

There is a tendency to jump straight to solutions before properly understanding a problem. Participants argued that research should be driven by performance questions and strategic priorities rather than new technologies or fashionable ideas. One attendee warned that without clarity around the questions an organisation is trying to answer, it becomes easy to pursue “a shiny new tool” without aim or purpose.

The table highlighted the value of establishing external research partnerships (e.g. with universities) when seeking to answer performance questions and close knowledge gaps. Such collaborations are relatively common in the UK, Europe and Australasia but less so in North America. The key, Thorpe noted, is ensuring these partnerships are understood for the value they bring and not just as academic exercises.

Several contributors also described internal governance structures such as review panels, technology trials and internal pitch processes to help identify those knowledge gaps. As an example, one participant described a process whereby prospective research questions are challenged by specialists from across their organisation in a Dragons’ Den/Shark Tank-style scenario. The aim is to test whether the issue being raised is genuinely a question worth investigating or simply a preconceived answer in search of justification. The exercise occasionally reveals the latter. As the member reflected, “it’s not even a question, it’s just we’ve come up with the answer in the room.”

2. Mistaking technology for innovation

Competitive advantage rarely comes from owning technology; it comes from using knowledge in ways that improve performance. As Thorpe said, “we tend to think of innovation as technology and technology as innovation”; it is one of the main industry challenges in this space.

While the table acknowledged that technology is an important enabler, attendees agreed with Thorpe’s idea that innovation is better understood as the creation of value through the application of knowledge. As one contributor explained: “The innovation piece isn’t necessarily the technology itself but the process change.”

Another noted that “technology can accelerate innovation in some respects” but that genuine innovation comes from “the redesign and the way that people think about that”. “Innovation,” one participant suggested, is ultimately about “creating value from a problem that matters.”

3. Turning ideas into practice

Thorpe observed that when innovation fails it is usually due to poor implementation rather than poor ideas. This resonated with attendees who described the realities of introducing change in elite sport. Professional environments often demand immediate answers, which creates pressure to pursue quick solutions rather than carefully embedding new approaches.

One participant noted “the perceived need of the organisation for the speed of an answer” while another spoke of “the need for speed, the need to be first” creating pressure to solve today’s problems at the expense of investing in initiatives whose value may only emerge over a longer timeframe.

Additionally, the table recognised that new ideas alter workflows, responsibilities and behaviours, which means successful implementation depends as much on people as it does on tools.

4. The ability to prove performance impact

The table agreed that neither research nor innovation carries inherent value; their worth depends entirely on whether they improve outcomes. Research priorities, they argued, should be linked to strategic goals and organisational performance. Projects should ultimately be judged by their contribution to better decision-making, healthier athletes, improved availability, operational efficiencies or competitive advantage.

Just as importantly, organisations must be able to communicate value to key stakeholders. Participants noted that strong ideas frequently fail because decision-makers do not understand their relevance. As one attendee observed, “the success of innovation is determined less by the quality of the idea and more by how effectively its value is communicated.”

Thorpe wrapped up the session with a set of questions designed to encourage the table to further explore the practical realities of research and innovation within their own organisations:

• Who owns research and innovation within your organisation?
• How do you decide which questions are worth investigating?
• How do you communicate the value of innovation to coaches, executives and owners?
• How do you measure whether innovation has genuinely improved performance?
• How do you balance short-term delivery with long-term innovation?

What to read next

Leading Beyond Silos: Dr Robin Thorpe Explains How High-Performance Organisations Can Integrate Expertise

Main Image: Fifa via Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The introduction of mandatory hydration breaks in this year’s FIFA men’s World Cup was, depending on one’s perspective, an intrusion into the sport’s natural pace, a naked cash grab for advertising dollars or a welcome reprieve from the onslaught of swampy summer heat.

After France defeated Sweden 3-0 in the Round of 16, several of the Swedish players indicated that they found the mid-half intermissions beneficial on a day with a game-time temperature of 90 degrees and a heat index of 93 at N.Y. N.J. Stadium.

“It was hot out there, and it’s always nice to get a little bit of a break to fuel up,” Sweden defender Victor Lindelöf said. “Obviously against a team like France, it can be good as well to get a break and talk a little bit.”

Just days later, an apocalyptic-sounding Heat Dome was forecasted through the long holiday [July 4] weekend. Only three of the 16 World Cup venues — Atlanta, Dallas and Houston — were air-conditioned, making this “the World Cup of the sports scientist” for the outsized impact support staff can have, said Douglas Casa, the CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute and a kinesiology professor at UConn. Casa said proper heat mitigation strategies can lead to a 10% gain in performance.

The available modalities on site were personalized sports drinks, high-tech cooling devices that can be worn or held, and sweat-tracking patches, not to mention halftime cold plunges that can be 2-3 times more effective than air conditioning alone, according to Casa. He added that 90% of the benefits can be achieved with targeted heat acclimation in 10 days. The U.S. women’s national team spent that amount of time at the KSI prior to the Tokyo Olympics.

The Powerade-sponsored hydration breaks have been multipurpose for the athletes: consuming sports drinks, applying cooling towels and discussing tactics (and allowing time for fans to refill their beers). But relying on those three-minute pauses alone is not enough.

“Hydration is one of those things that, if you’re in the moment, you’re too late,” said Darcy Norman, the Director of Performance at Chicago Fire FC who previously held similar roles at three World Cups with Germany in 2014 and 2018 and the U.S. in 2022. “It takes time for your body to absorb the water. Typically, you would have more sodium, more salt, and that would draw in more water into the muscle itself. So you’re filling up the stores.”

A plan to beat the heat

Norman said a proper hydration plan starts the night before and should be built on data collected over time. The Fire use Nix Biosensors to build sweat profiles of every player in every condition, monitoring water and electrolyte loss on humid summer days, icy winter evenings and several types in between (Nix worked with one World Cup team but was unable to disclose which one). Perspiration “can vary quite substantially,” added Norman, who said some athletes are metabolically efficient even in intense heat while others sweat “like a fire hose.”

Gatorade has supported the Brazilian national team for a decade, including the use of sweat-tracking wearables from Epicore Biosystems that monitors the water and sodium lost from sweat and also skin temperature. Epicore CEO Roozbeh Ghaffari said longitudinal tracking is critical, noting, “You have to know what’s happening over time to predict forward.” Also, where a player competed in his professional season will affect his baseline.

Heat acclimatization can be objectively monitored through devices such as the Core body sensor, a wearable popular in triathlon and cycling. Core is making its way from endurance pursuits to team sports — it also has worked in and around this World Cup but isn’t at liberty to say whom it’s supporting — to gauge each athlete’s internal temperature and adaptation to the heat.

Core Chief Commercial Officer Ross McGraw said athletes face biomechanical limitations when heat overwhelms their system. “If they’re overheated, they’re not going to be able to run as fast,” McGraw said. “They’re not going to win those individual balls. And the less of those individual battles you win, the more likely you’re not going to do well as a team.”

Even teams that don’t use a sensor have prioritized heat training. Swedish defender Daniel Svensson said the team did heat training in climate-controlled rooms and saunas prior to coming to the U.S., where the Swedes held training camp in sweltering Frisco, Texas.

Defender Daniel Svensson and Sweden had to battle the pressure of France’s attack and the New Jersey heat. Photo: AFP via Getty Images

McGraw said Core measures body temperature in tandem with heart rate. When there is a “decoupling” of the metrics — that is, your heart rate continues to rise even when power or speed output remains steady — it can be a sign of heat strain. Some teams, he noticed, warm up the legs while wearing a cooling vest to keep the core temperature lower, calling the practice “counterintuitive” but one that has been effectively implemented by endurance sports.

Adidas outfitted 14 national teams with its new cooling vests and boots at the World Cup, including Argentina, Mexico and Spain. In training, England used Therabody’s new CryoTherm Palms, a handheld device that can lower core temperature. (Several pro sports teams, including MLB’s Cubs, have used a similar product from Apex Cool Labs called the Narwhal.)

Building up heat tolerance can make athletes feel more confident, too. As the Tokyo Games started, Megan Rapinoe posted on Instagram that she never felt better prepared for the conditions. McGraw, who later competed professionally in triathlons, spent childhoods attending weeks of soccer camp in central Pennsylvania where he remembers intense training in the summer sun and, afterwards, feeling “like Superman.” (The camp director, ironically, was a former pro with the aptly named Harrisburg Heat, and his surname is familiar: Mark Pulisic, the father of USMNT star Christian Pulisic.)

No matter how prepared an athlete is and how successful he may perform, the postgame objective is clear. After scoring two goals against Sweden, French superstar Kylian Mbappé told a reporter before leaving the field: “I’m looking forward to the changing room and the AC.”

Main Image: VeloU

By Joe Lemire

The SBJ Tech Sandbox series is where we share our experiences testing products, gear, solutions and more in the sports tech space.

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. — The critique was stinging but true.

“Your body is telling you how it wants to move, and you’re ignoring it,” said Nick Serio, the GM of Velo University, near the end of my hourlong session.

The baseball and softball training center regularly works with individual high school, college and pro players, and I had undergone a robust battery of tests: a movement evaluation, multiple force plate drills, an ArmCare assessment and a dozen pitches in front of a TrackMan radar.

This data fuels the training programs and guidance VeloU offers its players, with hybrid options available for on-location and remote training. It developed a custom app, built upon white-label provider Everfi’s foundation, and guarantees responses within 24 hours, although typically VeloU coaches respond within an hour and a half.

“Our big promise — what we feel was the biggest gap in that industry — is our ability to communicate with an athlete,” Serio said. “We were always trying to think what is missing when you’re talking about remote training, and it’s the feeling that you have this connection to a coach.”

Serio, a former college baseball player who later earned a doctorate in sport and performance, had seen me squat comfortably into a deep stance but lack hip-shoulder separation — I have limited upper thoracic spine rotation, meaning I don’t generate much force from the twist of my torso, and my hips aren’t flexible. This much I knew, dating back to a Springbok Analytics scan when I was told in no uncertain terms that my hip flexors were struggling.

This is not my first — or even my second — summer spent chucking baseballs in the pursuit of speed. What VeloU diagnosed is that I try to compensate by over-rotating my trunk to increase the whipping action of my motion in hopes of eking out a few more precious miles per hour. But, as Dir of Pitching Thomas Jankins noted, I didn’t have the pelvic control to benefit from that move.

“To be honest, you are older — you’re just not going to have the same separation as a 19-year-old,” Jankins told me in a comment that was somehow both reassuring and devastating.

The downstream effect of these mechanics is that, when I ultimately pitched the ball, I lowered my left shoulder in an exaggerated fashion, and my right hand came over the top at an extremely high arm slot.

Here’s Jankins demonstrating my exaggerated arm slot for me. Image: VeloU

“Your rotation mechanism right now is basically just pure thoracic extension and tilting,” added Jankins, who rose to Triple-A in the Brewers system, explaining that I bring my arm over the top to create energy because, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t easily whip my torso around, thereby not taking full advantage of my lower half’s ability to generate force.

As Jankins put it, pitching mechanics are a byproduct of the body’s strength and flexibility. The throwing motion is a way to feel comfortable within those limitations. Serio believed I should prioritize generating force from the ground and through my legs because it ought to be more fruitful than whipping my upper body around.

“Most of the time, we don’t worry about the end of a race,” he said, referring to the throwing motion and likening my pitch to the finish and my mobility to the starting line. “We worry about the start of a race. In my opinion, you’re not built to wrap the way you’re wrapping, and that’s throwing everything else off.”

Performance coordinator Paul Franzese chimed in with some helpful weight room tips to emphasize the proper hip position when lifting. Serio noted that my squat during the movement assessment should be better leveraged in my pitching motion.

“You have too good of a squat for somebody that’s your height to not try and work on getting into that [position],” Serio added. “You’re avoiding loading your hip.”

Throwing a med ball on force plates helped isolate my force production and sequencing. Image: VeloU

KinaTrax, the high-end motion capture system, is set to be installed later in the summer as well as a set of Bertec force plates built into a mound. In combination, that’ll give richer data on biomechanics.

Projecting velo for U

VeloU has built its own custom player reports, and Jankins led the creation of a proprietary algorithm predicting an athlete’s capacity for velocity. The end result is a total energy score analogous to the max throwing velocity a body is capable of throwing.

The algorithm, which Serio said will soon be licensed to college programs, is built on four metrics that are all composites of the individual assessments:

• Energy potential (body composition).
• Energy production (weight room metrics).
• Energy transference (med ball, force plate).
• Arm health (ArmCare).

My total energy score was 81.8, and that’s right on the nose. A couple summers ago, I touched 82 mph. More recently, I topped out at 81 mph while throwing on a Pocket Radar. The big test, though, would be throwing on VeloU’s TrackMan. I had never thrown on an enterprise device like that; it formerly powered MLB’s Statcast and remains a leading provider in top colleges.

The VeloU reports tells me I’ve got great energy potential and subpar interference, meaning I need to strengthen my arm. Image: VeloU

As I neared the end of my throwing session, I had been maxing out in the upper 70s when Jankins gave me a final charge.

“We’re going to go just one more fastball to finish,” he said. “Give us 80.”

I rocked and fired, the ball sailing well wide of the strike zone as I put far more effort into velocity than command. TrackMan flashes a preliminary speed immediately before taking a few seconds to display the confirmed final number, initially showed 80 mph as the half-dozen VeloU trainers watching me cheered … before settling on 79.3, with the background noise descending into groans.

“One more,” I said, knowing the pressure was on.

This time, TrackMan began north of 80 and stayed there, registering 80.5, a reading met with a sustained cheer around me. Someone in the crowd equated the anticipation to one of their regular trainees trying to hit 98mph for the first time.

It was a supportive comment to show how invested the group was in my success, but it also reinforced for me how far away I was from the elites. I felt very much like a retiree auditing a course at VeloU.

This baseball may look stationary in the photo, but TrackMan told me it was traveling 80.5 mph. Image: VeloU

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch

When Ben Crockett served as Director of Player Development at the Boston Red Sox, he tended to be an early adopter of technology. But it didn’t always work out for the best.

At the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, he shared a decade-old story about a pitch-tracking technology that had been excitedly introduced by the club’s performance team. “It was a tool to help provide the coaches with more information that would help them in their coaching efforts and provide feedback,” said Crockett, who now serves the Red Sox as a Special Assistant of Basketball Operations.

The project proved to be a flop despite the technology doing exactly what it was supposed to do. Today, Crockett understands where his team went wrong. “We didn’t teach it enough; and we actually installed somebody to help operate it, which we thought would be helpful.” However, “in some ways it actually took away the ownership of our coaches for a solution that was ultimately going to help them.”

The Red Sox pitching coaches carried on doing their own thing; the merits of the technology were irrelevant to them. They didn’t trust, understand or see how it would help. “That was a good lesson in terms of what not to,” added Crockett, who shared the stage with Troy Thomson, the Football Operations Manager at the Brisbane Broncos, who had a cautionary tale of his own.

“Quite often, someone over-promises and under-delivers,” he said. “When you finally get the hardware in, it doesn’t quite have the capabilities you need.” It is no wonder that coaches can be wary of new datasets.

Ben Crockett (centre) speaks onstage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London alongside Troy Thomson (left).

Over the course of half an hour onstage at the Kia Oval, Crockett and Thomson explained why data is valuable only if it can positively influence decision-making and behaviour. Their efforts to refine their approach point to five common principles: transparency, education, alignment, ownership and storytelling.

Transparency – information only matters if people can see it

Data is most useful when athletes understand the metrics, contribute to the resulting discussion and take responsibility for acting upon the information unearthed.

Transparency at the Red Sox, as Crockett explained, is embedded in a system of “continuous feedback loops within session, after session, after games” between coaches and the players, who develop a “continued understanding of where they stand on chasing specific measurable goals that have been agreed upon between the player and the team.” He added that “the athletes today are much more open to getting that type of information”.

Thomson also noted that Broncos players actively seek feedback on their performance metrics. For example, they now “want to finish the session and come and see what their line speed metrics are,” he said.

Education – data must be understood before it can influence decisions

Data can begin to influence decision-making when people understand both the numbers themselves and the behaviours those numbers are intended to shape. As Crockett noted, “it isn’t a one-time presentation; ‘here’s what everything means’. It’s ongoing.”

At the Broncos, Thomson emphasises the importance of helping players understand what data reveals about their performance. The coaches’ role is one of showing rather than simply telling.

He said: “The coaches also work really hard from a visual point of view as well, so being able to show the players technically how they’ve been working is a really important part of the process.”

Alignment – everyone working towards the same goals

To reach a collective understanding of what success looks like and how it is achieved, teams must first establish what matters most. Data can be a useful tool in that regard.

When Crockett discussed the challenge of coordinating a baseball operation that includes Major League, Minor League and player development programmes, he stressed the importance of “clearly defining key metrics that drive value for us at the Major League level and drive value throughout the industry.” Once those metrics have been identified, the task becomes ensuring everybody is working towards the same outcomes. Crockett described how the Red Sox seek to “help align our player development staff and personnel development staff with the things that were most important to driving that value”.

It is a similar story at the Broncos. “We’ve got a whole heap of different stats that we use; so post-game, there’s some standardised stats that we know if you get those processes right, the result will look after itself,” said Thomson, whose team has put in a lot of work behind the scenes. “To be able to bring the whole collective leadership group on the journey was really important.”

Ownership – data belongs to all stakeholders

Crockett and Thomson both argue that data becomes valuable when the people making decisions feel responsible for using it. Crockett’s pitch-tracking debacle is a prime example of what happens when that ownership is absent. As he recalled: “It ended up becoming a bit more of a ‘well, that’s their information and the pitching coach’s; and I’ll do what I’ve just been doing the whole time’.”

To prevent such scenarios, as Thomson explained, teams must create environments in which practitioners feel comfortable sharing ideas, challenging assumptions and seeking new sources of information. He said: “It’s really important to have a psychologically safe environment where we’re challenging each other on a daily basis to be able to find new metrics or new data sets that can actually enhance the programme.” At the Broncos, the software eventually “became part of a routine for us”.

Storytelling – data is most useful when it explains performance

Behavioural change in a data context depends on the story your numbers tell. Thomson repeatedly stressed the importance of using statistics to tell a story because it “adds to the coaching”.

Not that every stat holds the same weight; coaches have a responsibility to “share the relevant data that tell that story to achieve your outcomes”.

The Broncos’ momentum-tracking software is a case in point, as Thomson explained. While initially unsure how useful it would be, the tool was valued because “it allowed the coaches to be able to present the feel of the game”. By helping coaches explain something they previously struggled to articulate, the data became far more powerful as a catalyst for decision-making.

What to read next

How to Use Data with Confidence in your Coaching

Main Image: Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

Not too long ago, WNBA performance staffs were filled by transient and seasonal practitioners, noted Keith D’Amelio, who joined the New York Liberty as Chief Innovation Officer five years ago with the charge of “reimagining how we actually care for athletes in the W.”

With the backing of Owner Clara Wu Tsai and General Manager Jonathan Kolb, the Liberty – who won the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup in June – have led the way in that growth, tripling performance staff in the first year after D’Amelio’s hire. His background included stints with the Celtics, Raptors, Stanford basketball and Nike, where he was the longtime director of performance, working closely with its contracted athletes such as Ndamukong Suh, who played 13 NFL seasons without missing a game due to injury.

“One of the things Clara and Jonathan both expressed is they wanted to set the standard for the WNBA as an organization and force everybody else to try and keep up to raise the floor for how players are cared for and how organizations operate in the WNBA,” D’Amelio said.

D’Amelio has stayed close with Suh, who played for five NFL teams, was named to five All-Pro teams and won a Super Bowl with the Buccaneers. Suh, an active investor in the space, spoke at SBJ Tech Week in 2025. He and D’Amelio recently offered SBJ their insights from their varied team experiences on how modern organizations should operate.

Communicate with and empower players

When it comes to training plans and athlete monitoring tech, D’Amelio said teams most often fail when they are perceived as imposing it on the players. “Make it a two-way conversation as opposed to a one-way conversation,” he said.

Anytime data will be collected, it’s incumbent on the coach to explain the rationale behind it and the way it will be used so that athletes are comfortable.

“My job is always to make the athletes, teams, companies — whoever I’m working with — better consumers of information,” D’Amelio said.

Many top athletes also have a private fitness coach in addition to support from the team. D’Amelio has done both — worked for teams and served as the outside guru for Suh and others — and emphasizes that collaboration is best.

Differentiate

Sports is often a copycat industry, but the innovators are the ones who tend to rise to the top. “A lot of teams are afraid to be different — lean into that,” Suh said. “When folks are open to it, they start to unlock the great things about their organization.”

Teams too often worry about keeping up with the Joneses, D’Amelio added. Trying to mimic what works for another club often falls short because the other roster has players with different skills, and that staff has likely put a lot of thought and planning into the system. He also cautioned against overvaluing any one particular tactic.

“You can’t just go replicate what they’re doing,” D’Amelio said. “It’s impossible. It’s another pet peeve of mine in the sport world when people are like, ‘Oh, it’s our secret sauce.’ No, stop. Your secret sauce is management, the thought process, the coaching staff implementation and players’ skill sets, but also it’s the uniqueness of that organization that makes things successful, not just the idea.”

Ndamukong Suh, who played 13 seasons in the NFL without missing a game due to injury, remains an active investor in athlete performance tech. Photo: Getty Images

Incubate

Take time for R&D, ideally formalizing an innovation program like an accelerator for startups, akin to what the Dodgers and Thunder have.

“There’s so much technology that’s coming out there,” Suh said. “So why not build an incubator where you can have this band of people or advisers that sit in the middle between experts in sports and in technology?”

That can be especially powerful in multiteam ownership groups, where the sample size of adoption is higher — even if, hypothetically, it’s a group like Kroenke Sports & Entertainment that has teams across multiple sports. D’Amelio says that interdisciplinary approach can be very beneficial.

“It really boils down to, how fast can we accelerate our organization’s ability to learn?” he said.

Bifurcate daily and focus on long-term planning

When D’Amelio joined the Liberty, the team put in a five-year plan to implement change over time rather than all at once, he said, so it wouldn’t be overwhelming for the players and the organization.

That tiered and structured approach should be overseen by someone removed from the grind of preparing the athletes for each practice and game; that staff typically doesn’t have the bandwidth to think on a five-year plan.

D’Amelio likened the separation to the dichotomy described in the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”

“You have to [balance] what are some things that we can do to address immediate problems, innovate and problem-solve in the moment, but also having that long-term view,” he said. “It’s sometimes hard to do when you are in it on a day-to-day basis. This is the role that I serve with the Liberty, who’s not really in the weeds on a day-to-day basis because when you are, you’re just putting out the fire of today to try and get to tomorrow.”

Main Image: Getty Images

By Ethan Joyce

I regret to inform you that I am not very clutch.

Normally, it’s my colleague Joe Lemire who experiments with new tech for our recurring Sandbox Series. But this week, it was me dipping my toe into the test zone — and I recoiled with a wounded ego.

When it comes to human performance, clutch is still a polarizing topic. Is it even real? The analytical stat heads say no, but anyone who’s seen a game-winning shot or a career-defining performance by a star athlete may beg to differ. So, what if you could evaluate people based on their likelihood to perform in high-pressure situations?

NTangible has figured out how to measure it.

The platform, which provides mental scouting assessments for athletes for multiple sports, was created by President/CEO Dan Connerty. Its testing, which features open-ended and multiple-choice answers, uses AI to analyze things like thought process, perspective and wording.

Connerty has been on this startup adventure full-time since 2024, with NTangible now in use in 40 NCAA programs (including Boston College and Florida Atlantic). Last year, the company became the official mental fitness partner of RFK Racing to evaluate and support its pit crew members.

Image: SBJ Tech screenshot

Based in Canada, Connerty spent most of his time in the baseball development space as a former collegiate and pro athlete. He was the principal director of Baseball Development Group from 2017 to 2019, and during that time, he got to know industrial psychologist Ed Levine. And it started this ongoing pursuit.

“At the time I go, ‘We’re going to reach a point where we cap out what we can measure physically — it’s going to happen,’” Connerty recounted to me. “Mental has always been this black box … nobody wants to touch it.”

Enter the Clutch Factor score, which evaluates mental performance in clutch scenarios. In roughly 20 minutes, I ran through a handful of pictures depicting various scenarios. (I did a basketball test since it’s the sport I played the most.) One was an image of a player shooting a free throw, the next was a ball handler staring down a full-court press, and others were similar in-game scenarios. I had a chance to pick my perspective of the play, who I would be and what I’d be planning to do next. I also shared my past experiences of higher-pressure situations.

When I finished the test, I was given a score of 663. That figure is out of 1,000, which placed me in the average category. Connerty said the scores can be quite predictive of college success (NTangible can test athletes as young as 13). The athletes who score in the 750-799 range are twice as likely to play a Division I sport. Above 800? We’re talking a potential all-conference or All-American honoree. Example: Texas freshman P/UT Hannah Wells produced the highest Clutch Factor score in the country. She helped the Longhorns win their second consecutive College World Series softball championship earlier this month.

After sharing my lack of clutchness, I could tell you about my days as a newspaper college football reporter. I was constantly combating the harshest deadlines, filing stories that squeaked in just early enough to make the next day’s edition, some of which I won national awards for. But I won’t do that.

The good news for me (and other users)? Because my clutchness can now be measured, I can also improve it, according to Connerty.

“Our psychologists have said, at minimum, if you wanted to redo it, six months,” he said about retesting. “Usually, this should be an annual test just to see where you are. If you think of the Clutch Factor score as your capacity to perform at your top range, not every day are you going to be there.

“This is something where your score can fluctuate based on experiential parameters.”

That’s totally it! I had an off day. I’m sure of it. Case closed.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch

Rachel Vickery is a high-performance specialist who helps teams in the worlds of sport, business and the military perform under pressure.

These teams tend to ask two questions. Firstly, “What are some techniques that we can use in the pressure moments to be able to handle pressure?” and, secondly, “How do we replicate pressure so that we can train our people to be able to be comfortable with it?”

Neither is the right question, as Vickery explained. They are “looking at the wrong part of the evolution of how pressure comes about,” she told a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable. “Probably 90% of the time, when I’m seeing an individual or a team not executing well in the pressure moment, it’s usually got almost nothing to do with the performance arena itself; it’s more to do with what’s going on everywhere else.”

Success is less about teaching people in-the-moment coping techniques and more about ensuring they arrive at the pressure moment with sufficient physiological and psychological buffer to absorb it.

“The reality of the environments that we all operate in is pressure is the constant,” she continued. “We shouldn’t be surprised that it shows up and that people feel elevated and escalated.” However, “we don’t do a good enough job of explaining to people that that’s normal and it’s really okay and ‘here’s how it could potentially impact your performance if we don’t give you the skills and the techniques and the ways to handle that’.”

Allostatic load and ‘buffer’

Vickery explained that performance under pressure starts with an understanding of an individual’s allostatic load – the accumulation of stressors and demands over time that push a person into a heightened state of physiological arousal.

“What they end up seeing in finals is not a sudden, unexpected failure of performance,” she said. “It was something that was actually built because of that accumulation in the system as a whole.”

Stressors can include:

• Relationship breakdowns
• Family illness
• Financial concerns
• Major life challenges
• Ongoing personal worries
• Poor physical foundations
• Sleep deprivation
• Constant organisational pressure

Any combination of these factors can push an individual over their threshold for coping effectively; and, on the last point above, Vickery said: “unfortunately, most organisations are unknowingly creating organisational allostatic load.” They create a constant background level of pressure that steadily consumes the buffer of athletes, coaches and staff long before the critical performance moment arrives. One participant also noted that mundane organisational barriers (or simple “inertia”) can become a chronic source of frustration, uncertainty and stress.

The goal should be to increase ‘buffer’ – the spare capacity between a person’s current arousal level and the point at which performance starts to deteriorate. When someone has plenty of buffer, the pressure can rise naturally, their arousal can increase, and they can still stay below their threshold.

Vickery argued that many organisations make a fundamental mistake by treating sleep, recovery, relationships and gratitude as wellbeing initiatives rather than as performance interventions that create buffer.

From there, the discussion turned to the ways buffer is most commonly depleted in high-performance environments. Vickery and the group identified five recurring challenges and a series of practical solutions.

1. Pressure first reveals itself through communication breakdowns

Leaders should treat communication breakdowns as early warning signs that people are operating close to their threshold. When pressure mounts, athletes and coaches withdraw, communication deteriorates; assumptions replace curiosity; body language changes, eye contact disappears and conversations become more directive and defensive. These behaviours are not personality traits but predictable consequences of the threat response.

The solution: When teams encourage open conversation, curiosity and honest dialogue, they are better able to identify pressure before it becomes a problem. “We’re feeling beings that think, not thinking beings that feel,” said Vickery. “Our thought processes are actually more driven by our physiology than the other way around.”

2. Outcome supersedes process

Too often success is linked to winning, with people pulled towards KPIs, rankings and results. One participant described an environment in which almost every meeting ended with the message: ‘we just need to win this week’. The danger is that a constant focus on outcomes increases allostatic load and elevates pressure long before competition begins. The result is an environment where people become fixated on consequences rather than execution.

The solution: Clear plans, role clarity and process-based language serve as anchors when pressure rises. The stronger a person’s connection to the process, the more pressure they can absorb without becoming overwhelmed.

3. Personal stress follows people into performance

There is a persistent belief that high performers should be able to leave personal issues at the door but, as Vickery observed, people may compartmentalise mentally and emotionally, but “we can’t compartmentalise our physiology”. Sleep deprivation, family pressures, financial concerns and relationship difficulties all consume buffer. She illustrated the point through the example of an elite military operator who missed a critical threat after a sleepless night following a relationship breakdown despite being regarded as one of his unit’s most reliable performers.

The solution: Individuals must address their biggest sources of allostatic load rather than ignoring them. Leaders must also provide support and understanding.

4. Neglect of the fundamentals

Several participants reflected on how neglecting sleep, recovery and self-management had eventually caught up with them despite operating successfully for long periods.

The solution: As Vickery said, “do the common things uncommonly well.”

5. Fear-based thinking narrows performance

When pressure rises, performers become consumed by consequences, avoiding mistakes and protecting themselves from failure. In this state, people hesitate, become defensive and interpret feedback as criticism rather than information.

The solution: Reframe pressure as an opportunity. Gratitude in that moment redirects attention from fear towards problem-solving. Vickery said: “It turns the fear brain off and it opens the [part of the brain] that’s going to be much more into curiosity and ‘how do I solve for the problem?’”

Vickery then shared her framework for managing pressure across an entire season:

Off-season

Pressure audits: Organisations should identify where performance broke down under pressure and then reverse-engineer the causes. The objective is to uncover where pressure was created, accumulated and left unchecked. It is not about apportioning blame. Vickery said: “Often what we see is where the pressure was set up is actually quite a long way away from where it actually showed up.”

Intentional design: Once the pressure points have been identified, systems, communication practices and organisational habits can be redesigned to preserve buffer rather than consume it.

Mid-season

Big rocks: When competition is underway, teams should not try to fix everything at once. Instead, organisations and individuals should identify and address the largest contributors to accumulated pressure and allostatic load.

Post-season

Add pressure analysis to your after-action reviews: Too few AARs examine the role pressure played throughout a season. Discussions should reference arousal state, allostatic load and buffer alongside technical, tactical and operational reviews. The real challenge is whether individuals and organisations have preserved enough buffer to absorb pressure when the moment arrives.

What to read next

Athlete Performance Under Pressure: why Systems and Culture Matter

Main Image: Getty Images

By Rob Schaefer

By John Portch

How does a talent pathway ensure effective transitions for its young athletes?

If your programme is too standardised, you risk producing technically proficient performers that struggle to adapt when confronted with new challenges. At the same time, an overly fragmented pathway can create confusion and hamper development.

“I don’t think anyone’s solved this. That’s why we’re still talking about it; we’re still trying to work out how to do it most effectively,” said Iain Brunnschweiler. “However, I’m sure there are certain systems who are doing this more effectively.”

Brunnschweiler, who has held coaching and pathway leadership roles in football and cricket, recently led a virtual roundtable on the topic.

He kicked off with reference to the 2016 work of Vincent Webb, David John Collins and Andrew Cruickshank titled Aligning the talent pathway: Exploring the role and mechanisms of coherence in development.

Drawing on their paper, Brunnschweiler illustrated three contrasting approaches to talent development.

1. The ‘copy and reproduce’ pathway

This, Brunnschweiler explained, “is a pathway where it’s very similar as you transition from one age group to the next. Things are kept incredibly tight. The methods are very similar.”

Athletes encounter the same coaching ideas, training methods and expectations throughout the pathway. Transitions are smooth because little changes.

“The implications of this sort of pathway are that there can be quite fast progress, but it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to adaptability, independence or resilience.”

2. The incoherent pathway

This is completely at odds with the first.

“There are major differences one year to the next. There is not really any handover. There isn’t much communication between coaches, sports scientists, support staff etc,” said Brunnschweiler.

Athletes bounce from one training or coaching methodology to the next, which can hinder progress and cause confusion. However, “for those players who do manage to make it through that sort of pathway, they become very self-motivated and adept at reflection; and actually it can lead to high levels of adaptability, independence, resilience.”

3. The Goldilocks pathway

“Having some variance in how a performer experiences transitions can be a really good thing,” said Brunnschweiler while sharing the following slide:

“The coaching would be different, but not too much. The training environment would be different, but not too much. The sports science methods and performance staff methods would be different, but not too much. The challenges players are facing would be different, but not too much.”

The variety athletes experience is built into the system. “One of the key tenets of this model is it is logical, intentional and progressive,” Brunnschweiler continued.

This led him onto five considerations:

1. Coaching / staff structure: Are athletes experiencing planned or random variation as they move through the pathway?
2. Development / performance principles: What remains consistent as athletes move through different environments?
3. Athlete autonomy: Are we developing athletes who can think and act for themselves?
4. Feedback mechanisms: Are key stakeholders receiving coherent and aligned messages?
5. Handover processes: Does knowledge transfer effectively when athletes transition between stages?

Brunnschweiler wrapped up his presentation with a final provocation inspired by his experience. It focused specifically on young athletes called into senior or first team environments:

At the upper end of the talent pathway, the highest potential athletes can get the ‘worst’ programme.

As he observed, an athlete may look as though they are receiving the best possible opportunity because they are training with senior professionals, yet if that exposure comes at the expense of match minutes, individualised development, physical preparation and psychological support, they may actually be receiving a worse developmental programme than peers lower down the pathway.

“They were being utilised more as a training mechanism for senior performers rather than a really high potential young player,” said Brunnschweiler, who worked with his colleagues to find a solution.

“One mechanism we did put in place was having a transition coach whose specific role was to go with that high potential player or group of players when they went into the senior training environment.”

His story raised a further question: are we designing programmes around the needs of the athlete, or around the needs of the system?

At that point, Brunnschweiler asked the members at the table to share their experiences. Their contributions covered several areas:

The step up to the first team

“Young players generally had no chance of playing, but we just felt that understanding the cognitive load and pressure load and all those things was really advantageous,” said one attendee with experience managing at a successful international rugby programme. Another member, a performance lead in the world of cricket, agreed on the value in exposure. “They will be around some of the best players to have ever played the game, and picking up the conversation, seeing how they go about their training,” he said.

The ideal approach offers the best of both worlds. As Brunnschweiler noted, “there are examples where the club as an organisation have decided that development is a part of what they do and therefore they will recruit managers or coaches based on a deliberate intention to get players through.”

Then, as one pathway lead noted, his job is to develop athletes who are better than the previous generation. “We deliberately say we don’t want to play the game the way the first team play the game,” he said. “If you imitate, you’re never going to be able to be the best version of yourself.”

The challenge posed by tradition

The risk is assuming athletes should simply survive because previous generations did.

“Creating the sink or swim environment is so dangerous when you’ve invested so much in it,” said a national talent manager working in international cricket. Challenge should increase, but support should not disappear. A team, he continued, must find “the right balance between having some of those support structures in place, some of those systems and processes, in order to inevitably allow them to fail, but catch them before they hit the floor.”

Athlete autonomy

Systems risk producing athletes who are adapted to one environment rather than adaptable to multiple environments.

“Sometimes we create athletes for one system versus [preparing them for] any system,” said a head of performance pathways working at a national level in Australasia. Her work with athletes focuses on “creating the conditions for them to have that autonomy, self-management and real sense of ownership”.

Similarly, a pathway leader working in an individual sport observed, “we need an individualised approach of being able to have flexibility and adaptability to what that player needs”.

Pathway misalignment

Another risk is the dangers of different parts of the pathway pulling in different directions.

One participant reflected on having worked in programmes where different stages of the pathway were ‘philosophically miles apart’. This led to players being rewarded for behaviours at one stage and criticised for them at the next.

The key, as Brunnschweiler said, is to ask: “How do we as a system create a combination of player engagement and autonomy and support and appropriate challenge so that as they move through each stage of the pathway, they’re ready to go in and survive and then thrive?”

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Five Common Tensions on Talent Pathways… and Five Solutions