Quik Scout Technologies Newsletter Issue 1
December 2005

A Week in the Life of a Football Coach

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Quik Scout newsletter. Here at Quik Scout, we are committed to delivering leading edge video editing technology designed to provide coaches a competitive advantage in game preparation and player instruction.  This issue of the Quik Scout newsletter focuses on Wamego High School Football Coach John Black from Kansas. He uses FireScout Football to evaluate his team’s Friday night performance as well as preparing for next week’s opponent. We’d like to thank Coach Black for sharing his experiences using FireScout Football and congratulate him on his team’s success.

In future editions, we will provide insight into how coaches using FireScout Football spend less time reviewing film and more time utilizing the information collected to prepare for opponents and instruct their players. We hope you enjoy Coach Black’s discussion of how video editing provides him a competitive edge and encourage you to visit the Quik Scout web site to learn more about the FireScout family of products. 

Post game
One the most important members of the Wamego football team is Brian Barngrover, the student aide who captures the footage from the video camera to the computer. We “scout” the game in FireScout, reviewing it play by play. FireScout’s custom keyboards allow me to preset my own football “tag lines,” words like, “Jet,” “Ace,” and “Left,” that my coaches and players automatically recognize. With the click of a mouse, I am able to tag footage using my own terminology while marking the start and end times of each play. In less than 90 minutes I’ve grabbed our top five rushing and passing plays and copied them to DVD. 

Rehash
The following morning I trade tapes with Wamego’s upcoming opponent. After transferring their footage to the computer, I go through the same process using FireScout to identify their outstanding individuals, strongest plays, and holes in their defense. If they are a passing team, we’ll grab their top four or five passing plays. 

Gearing Up
As I plan for the upcoming game, FireScout allows me to break down my film and find out what plays are or are not working in an instant. I can call up plays any way I want to see them. I can sort by formations or yardage gained or anything you can think of. But what makes FireScout better than other scouting software is that I can call up plays by a certain formation. But if I don’t want a formation that’s run to the right or left, I can exclude it. In other words, it allows me to narrow my searches down quickly and find only the information that I truly want. 

Monday morning before school starts, we call the players in for film session. We used to do it on Saturdays. But recently, so many of the players have gotten weekend jobs that we’ve had to move it to Monday mornings before school starts. We play the rushing and passing plays we selected in FireScout and talk about how they will be used in the upcoming game. 

After film session, we will take our cuts and burn them to VCDs (Video CDs) and we give the CDs out to the players. This allows them to watch the cutups on their own computer throughout the week as they continue to get ready for the game. 

Winding Down
The season is coming to a close and it's time for end of the year cuts. Every year I make highlight tapes for my team. I used to spend countless hours trying to look through every tape to see if I have all the great plays. Now with FireScout I can get it done in seconds. After every game, I have my student aide put the plays on a computer. At the end of the year I can call up every great play in just one second and copy it to the hard drive as a video file or send it straight to a VCR tape. It allows me to make personal highlights of each player in an instant. It is great for recruiting purposes. 

Winning
So how does all this translate into success? In 2003 we averaged 333 yards per game with 1563 total passing yards. In 2004 after getting the FireScout we averaged 440 yards per game with 2688 total passing yards. 

At the end of the season, we capture and scout all the opponent’s tapes so next season we have the previous season’s tapes along with this year’s to study tendencies. With FireScout, we can easily call up every formation and see how each team played to give our team the winning advantage.

For more information about Fire Scout Football or any of our digital editing, scouting and statistics software, please contact us. Contact Info: 

Quik Scout Technologies
1821 East 40th Street
Cleveland, OH 44103
800-251-4077 x 347
www.quikscout.com