TRAQ Series: Junior College, Parkland Community College
For this week’s TRAQ Series blog, Jeremy Tecktiel, TRAQ Project Manager, talked to Jon Goebel, Head Coach at Parkland Community College, about how he has been able to implement TRAQ into their program.
At Parkland, Goebel is very familiar with Driveline, so adopting TRAQ felt like a natural progression for him.
“We’ve been using Driveline products since late 2014. We have Driveline Edge. We are all in and heavily invested in most of the stuff you guys are doing. We believe in what you guys are doing,” Goebel said.
TRAQ itself also struck a chord for Goebel.
“For my purposes, as far as making things more efficient for me, that was intriguing. I could program the guys a little more efficiently and make life a little bit easier for me, and then the other part was the overall interaction with the athletes,” Goebel said.
Goebel has already seen the benefits of his athletes’ interaction with TRAQ.
“When we used Google Docs, I could program them and I would send them the link for the practice for the week and every player would have their own tab. It would show what they’re doing for the week or a two-week cycle or a three-week cycle, but their ability to interact back with me was limited,” Goebel said.
Now, he can interact back and forth with his athletes much more easily.
“The athletes carry around their phones during practice and they are checking ‘Complete’ as they go. They also have their throwing journal that they are filling stuff out in as well. [Due to] the overall connection the athlete then has…he starts to take a little more ownership of his development and getting more mentally engaged with it,” Goebel said.
One of the biggest benefits he has seen thus far with TRAQ is the overall player engagement in practice.
“The players’ feedback right away was like, ‘Oh man, this is so much better than the old system!’ There are definitely less questions to me as far as, ‘Hey, how many pivot picks?’ or, ‘Am I pivot picking with a kilo or 450g?’” Goebel explained. “I’ve got some guys that pivot pick with a kilo, some with 450, some do a combo, some with a connection ball. Every player is more individualized where it’s like, you don’t really have to come ask me because it’s right there on your phone and it says exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
Goebel said that efficiency is better, freeing him up during practices to be more places and work with players.
“It’s like I’m not just constantly being tied up with generic questions anymore—every detail is right there for them,” Goebel said.
That increased player interaction extends from practice to the offseason.
“I love it because I could track the incomplete workouts, if they aren’t filling stuff out, so I can keep them accountable,” Goebel said. “When they go home for Christmas break it was nice to be able to program them remotely. I could tell them, ‘Hey, I want you to upload video of you throwing,’ and be able to see that even when they aren’t here,” Goebel said.
A unique thing about Parkland — relative to other schools — is the main focus being player placement in future programs, due to it being a JuCo school.
“Player placement is a big thing for us,” Goebel said. “It’s easy to go back and pull up Rapsodo reports and video and say, ‘This is what his offseason looked like, this is the way he likes to train. What does your program do in the offseason? Is it anything similar? Does it look like it would be a good fit?’”
TRAQ has been a valuable recruiting tool for Goebel when recruiting players at Parkland.
“When I recruit, I show all of our programming. We keep season by season progression in terms of everything involved in our development process. We don’t push wins and losses in the recruiting process, we push development and player placement and the fact that we are going to prioritize you and your career in front of anything else,” Goebel said. “TRAQ is a recruiting tool for us. It’s another way for us to show guys how we spend money and that we are going to invest in your development and we are going to do everything we can to give them an edge and make them better.”
Learn more about TRAQ here
By Jeremy Tecktiel
Photo courtesy of Parkland Community College
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