Eastern Illinois Women’s Soccer switches to SPT and sets a new standard
Prior to SPT, Dirk Bennett and his staff at EIU Panther’s women’s soccer had been using GPS tracking for player safety, development, and game-prep, but knew the system they were using wasn’t the best fit for them. Ahead of the 2024 season, Coach Bennett and Coach Deanna Hecht turned to SPT. We talked with their staff, who were able to break down the differences they saw in their own day-to-day, along with their player’s buy-in, competition and accountability.
“The biggest value came from simplicity and usability. As a college program with limited staff and time, SPT gives us high-level insights without complexity. The SPT platform made it easy for our staff to interpret data quickly and doesn’t require a full analytics staff to make use of it.
The impact for the players was immediate. “[SPT data is] accessible enough that our players could understand and buy into the performance feedback,” Hecht continued. “Our players could see and understand their data, which made them take pride in what their metrics were, and we saw players looking to compete against themselves to raise the bar, which ultimately helped raise competitive effort during sessions. It also helped us hold players accountable to physical standards and ensured subs or injured returners were progressing safely and appropriately.”
Besides some intangible benefits like increasing daily competition, EIU used SPT to monitor player load, and to better understand positional group comparisons.
“We used SPT to monitor individual player load across training sessions and matches to help manage fatigue and reduce injury risk. Using the data across different lines (defenders, midfielders, forwards), it helped us identify workload, overexertion, or areas where training needed to be individualized.”
For future seasons, the EIU staff is already working to fine-tune the training application of SPT and use last season's data to set standards for their returners. Heading into the Fall, they plan to hone in on the tactical application as well. “Taking more time to teach our team how to interpret their own SPT data—what it means, how to use it, and how it links to on-field roles and performance.” Coach Hecht finished by stating, “We plan to utilize heat maps as an analytical tool to assess whether we are playing to our team’s tactical identity.”
We look forward to watching EIU women’s soccer continue to build on the foundation they built in 2024!