GPS + Heart Rate data becomes an integral part of Presbyterian Women’s Lacrosse
Ahead of the 2025 season, the Presbyterian Women’s Lacrosse coaching staff prioritized the addition of performance data to help themselves and their players be better prepared for the physical demands of each game. Coach Eric Clakeley and Coach Lauren Chong quickly began leveraging SPT as a daily coaching tool. We talked with Coach Chong about her use of SPT over the Spring:
"After partnering with SPT right before the season, we originally viewed this as a trial period to get familiar with the software. However, after just a few weeks of collecting data, it quickly became an integral part of our daily routine. We began tailoring our practices to better replicate game-day intensities. This allowed us to structure training in a way that mirrored real competition, improving our athletes’ readiness.
The coaching staff were the sole members who had access to the athlete data, which led players to come by the office to review their performance metrics. This created a buzz within the team—athletes began coming in groups, excited to see who had logged the highest speeds or covered the most ground. The visibility and accessibility of the data sparked friendly competition and boosted accountability across the board."
The Presbyterian staff used external performance data like, overall load, top speeds, and distances covered, to curate their practices, but took it a step further with SPT’s Integrated Heart Rate vest to inform another aspect of player preparation.
“The heart rate vests opened our eyes to an important trend: several athletes weren’t reaching the same heart rate zones (especially red) in practice as they were during games. This insight sparked individual conversations, and we encouraged those athletes to push harder in training to better match game-day intensity.
As we expand our roster, we plan to order additional vests so our sports medicine team can monitor workload and heart rate recovery in real time—particularly useful during return-to-play protocols this Fall.”
After exceeding their “trial period” expectations, Coach Chong and the staff look to build on their use of GPS + Heart Rate tracking this offseason.
“Heading into the Fall, we’re excited to build upon the foundation we’ve established. We now have baseline data on our returning players, which is invaluable as we ramp up conditioning and physical benchmarks in the offseason.
With a better understanding of the platform and data, we plan to structure our practices with clear intensity levels — high, medium, or low workload days. This will not only help us periodize training more effectively, but also hold our athletes accountable to their effort levels and workload thresholds”
We finally asked Lauren, “Why SPT?”
SPT is a great fit for us because of its straightforward pricing structure and extremely user-friendly platform. The Gametraka interface makes it easy to interpret key performance metrics, which has been especially helpful when communicating with athletes. Even with no prior experience in GPS tracking, I found the built-in definitions and visual summaries made it simple to learn and teach others. It’s been the perfect tool for both coaches and players to engage with performance data without feeling overwhelmed.
SPT is looking forward to seeing Presbyterian’s use of SPT evolve in the seasons to come!