We recently took the opportunity to visit Performance Analyst Nathan Payne and the British Wheelchair Basketball team (BWB) at their spring training camp at the University of Worcester. We wanted to interview Nathan and some of the BWB team to share with you how they take advantage of our online team communication and sharing platform, Nacsport Hub.
What is Nacsport Hub?
Communication is fundamental to success within a team. The easier you can share information, start meaningful conversations with players and coaches, and paint very vivid and real pictures, the better chance you have of engaging athletes to take ownership of personal development and ultimately enhance performance. Nacsport Hub is an online sports team communication platform, where you can upload videos, analysis, presentations, and documents, along with empowering your team to comment, create their own clips, and interact with coaches and players. All in one easy-to-use platform.
How does Nathan support teams throughout the year?
Nathan works across both British Wheelchair Basketball men’s and women’s squads. Most of his role is around gathering data and video to process in Nacsport and share on Nacsport Hub. A lot of the athletes are remote and play abroad in Europe, so he spends a lot of time collecting data from the European leagues to make sure the BWB athletes have what they need to review their own performances.
“From a core point of view, a lot of the data we get out of Nacsport into Excel and Tableau is for coaches. So that’s around trends, shooting charts, etc. We use that as a part of our reviews. This changes during tournament time because we are usually away for 10 days at a time and here we will have games every single day. The turnaround time is quite tight, so efficiencies and workflows are key. This is something we have been working on with AnalysisPro to make sure we can get what we need to be turned around quickly. Sometimes we have as little as 12 hours to get everything ready for reviews and previews for the next day.” Nathan Payne – BWB Performance Analyst
How does British Wheelchair Basketball use Nacsport Hub to engage players?
British Wheelchair Basketball uses the Hub platform to share videos with athletes remotely. The majority of the athletes are spread up and down the country and throughout Europe. This means it can be difficult to regularly meet to review videos in person. To ensure they maintain communication with the coaching team and review their video analysis before and after training camps and competitions, they use the Hub to enable them to operate remotely.
“Before the lockdown in 2020 we didn’t have an effective way of sharing video with our athletes remotely, so Nacsport Hub was a godsend. During this period we were able to make sure they had footage of previous competitions in the years prior. This also meant coaches could stay connected with athletes. We did a number of tutorial sessions and skill drills that were shared on Nacsport Hub as well.
As we progressed through the pandemic and went to major tournaments, we had some issues with Covid-19 itself, which meant some of the staff couldn’t travel. We had large time differences and location changes for some of the staff and coaches. With Nacsport Hub we were able to get presentations ready for the next day with people back at home and share what we were presenting to the athletes, so we were able to maintain a high level of efficiency with what we were doing." Nathan Payne – BWB Performance Analyst
How do the athletes use Nacsport Hub?
One of the key features of Hub is its interactivity. Athletes can take ownership and accountability for their own learning and development by making their own highlight reels and developing discussions through comments and sharing ideas with other players and coaches.
“The ability for the athletes to put together their own clips is something we weren’t been able to do before we started using Nacsport Hub. This is something they really enjoy doing. The coaching team might upload a presentation or some clips, but the athletes might see something differently. So they can refer a coach to take a look at something specific or from a different perspective and start a conversation online. The ability to add comments, ask questions and add notes to clips is really important in a remote environment.” Nathan Payne – BWB Performance Analyst
“I live really far away from my team, so it’s not realistic to turn up for a short video session. So for me, I can look at Nacsport Hub at home and put comments in and start a conversation with my teammates before I have even had a team session to go through the video. For me, it’s perfect because I can work remotely and I’m still included and I can still start the conversation off ready to go into training and work on the things we’ve seen” Kayla Bell – British Wheelchair Basketball Player
“Nacsport Hub has been really useful for me personally because I can go over the sessions we’ve had and clip it to be the things I want to work on and it’s a really good conversation starter, so I can share with coaches or teammates the things I have found and discuss things I’ve noticed or things I want them to help me with and want to improve on.
So after a session, if I have found something I really want to work on or a specific thing like my shot or how I need to move my chair more in a certain angle to get a shot off, I just go on Nacsport Hub and I clip it easily and find it so I can see what I need to change. Rather than looking at the whole game and trying to find it, I can just clip and save it in a specific section then I can go and find it after.” Lucy Robinson – British Wheelchair Basketball Player
We want to say a massive thank you to Kayla, Lucy, and the whole British Wheelchair Basketball team for letting us into camp and sharing their feedback. Of course, a huge thanks to Nathan Payne too, for sharing your performance expertise with us and the wider video analysis community. We wish you and the team all the best with the debut of the sport at the commonwealth games in July.
We’ll be following up with another post including more feedback and insights from Nathan and Michael Hanson-Morris (Head Coach at East London Phoenix) on the positive impacts of video analysis expansion across Wheelchair Basketball, so stay tuned for that!
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