Andy Kaasa, the Director of Coaching for the Minnesota Eclipse youth soccer club, is always looking for opportunities to help his players get a leg up in college recruiting. As a relatively young club, MN Eclipse has used Trace's soccer camera system for filming games, getting instant highlights for players, and getting on top college soccer programs' radar. 

Kaasa wanted to ensure that college coaches knew the progression of his player's development on an ongoing basis, so he decided to build a newsletter for college coaches to keep them updated on the latest highlights and game information from MN Eclipse. 

Managing a newsletter can be a time-consuming job, but Kaasa decided to streamline the process by linking to his players’ Trace iDs and full game footage in the emails, making the process much easier to manage. Here’s part of what coaches see when they receive the newsletter:

Trace - Recruiting Guide

Using Trace’s comprehensive system, which provides both highlights and full-game footage, communication around recruiting is much easier for youth soccer clubs. Kaasa explains the issues with more traditional soccer camera systems, “Coaches can’t see the player numbers, and you have to do a lot of work of giving them the schematics of who’s in the game, the changes that have been made, and what they’re looking at.” 

With Trace, college coaches can click on individual players, view more of that player’s curated moments, or view full game footage. And on Trace iD, players are spotlighted as a visual cue for the coach to follow. “Coaches might ask something about the attacking midfielder, and we can send them the player’s Trace iD will their full compilation of highlights,” states Kaasa. With more context around highlights, college coaches can make faster, more informed decisions. 

“The college coaches have really liked being able to view players’ Trace moments. It’s definitely helped increase interest from coaches in our team, and coaches have been adding more and more of their staff onto our newsletters.” 

Engaging with coaches using soccer game video has opened the doors to different schools to MN Eclipse players. “With the recruiting dead period, coaches can’t make it out to games right now unless they’re DII or DIII, and even if they could, there are not as many schools in the Midwest as there are on the coast, so we can keep all schools updated with these newsletters. For us, Trace really levels the playing field.” 

“Trace has been a huge positive for our kids,” states Kaasa. “We’re super excited about it.” 

Parents are also very excited about the additional work that MN Eclipse is putting in to get their kids in front of college coaches. Knowing that coaches are actually watching the Trace video keeps kids motivated. “Looking at the number of Trace iD views each of our kids gets has been fantastic,” states Kaasa. 

“At times, the outreach process can get overwhelming for kids. They don’t want to email coaches all the time, so the newsletter is a nice way to keep coaches up to date with how players are developing. And it alleviates some of the workload for the players.” 

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