As a multibillion industry that is tied to various others, sports can at times be a bit resistant to change. Naturally, for any process to disrupt tried and true practices and push them into modernity, it needs to serve as a more efficient way to facilitate several key functions within the space.
James Paul Adams, also known as Beau Adams, from Cypress, TX maintains that one of the areas of sports that is most ripe for change is how athletes, coaches, recruiters, and fans connect with one another. Here, Beau Adams explores a few ways that his new platform, Breakout Athletic Network, seeks to revolutionize various sports data management processes to improve the athletic experience for all involved.
What is the Current Recruitment Process Missing?
Through his experience playing football at Texas A&M and continued post-grad contributions to the athletic community, Beau Adams became knowledgeable of the sports recruitment process. This largely involves collecting a list of prospective players based on the organization’s requirements, reaching out to these players through recruitment letters, conducting player evaluations, and finally extending offers to build out the team’s roster.
In the digital age, recruitment can be streamlined through digital platforms that handle sports data management. To this point, several platforms have been developed through the years to give athletes a tool to share their achievements, stats, and a variety of info that would be valuable to recruiters. Beau Adams notes that the existing recruitment process does have quite a few blind spots, however, and these oversights played an integral role in his decision to found Breakout Athletic Network.
One of the primary weaknesses of the existing recruitment process is the amount of work that recruiters need to put into it to find quality players. College coaches can be looking to recruit as many as 300 athletes year over year, and not all of these players will have sufficient data available on first glance. This means that recruiters often need to dig deep to determine whether or not an athlete is a good candidate for their roster, which can take up a lot of time. The nature of recruiting can also mean that potentially great players are overlooked, especially if they are not active on the same platforms recruiters are searching or are trailblazing at lesser known schools. There is plenty of room for bias to prevent potential candidates from getting an invitation as well.
Beau Adams also notes that the number of recruitment platforms is vast, however, there is no unified platform for connecting players with coaches, recruiters, fans, and other players. Instead, many players are spread across multiple platforms — something that can defeat the point of streamlined data management.
How Does Breakout Athletic Network Modernize Sports Data Management?
Beau Adams speaks to how the simplest methods are often the best when it comes to streamlining systems. In the case of sports recruitment, Breakout Athletic Network pulls from his philosophy to simplify how athletes, recruiters, coaches, and their fans connect. The end result is an approach to sports data management that empowers each individual to take their role to the next level.
Below are a few of the way that Breakout Athletic Network streamlines sports management to the benefit of athletes and recruiters alike.
Provides a Single Place to Build and Share Athletic Resumes
One of the primary strengths of Breakout Athletic Network is its ability to provide athletes with a one-stop-shop for building their athletic resumes and sharing them with the world. While many digital sports management platforms are tailored solely to athletes at recruitment age, Breakout is available to athletes as early as seven years old. This empowers athletes and their parents to collect and share information such as highlights, game states, academic progress, and other measurable attributes to track their progress as they build skills in their sport of choice.
By the time players are in high school and are being scouted by recruiters, organizations will have access to all of the information that they need to make important roster decisions —with the added bonus that they can see the progress they have made over the years as well.
The advantage that Breakout Athletic Network provides over competing digital platforms how its functionality creates a tool that athletes would otherwise need to combine multiple platforms to match. In today’s fast paced world of sports, athletes should be able to meet all of their data management needs with one streamlined solution.
Simplifies Recruitment for Organizations
Recruitment organizations do a great job screening hundreds of potential candidates to build out their rosters, but the fact remains that their job could certainly be streamlined through effective digital solutions. Currently, recruiters are spread a bit thin through antiquated methods that can lead to the best prospects being overlooked in favor of the most popular ones. This is due to the fact that players are spread out on several competing platforms, while some organizations have not fully adapted to digital techniques to fill their rosters.
Breakout Athletic Network addresses this need within the recruitment space by making important data easily accessible to make the decision making process easier. Breakout empowers recruiters to filter through digital athletic resumes to find prospects as they progress through their athletic careers. These real-time stats and updates can even help recruiters stay ahead of the game as they look to build strong rosters for their organizations.
Gets the Fans and Community Involved
While there have been significant developments in platforms to streamline sports data management, many of these solutions neglect the fan experience. Beau Adams of Cypress TX notes that, in today’s landscape, we only have a few platforms such as Twitter and Instagram to stay connected with organizations and our favorite players as they continue through their journeys.
Breakout Athletic Network stands out because it recognizes the important role that fans and the community play in the development of athletes. Fans are encouraged to connect with one another through Breakout to show support for players as they post their digital resumes and stats. Fans can communicate directly as well as contribute to conversations on essential sports topics and upcoming events. Not only does this serve to help athletes stay motivated in their sports careers as they push towards new heights, but it also shows recruiters that players they are scouting have bustling fanbases ¬– potentially inspiring them to look into them further.
Fans are eager to get into the experience and show love to athletes from within their communities. Helping fans connect with other members of the fanbase is how Breakout Athletic Network shows that its commitment to the thriving communities that make sports possible.
