Watching film is a huge part of Malvern athletics and high school sports in general. Companies like Hudl and Krossover’s goal is to make editing and processing film as easy as possible for teams to use.  

Film allows teams to rewatch practices and games to help them improve and refine the plays that they run. It also allows teams to scout opponents to learn their plays and schemes. Athletes also use Hudl and Krossover to create highlight films if they’re interested in playing at the next level.  

According to their website, Hudl’s mission is as follows:

“Hudl now offers the tools to edit and share video, interact with stats, and create quality highlight reels for entertainment and recruiting purposes. The whole experience is available online, giving coaches and athletes secure access at home and on the go.”

Krossover offers a similar product to Hudl, and according to their website:

“Our passion is designing and building tools that help coaches and athletes win.  We are rapidly growing our team with the best and brightest talent who share our hustle and passion.”

At Malvern, both of these programs are used by coaches. Hudl is used by the football team, and Krossover is used by the basketball, soccer, and lacrosse teams.

Head football coach Dave Gueriera is a huge advocate for Hudl. He said that it has made life a lot easier for him and for football coaches in general.

“Before Hudl, you had to watch games on DVDs. You didn’t watch your own practice, you never filmed your practice,” Gueriera said. “It’s immeasurable the effect that it’s had on my coaching style and on the game.”

Hudl can download film to its website and make a clip for every play.

“You may have 180 plays in one game, and there’s a clip for each play,” Gueriera said. “It’s easy to organize, it’s easy to put notes in it. It makes scouting and film evaluation that much more effective.”

Filming practice is one of the most effective aspects of Hudl for Malvern football, according to Gueriera.

“I’m able to watch and send notes to the players from each practice film. That night of the practice you see the mistakes, and you can correct them going into the next practice,” Gueriera said.

Senior and football manager Griffin Kennedy helps head up Hudl usage with the team. As the manager, one of his jobs is to film and share each practice with the players and coaches. He said that Malvern football uses a new program called Hudl Sideline, which essentially acts as an instant replay tool.

“You can actually watch replays during the games of previous plays,” Kennedy said. “It’s just like the NFL, except we can use it in high school.”

Athletic Director Kurt Ruch has overseen Hudl being used at Malvern since its initial introduction in 2006. However, Krossover has become the more beneficial tool for the basketball, soccer, and basketball teams, with Hudl trying to even the playing field.

“We went to [Krossover] because they were the first to break down the film for you. Hudl didn’t do that originally; the coaches had to do that,” Ruch said.

Head basketball coach John Harmatuk said that Krossover has made a big difference for him.  As a basketball coach, he likes Krossover due to the fact that it can break down the film possession by possession and formulate stats and shot charts. This saves him time and helps his players stay engaged.

“The fact that you can individualize it makes it much better,” Harmatuk said.  “In Krossover, a kid’s shot chart can come up; I can click on wherever he shot from, and that video will come up.”

Both Ruch and Harmatuk have noticed that Krossover’s ability to break down film for coaches has made Hudl step up their game to stay with the competition.

“Hudl is getting into it [breaking down the film] because they lost so many schools to the competition. They saw how many lacrosse and basketball teams wanted that ability,” Ruch said. “They’re doing that now in football with their own programming, so you have these programs Hudl’s designed because of the competition.”

One of the biggest components in both Hudl and Krossover is the ability to create highlight films for athletes to expose themselves to colleges. Athletes can take the individual clips where they look best, compile them, and create a fairly short reel. This can all be done through the Hudl and Krossover websites.

Ruch and Harmatuk remember when athletes had to bring their film to create videos outside of school to create their highlights.

“Instead of kids using third parties to put together their highlights, now a player with a coach or a kid with a parent can sit and use Krossover or Hudl and design their own highlight film they can share with a college,” Ruch said. “It makes their lives easier, it’s faster, and it’s cleaner.”

“Companies used to charge families three to four thousand dollars to send out video to colleges.  Now you can do it for free,” Harmatuk said. “Hudl and Krossover allow you to create your own page and hook up colleges to your videos. The digital world that is saving us.”

According to Harmatuk, professional and collegiate sports programs have a technology called SportsView that contains an algorithm that makes the camera and the video do literally everything by itself, with no human involvement. These technologies make things even easier on coaches and players.

While SportsView and more advanced technologies like it aren’t readily available to Malvern right now, the existing technology, namely Hudl and Krossover, have made an undeniable impact on sports.