Located in the tranquil town of Torre en Conill Norte just 15 minutes from downtown Valencia, we find the Mas Camarena resort and boarding school. With state-of-the-art training facilities that include several turf fields, a bright and airy weight-room, tennis pitches, basketball courts, and even a swimming pool- it feels like a sports person's paradise. This is where we find the International Development Academy's Valencia installation, or IDA Valencia for short.
From just one short glimpse of an IDA training session, one gets an instant feeling of professionalism. At the time there were around 60 footballers who were in the midst of completing their 10 month program, essentially living the life of a professional. IDA's goal is simple, to help players reach their full potential. Many players come to IDA with aspirations of earning a college scholarship or signing a professional contract, many succeed. Of 200 IDA enrolees, 75 have earned college scholarships and 8 have gone on to play professionally.
In every aspect of the IDA program, they've integrated professional tools and resources to get the most out of their players and staff. Visit a training session and you'll notice that all the players are wearing stat trackers, collecting physical data like heart rate, sprints, total distance travelled, and more. Visit a gym session, and you'll notice players executing a detailed program with different machines, equipment, and the oversight of a strength and conditioning specialist. And at the heart of everything, you'll find 360Player, the platform they use to communicate, log information, schedule events, share resources, and more.
We caught up with several coaches and staff members within the organization to ask about their goals and processes within the academy, and the role 360Player's technology plays, here's what they said:
Antony Blackburn, Technical Director IDA Valencia
Question: How have you guys been using 360Player in your academy?
Antony: Since starting to use 360Player last year it's been a fantastic addition to our program. It's really now something that we couldn't live without. We use it for absolutely every single element of what we do- from the workflow of the staff, to distributing tasks as a staff, to analysis with players, to evaluating players performance and giving them feedback after every single game. We also put our match day targets through 360Player, we communicate with our parents, there's really nothing that we don't use it for. As an academy, it is really the heartbeat of everything that we do.
George Nichols, IDA Valencia Head Coach
Question: How have you guys been using 360Player in your academy?
George: When players arrive here the first thing that we do is get them integrated into the platform. They create their profile as a player, and it's then how we communicate with them. It's how they receive their daily and weekly calendars and schedules which ensures they are fully aware of everything that we are doing on a daily basis. We also use it as the platform to provide feedback to the players from their matches and sometimes training as well. We can share the videos of the games with the players, we can add notes to those videos so they can see in which areas they've done well and which areas they need to improve. That's the essential idea of the program, that each individual player is developing as best they can through their time with us.
Question: Who would you recommend 360Player to? Who could benefit from a platform like this?
George: I would certainly recommend 360Player as a platform to be used by any academy, professional club, or international academy such as we are. Dealing with a large number of players with different calendars and different schedules, we think 360Player is fantastic for that. You can really have one integrated platform that brings all the players at the club together using the same structure and programs, and that continuity helps players on their individual pathways.
Want to learn more about IDA? Here's a link to the International Development Academy website.
