UMass placekicker Jacob Lurie attempts a field goal during training camp in Amherst earlier this month.
PHOTO BY MASSACHUSETTS ATHLETICS/CHRIS TUCCI
AMHERST — As performance-driven data has gained more and more use in sports over the past decade, Trackman has become a hot name.
It’s most popular in baseball, where its ball-tracking data is primarily used by pitchers. Red Sox hurler Tanner Houck used a Trackman machine to workshop his now-deadly slider. The technology is made for golf too. Famed long-driver Bryson DeChambeau studies it to get the most out of his swing.
Most recently, Trackman’s technology is being used at McGuirk Alumni Stadium, where UMass punters and kickers are now in their second season with it. The Trackman Football machine uses the same dual-radar technology as Trackman Golf. Use of the technology for quarterbacks is in the works, but for now, it’s just available for punts and kicks.
“Every single field goal attempt that we’ve had this preseason, we have chronicled the result of it and we can go back and look at it,” UMass special teams coordinator Ben Albert said. “We can look at the empirical data and make decisions based off it.”
Simon Mathiesen, the Director of Operations and Sales for Trackman Football, said UMass is one of about 20 college football teams currently using the technology. Mathiesen was a college kicker himself at Northwest Missouri State, where he was a four-year starter and a three-time Division II national champion.
On every kick, the Trackman machine records ball flight, apex, trajectory, launch angle, spin rate and ball height at the line of scrimmage. Video and data for every kick are available on an iPad.
The iPad also shows where kicks were attempted from and the maximum distance they’d be good from – displays that viewers have seen embedded in NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcasts since 2018.
UMass uses it as one of several camera tools during practice.
“We get a regular game (camera) vantage point both from sideline and endzone, and we get an on-ground vantage point from the GoPro and all the other data we’re getting from the Trackman,” Albert said. “And we combine it all and use it to make good decisions.”
Albert said he’s most concerned with the flight path of the ball – the lower the trajectory, the higher likelihood a kick has of being blocked. UMass also likes using a GoPro to film the snap and hold up-close.
“A lot of that is on the snap,” Albert said. “The better the long snapper is at delivering the ball in the proper position, the more efficient the holder can be at getting the ball with the laces away from the kicker, and the kicker can do his thing in rhythm.”
UMass currently rosters two kickers, a punter, two players listed as placekickers and two long snappers. CJ Kolodziey has started at punter for the past two seasons and is back in Amherst for his senior year.
UMass’ kicker for the past three seasons, Cameron Carson, graduated last season. He finished last year 11-for-20 on field goals, which put him 130th out of 134 FBS kickers in field goal percentage. UMass brought in grad-transfer Jacob Lurie from Vanderbilt to take his place. Lurie has just three career field goal attempts and did not see game action in two seasons at Vanderbilt.
UMass has not had a qualifying kicker (one attempt per game) place in the top-90 in the FBS in field goal percentage since 2017, when Logan Laurent went 13-for-15.
According to Albert, Lurie hadn’t missed a kick all preseason while kicking at the north end zone, away from the video board. In UMass’ most recent scrimmage, he missed one while kicking toward the scoreboard.
“He’s a very methodic kid, his mannerisms,” Albert said. “I always look at the mannerisms. His mannerisms were a little off, so when he came over, I asked him, ‘what was different about that kick?’ And he’s like ‘coach, that’s the first time we’ve kicked towards the scoreboard and there were moving images and they threw me off.’
“So being a coach, we’re trying to squeeze out every advantage possible, so we decided to use today to kick towards the scoreboard so that becomes a non-issue.”
Albert said he likes to pair the data with videos to use as teaching points for UMass’ specialists. He said the use of Trackman technology “definitely” gives the Minutemen a leg up on competition who may not be using it.
“Every tool that we have access to,” Albert said. “We’re going to use it so that we can win.”