@Fuegofan One other technique is called "ride the tackle" This is where rather than pushing back you absorb the tackle and kind of bounce off of it. Messi does it a lot. If I were skinny/light I would not try to go shoulder to shoulder against a bigger player, he'll win because of basic physics. But you can roll with the punches so to speak.
Live streaming question - there are these cameras like Veo that do live streaming. Seems to be gaining in popularity. But what I don't get is that it's fairly easy to live stream with a cell phone. You can live stream on twitter, youtube, facebook. So I wonder why more people don't just use their cell phone to live stream to the grandparents or whoever can't make it.
Hold your phone up for an entire game. Try to zoom in and out during the game. Hold your phone up high during the entire game. Don't forget to focus on what your camera is shooting and not what your eyes want to watch, Put up a scoreboard and a clock on the live stream. Veos, Trace, Pix4team among others all claim to make the process easier. Which they do. But you lose some of the human factor. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes not so much. Those cameras also record the game so coaches and players can go back to watch.
Yeah I get that it's easier to setup a Veo on a tripod and let it do it's thing. But it's also a lot more expensive; the camera isn't even the costliest part, it's the subscription service. Anywho, was just wondering why some don't use more readily available methods to broadcast to relatives. I think after a few go's they would get the hang of it. Use a tripod or mono-pod.
Having spent the past few months running video/trying to get other people to help with video for school soccer (after spending the past few years having access to Trace for club soccer), for me it's worth the money to do an automated service. FB Live, ..., are great, but to do a decent stream, you need a nice tripod, a guaranteed high spot to set up such as tall bleachers (field-level video is pretty hard to make heads of tails of), good cell service (not always a given in my experience), and someone running the camera/phone who, as Sam says, is just fine watching that rather than the game itself. I don't mind running a camera -- that live mic makes me a better sports parent -- but it surprised me this fall how often all of the above didn't line up.
So go ahead and do it. You're right. The systems are fairly expensive (figure $1500 for the hardware then hundreds of dollars yearly for the subscription). But, it's easier to get a "non-technical" person to set a camera on a tall tripod and use an app on their phone to start the stream/record. When Covid hit, I started streaming my son's HS games (attendance was limited). I did his games for two years and DD's game for a year. That ended up requiring: 2 cameras (one for the clock), a 7" monitor (MUCH easier to watch than the camera screen), two tripods, a remote zoom & start/stop controller, a laptop, a mifi device, and all the cables to set them up. I live streamed to Youtube (including a scoreboard w/clock), then put the recording (no graphics) on Hudl for team usage. Here's a game I did my son's senior year: Here's a game a parent did this year: He used a camera, a "tall" tripod, a laptop, and a remote pan head. It's amazing how much a difference using zoom can make. Here's a game from this year where we were at a park, not a school stadium... the camera is on a 12' pole I put together. Even a little bit of height make a big difference... Unfortunately, my new job will prevent me from doing so for my daughter's Senior year. But I've got the system down. One JV parent streamed those games via her phone and FB live. I don't have FB, so I don't know how well it turned out.
I have wondered if one could make enough in a side hustle by streaming games for teams. Then I wondered if large sites (think Grand Park) or tournaments/showcases could make money by streaming all the games in a weekend. You could charge $6/game to watch or a "weekend pass" for $15. Just don't know if there's enough of a market there.
I think there's a growing market, and I'm surprised places like Grand Park haven't already jumped in or hired somebody. Maybe the fact that most clubs seem to have their own Veo or Trace cameras now has already filled too much of it? On the school soccer side, loads of schools in Illinois started streaming since the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of them using https://www.nfhs.org/. I think Hudl offers a service, too. This fall, it felt like my son's school was one of the few larger schools with a serious, competitive program that didn't have some kind of regular streaming service.
You guys were serious. Did you have to jump through any hoops to stream via Youtube, some kind of minimum threshold for number of subscribers?
For some reason, I thought Grand Park did offer that for showcases, but I could be wrong (or delusional )
I know you have some experience in this! The Veo subscription is $125 per month, so $1500 per year. The camera is about $1k. https://us.shop.veo.co/?gclid=CjwKC...jCgs3WB4TTaJ2dptt7Yy9nbk9HlIXIVRoCLzMQAvD_BwE
Nope. I already had a YT account for myself, I was able to create one for the boys' team (and later for the girls). No minimum number of subscribers. I could have just used a single camera into a laptop (that's what the guy did this year), but I wanted to make a better viewing experience for the folks at home. That's on me.
I wish I can multi-quote. @soccerdad72, we've been to GP showcases where they've provided recordings of games (I think for a charge... I remember doing our own recordings for the team. I didn't stream club games). I would think any facility wanting to live stream needs to add some infrastructure. Each HS game took about 3.5Mb (I think that's right). You'd want dedicated bandwidth for just the games (most home upload speeds are probably 10-20mb) I know nfhs charges viewers, and the smallest time I think is a month ($12). They can hire me. lol
$1k for the camera/tripod was with a discount for getting a year worth of service. HS would just need it for 3-4 months, so I got month to month pricing (and the hardware was $1500)... $179/month for the team subscription, $50/month for the live subscription. Then, don't forget you need some kind of internet. You can use a phone hotspot, but depending on how many games you do in a month, you could max our your data (even "unlimited" data plans will throttle you if you use too much data). We inherited a MiFi device from my mom, and we activate it for the HS season. That's another ~$200 for the season (activation fee + monthly fee). Again, the Veo (and the like) greatly simplify the tech knowhow needed. I spent 30+ years working for a local TV station, so that I had.
Yes they do. I have an account I set up for out-of-state relatives to watch the postseason games that I'm having a tough time shutting down. I know nothing about their setup, but this school from my son's conference (this fall's reigning 2A state champs) streams most if not all of its games with a decent PBP guy, color commentator, the on-screen graphics you see plus, for at least some of their games, replay.
Yeah I get it. That is the best option. But I'm just talking about the quick and easy poor man's option. It's what old apps like periscope were invented for. (I think periscope no longer exists, it was bought by twitter but then integrated into twitter or something). Our club has a bunch of Veo's, and they pay a lot for the subscription service. Maybe I'll try the poor man's way soon and broadcast to relatives who can't be there. Our club is kinda picky about usage of the cameras so it's not even that accessible. I have a prosumer type 4k video camera that records decent quality and I record games with it. Maybe I'll stream with that. It would certainly be easier to pick out your kid vs Veo where the kids faces are hard to make out. With me operating my camera I can clearly see each kid and zoom in and out a bit.
If you'd like some help on the tech side, feel free to ask questions. I *HIGHLY* suggest doing a "test stream" at home to get things figured out. You don't want to be troubleshooting at the field unless you have to. Some things to think about (and you already might have)... * From the camera, how are you encoding the video to get to the internet (or is it built in)? * How are you getting the video from the camera to that device? * FYI, the handicam I got a year or so ago, I found out too late, it doesn't pass audio out of the HDMI port. * What are you going to use as your gateway to the internet (hotspot on a phone? mifi device? available wifi or hardline internet)? * Do the batteries last long enough on ALL the devices you need? Again, try to get as high as you can. Here's a recording I made at ground level...
Just coming here to brag about the play of my HS rec team, A little background-- our club is large enough that we are able to offer a full rec program all the way through the end of high school. This season there were 18 girls teams playing. As a fun way to end the season, a number of years ago, the club created the HS Cup. It is a free post-season knockout tournament , following the classic group stage/ championship round format. Anyway, my girls won their group games (4-3, 5-0). In the semifinal round, I pissed off the other coach because of how I was subbing and the girls won 1-0. They won the final 3-0 and so ended the season as champions of their flight. It was great ending for a cool group of girls.
Congratulations. Man, that seems like a lot of girls. That's an average of ~4 teams in each age group?
We don't split teams by age group in HS. For example, on my team we have seniors, juniors and sophomores. Many teams are mostly from the same grade and have been together for years. For the divisions this fall, the 1st division teams were mostly seniors, the 2nd division teams were mixed (there was 1 all freshman team that either won the division or took 2nd)) and the 3rd division were mostly freshmen. 18 teams was the largest number of teams that I'd seen in the 14 years of being in the HS program.
It is even more than that-- given that it is rec and kids have other priorities, teams carry large rosters. It takes between 20-25 to be viable so we are probably north of 350-360 girls. Our club is huge, we have around 5,500 kids playing in our K-12 rec program, 1,400 or more in our travel program and maybe 600-700 in a program that sits between the 2
Competitive soccer is hard for single parents. It is resource intensive. It requires money, it requires time. Wear and tear on the car. It requires shopping for equipment and constantly trying to find the right fitting stuff. Lost balls. Lost water bottles. Broken umbrellas at windy tournaments. Over priced coffees and hot cocoas and smoothies and tacos. $5 parking. $10 parking (per day). Do I hear $20? Now you have to buy the nice camper chair, and the tent... that's alot of stuff to transport, I'd better get a cart to haul it all. Wow, it won't fit in the car. Time to get an SUV! Looking back, I can see how it would have been impossible for my dad to get me into comp soccer. He was a single dad raising two boys. He grew up in a small town (more like a farm near a small town). He played some football, was in the marching band. Knew absolutely nothing about soccer, until maybe his 30s. He did sign me up for rec soccer. I mean, why not. You can play some little league baseball. You can play some rec soccer. Cool! Fun! But that's about all he could handle I'm sure. My cleats never fit well. But I can't blame him. I never learned good technique but I can't blame him. The leg up that my kid has, even today vs say a single mom with two kids... I feel fortunate yet at the same time sad for that single parent. I only have one kid so it's not impossible, even though it isn't easy.
$20/car parking fee is cheap. DS played at ESPN Wide World of Sports a couple years. I think the tickets (for three days) were $75 per PERSON. Everything you mentioned is not limited to soccer... every sport requires uniforms, equipment, and travel expenses. I will say we've been through ~10 years of travel soccer (two kids), never purchased a tent. I think we've gone through 3-4 camp chairs for each of us. I have a decent set of rain gear (got from work). Don't get the cheapest ANYTHING. You want something that you're going to get 2-3 years out of (if you're using it) and at least a year for the kid. Scratch that... you can go cheap on the ball and water bottle. Easier to replace.