In this week’s Inside Look, Just Play features Matt Hennesy, Head Coach of the Locust Grove Pirates, who are currently ranked #2 in Oklahoma. Coach Hennesy was first introduced to Just Play at the USA Men’s National Team Development Camps this past summer. After his experience, he decided to immediately utilize Just Play within his own program in Oklahoma.
“My first exposure to Just Play was at the USA Football Men’s National Team Development Camps this summer (Just Play was the official playbook provider of 5 camps). It was awesome, Just Play gave us coaches the ability to quickly streamline everything for all players.” Hennesy said.
“The most important thing is consistency, when you have 25+ coaches and 300+ players per camp from many different teams, there needs to be uniformity. Just Play made it easy for us to teach and execute all our schemes in a week.” As coaches could teach everything but then actually see who was studying through player specific analytics.
After losing in the semi-finals to eventual state champions Heritage Hall last year, Coach Hennesy was looking for something to minimize the number of critical mistakes his players made. “Just Play was exactly what we were looking for, our system is pretty complex so we needed an efficient way to teach, where they couldn’t give us any excuses.”
This brought up an interesting question… Have you been able to tell a difference with Just Play’s Analytics?
“We have a veteran team so we are able to open up the entire playbook for them but control what other guys like the freshman have access to see. Unlike before Just Play, players now hold themselves accountable. It was pretty obvious early on who was studying and who wasn’t. So we would bring them in and show them that we could see everything they’ve looked at, how long and when they looked at it.”
Matt Hennesy and Locust Grove Pirates are 5-0 putting up over 50 points per game and they are just scratching the surface with what Just Play can do.
More Knowledge. Fewer Mistakes. More Wins.