Super Soccer Stars (SSS), the leading premier youth soccer club in New York partnered with Famer and their online personal coaching platform for a coach, athlete and parent to engage through a personalized coaching experience. Famer will connect Super Soccer Stars football players to coaches and instructors via a smart video app for training programs, messaging and interactive feedback. Super Soccer Stars curriculum and training modules are delivered to member families through Famer Play directly to digital devices. The Sports Techie community blog had a Q&A with Matthew Stefan, Director of National Marketing at Super Stars, to learn more about this sports tech driven partnership. This business model is comparable to how Peleton took adult fitness training to the next level through personalized sports training technology over the web in a cost effective manner. Youth soccer training just got a major digital upgrade.
SSS
The sport company was founded back in the year 2000 and is now considered the largest corporately run youth soccer program in the United States. The soccer ball is the catalyst for kids to better their skills while reinforcing self-confidence, improving athleticism, coordination and socialization, while targeting physical muscle memory.
A collection of experienced coaches both local and overseas pool together to instruct small groups of boys and girls to develop skill sets and promote teamwork while emphasizing a fun, non-competitive and educational, secure environment. SSS has more than 650 coaches on staff spread across 25+ major markets with a user reach numbering 100,000 children each year.
Famer’s mobile app allows Super Soccer Stars’ coaches to share videos and instructions on how to perform Super Soccer Stars’ skills & drills at home, as well as assign weekly workouts and provide progress reports to athletes and parents. Super Soccer Stars customers from ages 2-X will be able to use the Famer app to digitally extend its age-specific skills and drills training program to the parent and the athlete as a supplemental interactive program at home.
With Famer, parents will have a clear understanding of their child’s training and development milestones and will receive the following:
- Access to videos and descriptions week by week explaining their child’s Super Soccer Stars’ class activities.
- Skills & Drills support their child by helping him/her work on what he/she just learned in class.
- The ability to follow their participation progress.
- Additional physical, mental, and social development activities for their child.
- Quality time spent with their child by actively supporting him/her when practicing programs assigned by Super Soccer Stars’ coach.
“This will be the first of many digital offerings in our pipeline to drive home our vision of empowering youth through sport, something which is missing in the coaching pipeline today. We need to connect with our young people on any device and at any time possible, and by partnering with Famer, we will provide a mobile curriculum which supplements our classes to further engage our young Soccer Stars and their parents through our digital content. ” said Adam Geisler, CEO, Super Soccer Stars. ”Famer’s digital platform will become a core part of the Super Soccer Stars training curriculum going forward to enable our young athletes to tap into their full potential on and off the field.”
Famer, taking sports personally
Famer is a sports technology company launched in 2019.
Youth sports clubs are joining Famer’s online interactive coaching marketplace and platform as well as young athletes, parents and sports camps. Their vision is to help young athletes realize their full potential both on-field and off-field.
- Communicate Directly With A Coach
- Follow Personal Training Plans
- Receive Performance Analysis and Feedback
Kids often lacks access to coaches and trainers but not anymore as Famer provides direct communication between coach, trainer and athlete while providing performance analysis such as graphics, telestration and expert voice overs.
Areas such as technique, strength confidence and cardio are displayed in the app as a percentage of each goal met. Instruction, feedback, tips, and drills, as well as positive words or constructive criticism commentary, are all delivered on-demand from a verified coach to an athlete in real-time.
Framer saves each party time that can used to practice, train and get mentally fit for play.
Up to six family members can use the app with the Apple Family Sharing option enabled, age 4+.
Famer App
To begin, download the free app. Next, sign in with a phone number, enter the notification code and select whether you are 13 Years Old or Older, or an Athlete’s Parent, The app is designed for over 13 years old.
Create your Famer Player Card using a photo, first and last name, and adding a Club if you want, this is optional. I did not see Super Soccer Stars as an option of the six club options to select. The next step is to select your gender and enter a date of birth. Pick your sports between Soccer, Basketball and Baseball, then select a position. I picked soccer and striker. Choose your soccer skills such as running, passing and dribbling, I also picked free kicks. Enter your height, dominant foot and a small bio. Mine read, @THESportsTechie at @SportsTechieNET, Finally, click Finish.
The app asks users to allow notifications which is standard. After that step, you are in the simple GUI. To begin using the app, there are three options – Coach, Video and Information. You need to get an invite from your coach. Users can share videos. Info data includes Age, Height and Position. You will notice Challenges Stars and Following (videos) tabs.
Search for Coaches near you that are Famer verified; also see how many followers a coach has and how many they follow. Find drills, strength and conditioning drills.
Note, when you enter the app there is a Kobe Bryant quote, “Everything negative – pressure, challenge – are all an opportunity for me to rise.”
“Consumers are used to be receiving on-demand access to communities from fitness classes to continuing education programs, but youth sports training has been missing that opportunity until now. Famer provides that content for the first time, and there is no better partner to launch this than Super Soccer Stars with its proven curriculum, incredible teaching, and tremendous coaches,” said Rich Abend, CEO of Famer. “Our Famer Play product allows for better communication and provides a mobile and digital extension between Super Soccer Stars’ teachings and its parents, which leads to more fun and better participation for all.”
THE Sports Techie Q&A With Matthew Stefan
Why was Super Soccer Stars not an option for the optional Club selection during sign up?
- The Super Soccer Stars Skills and Drills is an add-on digital subscription service to our seasonal classes. As such, we want to ensure it is a completely closed community and that not just anyone downloading the app can request to train with Super Soccer Stars. Additionally we are automatically building out the accounts for every user that signs up for Super Soccer Stars Drills and Skills on Famer so that when the account is built out, the users download the app, their phone number is recognized and they are automatically placed into the appropriate Super Soccer Stars curriculum stage based on their date of birth.
What are challenges and stars?
- The Challenges and Stars tab is a social/community building tool for organizations, coaches, and athletes to post specific “challenges” i.e. show us you hitting the crossbar from the top of the box.
Is feedback from a coach all on-demand and telestration layered on the video or can you converse back and forth with a coach in real-time too?
- A coach will assign workouts containing a number of drills. On the Famer One product (personal 1:1 training) for some of the drills, coaches may require athletes to submit videos of them performing those drills. Once the athlete submits that video to the coach, he/she can then do telestration and voiceover feedback on the video. Coaches and athletes can also converse back and forth via our chat platform on our Famer Team and Famer One products.
Is your mobile curriculum tied in with US Soccer?
- The Super Soccer Stars curriculum is not currently tied to US Soccer today, however it is used in conjunction with several MLS teams
The app says it is for use with 13+ but the press release mentions 2-x, please explain this disparity?
- Famer (or any app for that matter) needs to be COPPA compliant. This means that a user needs to be at least 13 years of age to utilize the app. While the curriculum is built for kids 2-10 years of age, the parents are the ones whose numbers will be used and the kids would be utilizing the app under their parents’ supervision.
Sports Techie, I played organized youth soccer from 6th grade to 12th grade in Redmond, WA and football programs in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s did not have this kind of specialized app to connect with coaches and trainers because the internet, smartphones and apps were not around either.
They are today for coaches, kids and parents!
Thank you to Famer and Super Soccer Stars for sharing this story.
See you later sportstechie in Seattle, Atlanta and around the world!
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