The most valuable coaching in youth soccer is spoken, and most of it disappears the moment practice ends. We catch it and get it to the player it was meant for.
Decades of learning-sciences research rank feedback among the strongest influences on how people learn, though its effect depends heavily on the information it carries. Players remember fragments. Parents get a secondhand version in the car.
Clubs film every match now. The footage shows what a player did, not what their coach told them to do next.
Coach Sidekick captures what coaches say during practices, matches and halftime talks, and turns it into feedback a player can act on and a record a coach can learn from. No clipboards, no note-taking after practice: a coach records on the phone already in their pocket.
Wisniewski, Zierer & Hattie (2020): feedback's overall effect on learning is d = 0.48 across 435 studies, and information-rich feedback is roughly four times as effective as simple praise. More on the research page.
The science of how people learn
Co-Founder & CEO
Andrew studies how people learn, how teachers decide what to teach next, and how AI can sharpen both.
Coach Sidekick is that research pointed at a soccer pitch: the coach and player feedback loop, rebuilt so both sides can see it.
Education & learning-sciences researcher · Ph.D., Engineering Education, Purdue University
The reality of the pitch
Co-Founder & Head of Coaching
Hunter is an NCAA Division I National Champion (Virginia, 2009), a three-time ACC All-Tournament selection, and was drafted into MLS by the Chicago Fire.
Now a youth coach, Hunter has been the player getting the feedback and the coach giving it. He knows what gets said in the moment, and how little of it lasts.
NCAA National Champion, UVA Men's Soccer (2009) · 3× ACC All-Tournament Team · MLS SuperDraft, Chicago Fire (2012) · Youth soccer coach
The best coaching is spoken, and it vanishes.
The note that changes a player is said out loud, in the moment, and gone by the car ride home. Video keeps what players did. Almost nothing keeps what their coach said. We built a company around not losing it.
Coaches deserve the loop they give players.
A coach spends all season giving players an honest look at what happened and what to adjust. Almost no one gives it back to the coach. We do: a Debrief on the session they just ran, who they reached, who they didn't, and how closely it followed their plan.
Every player, not just the loud ones.
On a roster of eighteen, the most gifted get most of what a coach says out loud. We attribute the coaching to each player by name, so the quiet kid who never gets pulled aside still goes home with something real, in the coach's own words.
For the clubs that measure a season by who improved, not just who won.
Photograph is AI-generated.