As football season comes to a close, most football players are reviewing their seasons and posting their season highlights on a commonly known site called Hudl.

Hudl was established in 2006 with a goal to provide video review and performance analysis tools for sports teams. Although many high school teams across America use the tool, many of these sports teams are next level teams in the collegiate and professional ranks. According to TechDay, “Since its inception, Hudl has acquired over 162,000 total active teams across 30+ sports and more than 4.1 million active users – coaches, athletes, trainers and analysts.” 

Hudl, when founded, was a sports video company focused on the highlight. “We understand the value of a highlight – it’s an essential part of our very existence,” expresses an individual in a Hudl.com blog. Hudl, when started, was a company that wanted to exemplify the popular ESPN show called SportsCenter. “SportsCenter, which informed viewers of games’ outcomes in short, digestible bites, each one rarely lasting longer than a few minutes. Viewers came to crave this mode of getting their ‘sports fix’. At Hudl, we wanted to try to capture the highlight aspect of SportsCenter.” Hudl as a company had many aspirations for the future including VR highlights.

Hudl has become a huge platform for athletes to upload their personal highlights and their personal achievements. It has become a huge platform for high schools across the country and especially at FHC. Most athletic teams at FHC use Hudl for scouting other teams. In basketball, Jonas VanderWoude, a player for the FHC Rangerball team, says this about Hudl: “I use Hudl as a way to watch film of our games we play as well as scouting the opponent at hand.” Our athletes and coaches here at FHC are extremely hard-working and will do their best to make sure they are fully prepared for competition. Hudl has assisted teams across the country to achieve these goals. One question about scouting  programs though is the ease at which it is to upload to a platform like Hudl. 

Scouting by most college scouts is done in a very conspicuous and undercover manner, and Hudl allows for this type of recruiting. Jonas VanderWoude states, “I don’t really use Hudl as a scouting platform, but I do use clips from Hudl to make an iMovie. I can then use those highlights to make videos to send to scouts via Email or Twitter.” 

As fall sports wrap up and winter sports begin here at FHC, Hudl will continue to be at the forefront of prepping our athletes for the season ahead and the competition they will face.