Media Gallery

It?s game night at Fife High School. The coach is on the court. The team is warming up. And in the bleachers, the Dartfish student expert, laptop and video camera in hand, is ready to shoot the game.

Fife High School in Tacoma, Washington is the first high school in the nation to introduce a fully integrated program of training, technology and traditional coaching.  Beginning  in January of 2006, students taking the new Sports Video Production Class, will learn how to use Dartfish - the world leader in video analysis - the same cutting edge technology used by 90% of the Olympic Teams, and universities like Washington, Seattle Pacific, Stanford, Cal Poly, Texas A&M and Harvard.

Dartfish trained students will work with a coach and team at Fife, filming and tagging games and meets for pre and post game analysis.  The Dartfish student experts, will also work with their teams in practice, capturing athletes In The Action for drill and skill analysis, and personalized coaching, with immediate visual feedback.

The driving force behind this innovative program is Howard Hosley, the Athletic Director at Fife High School, who has taught PE and coached various team and individual sports for 35 years. Hosley knows that seeing is believing, when it comes to getting through to kids. ?Since the Dartfish training sessions in September, Fife coaches and student peer mentors have been ?playing? with Dartfish, tagging some football games and experimenting with different features,? explains Hosley. ?In January, peer mentors from the Sports Video Production Class will train fellow students to become Dartfish experts. As all of us in the field of education have learned, kids teaching kids on computers is the fastest way to accelerate the learning curve. Our goal is to have a core of Dartfish student experts that we can call on for any athletic activity at Fife.?

Not only will Fife have student motion analysis experts for each of their sports, they will also be using Dartfish in their student-produced Trojan Television Show, airing monthly for the entire high school.

Both athletics and academics at Fife will benefit from the use of this technology, because Hosley plans to use Dartfish in his PE classes as well, ?breaking down skills and activities with immediate visual feedback, to improve the performance and confidence of my PE students.?

The whistle blows, the ball is tossed, the digital camera rolls, and a new era of coaching commences at Fife High School, preparing the next generation with hands-on experience in technology.

by Illana Hosley