Sam Gillispie spends game nights putting out fires. With Hudl, he finally has a tool built for the demands of his job, not just his coaches.
Sam Gillispie thought Friday nights as an athletic director would mean sitting and watching the game with the rest of his football-obsessed community. He thought wrong.
“I think my first time here, man, I might have got to see five minutes of the game,” he admitted. “The rest of the time you're putting out fires.”
Gillispie, now finishing his seventh year as AD at Texas’s Tyler Independent School District, quickly caught on to the demands of the role. “Part of my job that surprises people the most is behind the scenes,” he said. “Everybody sees the big Friday night lights games, but what they don’t realize is the transportation, the workers, the security, the custodial, all the kinds of things that have to go on to make an event run.”
The Questions That Drive Everything
With all the demands on his time and decisions on his plate, Gillispie often turns to a couple of simple questions. Is it good for our athletes? Is it good for our coaches?
“If it is, we’re going to jump all over it,” he said.
The Hudl athletic department package was both. With the added bonus that it was good for the athletic director, too.
“The level of access you have with Hudl is infinite,” said Gillispie. “We can’t be everywhere at once. It gives us a way as an athletic director to flip on a Hudl camera in a gym or at a football field and see, hey, what's going on at practice?”
More Than Film
Gillispie is adamant that Hudl is more than just film. He points to the district's recent adoption of Hudl Tickets as evidence. “We wanted to find a way to be faster, more efficient,” he said. “People always laugh at me because I’m always looking at the ticket lines.”
With Hudl Tickets, the lines to get in games at Tyler ISD venues are a thing of the past. “It’s been seamless,” he said. “People love it.”
One of the people who loves it is ticket taker Tiffany Lary, also a Behavioral Specialist in the district. “A Friday night football game before Hudl Tickets was chaotic. The lines were probably all the way down the street,” she said. “My anxiety level was so high.”
Now, patrons flow through the gate, no longer forming lines that cause anxiety among ticket takers and athletic directors alike. “Another thing I love is that it doesn’t have to be connected to Wi-Fi,” Lary said. “We just had this system going and it was flowing. Nothing was going down.”
“Something that would normally take me 20 minutes probably went down to seven,” she added.
We’re going to use Hudl no matter what just because of the quality they have, but when that rebate came along, it gave us a chance to recoup some costs on our Hudl subscription and pour some more money back into some of our other programs.
Sam Gillispie, Athletic Director, Tyler ISD (TX)
The payoff from switching to Hudl Tickets is more than an improved gate experience. Thanks to the Hudl Tickets rebate, which returns schools extra money on every ticket sold, it was a financial one, too.
“The rebate was great,” said Gillispie. “We’re going to use Hudl no matter what just because of the quality they have, but when that rebate came along, it gave us a chance to recoup some costs on our Hudl subscription and pour some more money back into some of our other programs.”
What Time Means to Coaches
For all the ways Hudl has changed game nights at Tyler ISD, film is still the foundation. And for Gillispie’s coaches, its biggest gift is time.
“It just gives you more time to teach and coach kids,” said Gillispie. “Before, there was so much manual stuff with VHS and miniDVs where you had to make copies. Now, there’s the capability to download something to an iPad and go watch practice, not necessarily at the Fieldhouse, but at home with your family.”
That time compounds into something bigger: kids who actually understand what their coaches are telling them. For Tyler Legacy High School softball coach Annie Gillispie, the difference is between hearing a correction and seeing it.
“It's something that as a coach is so helpful, just allowing kids to see what we're talking about rather than just hear it and have it go in one ear and out the other,” she said.
The coaches point to film as their single most effective player development tool, and they can prove it.
“It’s great because we can get on and see how many hours our guys are watching each week,” said Tyler Legacy boys' basketball coach Kyle Smith. “A lot of times, the guys that are watching the most film are the guys that are showing the most improvement throughout the course of the year and throughout their careers.”
Good for the athletes. Good for the coaches. And, as it turned out, good for the guy watching the ticket lines.
The Reason Behind the Role
The light coming on for young athletes is a big reason why Gillispie chose his career path.
“When you see kids excel at something, overcome adversity, and see that reaction when they first get it, kind of like that light bulb moment,” he said. “That’s when I knew this is something that I really want to do for the rest of my life.”
It’s also why the fires are worth putting out. Tyler, deep in East Texas, behind what locals call the Pine Curtain, is a community Gillispie is deeply proud to contribute to. “The community as a whole, the way they support athletics, the way they support teams, their kids in everything they do,” he said. “The thing that makes Tyler so special is just the support you receive from the community as a whole.”
For Gillispie, the tools were never the point. The community and the kids always were.
“Athletics is so much more than just wins and losses,” he said. “When those kids come back to you and pour back into the community and tell you how much they appreciate what you’ve done for them, it reaffirms I’m doing what I should be doing.”
He doesn’t have to look far for proof. One of those kids who came back is coaching just down the hall: his daughter, Annie.
See how more athletic directors are winning with Hudl.
