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News & Photos
McDonogh Football Goes High-Tech
Varsity Football Coach Dom Damico studies one professional football team every summer. In 1999, a conversation with Baltimore Ravens Head Coach Brian Billick led him
to an exciting discovery. “I met with his top tech assistant, Wade Harmon, for a few hours over at the Ravens’ practice complex,” Damico recalls. He left with a demo CD-ROM for Coach's Office , a program that allows coaches to manage their playbooks, practice schedules, and scripts from a virtual office on the computer screen. Nine NFL teams use it.
Damico has found the software invaluable. Traditionally, when the team practiced a hundred plays, someone had to spend hours drawing diagrams for every play. Now, Damico uses a feature called chalkboard to compose those diagrams on his laptop. Circular icons representing players are dragged into position, along with arrows that indicate their movement. A digital playbook keeps the cards at Damico’s fingertips, and he can fine-tune them as needed whenever his team adopts a new strategy.
Damico soon hopes to harness another technological innovation: digital video. Presently, when Damico wants to analyze a certain play, he must rewind through a maze of VHS tape. Once McDonogh football games are stored in digital
movie files, a rich library of plays will be a mouse click away. “I hope it will help us sustain the same success on the field,” says Damico, referring to the perfect 10-0 season his team enjoyed last fall.
Varsity Football Coach Dom Damico studies one professional football team every summer. In 1999, a conversation with Baltimore Ravens Head Coach Brian Billick led him to an exciting discovery. “I met with his top tech assistant, Wade Harmon, for a few hours over at the Ravens’ practice complex,” Damico recalls. He left with a demo CD-ROM for Coach's Office , a program that allows coaches to manage their playbooks, practice schedules, and scripts from a virtual office on the computer screen. Nine NFL teams use it.
Damico has found the software invaluable. Traditionally, when the team practiced a hundred plays, someone had to spend hours drawing diagrams for every play. Now, Damico uses a feature called chalkboard to compose those diagrams on his laptop. Circular icons representing players are dragged into position, along with arrows that indicate their movement. A digital playbook keeps the cards at Damico’s fingertips, and he can fine-tune them as needed whenever his team adopts a new strategy.
Damico soon hopes to harness another technological innovation: digital video. Presently, when Damico wants to analyze a certain play, he must rewind through a maze of VHS tape. Once McDonogh football games are stored in digital movie files, a rich library of plays will be a mouse click away. “I hope it will help us sustain the same success on the field,” says Damico, referring to the perfect 10-0 season his team enjoyed last fall.