Firstbeat Sports Post-Season Review – 2022 Highlights from NCAA Women’s Soccer

A growing number of collegiate athletes are benefiting from technology as they pursue their performance dreams. With 2022 coming to an end, we thought we’d take a look back at some of our women’s soccer clients’ fantastic achievements over the last few months and ask their coaches what role the Firstbeat Sports solution plays when it comes to enhanced performance and improved recovery.

For Firstbeat’s Director of North American Sales, Benjamin Jensen, the conference tournaments are always an annual highlight. He says:

“It’s always an exciting time of year when the conference tournaments approach. I love to follow our clients and see how successful they are. A lot of the teams we have worked with for many years feel more like good friends than clients and continuing to have relationships with them is the most rewarding part of my job.”

University of South Carolina Take Home SEC Conference Title

The University of South Carolina is a long-time Firstbeat Sports client, with the solution used not only by the women’s soccer teams, but by both tennis programs too. This year saw the women’s soccer team, the Gamecocks, take home the SEC women’s soccer tournament title, the conference championship tournament for the Southeastern Conference.

For Head Women’s Soccer Coach, Shelley Smith, working with Firstbeat has become a long-term partnership:

“We are currently in our eighth year working with Firstbeat, and have been very appreciative of the partnership we have formed.  Firstbeat has allowed us to maximize player development by delivering a consistent and reliable product.  The software is user friendly and allows for clear communication between our sports performance and coaching staffs.  Above all, the customer service is what separates Firstbeat from other products.  We look forward to continuing our collaboration with them.”

University of Buffalo Take Home MAC Conference Title

Another client who has been utilizing the Firstbeat Sports Solution since 2019 is the University of Buffalo Women’s Soccer Team. In addition to women’s soccer, Firstbeat is used by both of the university’s basketball teams – with all systems run by the athletic training staff.

This year saw the Buffalo Bulls claim their first women’s soccer title since 2014, winning the Mid-American Conference (MAC) championship, and extend their unbeaten streak to a program-record 17 matches. For the athletic training staff, Firstbeat is an important tool when it comes to managing training load. University of Buffalo Associate Athletic Trainer, John Ward, says:

“Firstbeat has been an invaluable tool for us in evaluating and managing training load. It is user friendly and gives clear but comprehensive data that allows me to provide our coaches accurate feedback on our training sessions. Since we’ve started using Firstbeat, our overuse injuries have significantly decreased.”

Old Dominion University also saw their women’s soccer team beat James Madison 4-3 in double overtime to win the 2022 Sun Belt Conference Tournament. The Monarchs have been a Firstbeat client since 2017.

Regular Season Title Winners

In addition to the superb conference championship wins mentioned above, several Firstbeat clients also won their regular season titles, including Binghamton University and Valparaiso University.

In October, Valparaiso’s women’s soccer team won their MVC soccer regular season title, their fourth regular season league championship over three different conferences. The program claimed back-to-back regular season titles in 2005 and 2006 in the Mid-Continent Conference and took the Horizon League regular season championship in 2014.

When asked why he chose to use the Firstbeat Sports solution, Valparaiso Coach John Marovich said:

“Firstbeat Sports stood out because not only did it have the real time monitoring component, but it also had the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) piece built into the system. The HRV recovery monitoring was a critical aspect that I wanted to be a part of our system. The customer support received was first class which made it a very easy choice to select Firstbeat Sports to work with my soccer athletes at Valparaiso University.”

Over at Binghamton University, the Bearcats claimed their regular season title with a 5-0 win over UMBC. A Firstbeat client since 2017, Head Coach Neel Bhattacharjee finds the system useful when it comes to the team’s training and recovery.

“It was a good year again with Firstbeat, we had very little on soft muscle injuries and I give a lot of credit to Firstbeat and the data it provides.” – Neel Bhattacharjee, Head Coach, Women’s Soccer Binghamton University.

When it comes to working with college teams, Firstbeat’s Benjamin Jensen believes our close relationships with the coaching staff help make the Firstbeat Sports solution stand out among the competition:

“We continue to build our product offering based on feedback from our valued customers, and the great thing about Firstbeat being a small employee-owned company is our ability to take action and implement the coaches’ feedback.  The coaches themselves truly are the developers of the product at the end of the day.”

Interested in learning more about Firstbeat Sports for your team? Contact us here.