Keeping State Soccer on the Cutting Edge

STARKVILLE – In recent seasons, you've seen Mississippi State soccer rise to new heights. Whether it's the Southeastern Conference Championship, the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 appearances or the multiple Bulldogs that have been able to swap out the Maroon and White for a professional kit, it's obvious there is something special behind State soccer.

So, what's fueling MSU's success? The answers are many. It's the players, coaches and fans, for sure. But it's also a commitment to getting the very best out of every athlete using the latest technology and collaboration from State's sports science department and the Athlete Engineering Institute on campus.

"it's important for us to be professional in everything that we do," MSU assistant director of strength and conditioning and applied sports sciences Victor Hoffmann said. "The intentionality behind our training days, training weeks and training months is key. Having everything planned out is something that sets us apart, and it prepares players for their next step."

That word – intentionality – is key. Hoffmann is one of the faces charged with using technology to measure and evaluate each Bulldog in both training and matches to best develop individualized plans for each player to reach peak performance.

Each practice session or match, Hoffmann is using State's GPS tech to track players' total distance covered, their high-speed running, player load, maximum speeds and more. It allows coaches to structure appropriate drills with a data-informed edge.

A similar approach is taken on game day, and information can be leveraged in the moment for tactical decisions.

"We'll look at a player's data in the first half compared to the second half," Hoffmann explains. "We primarily look at work rate, which is how many yards they are covering per minute. That tells us a lot about where the athlete is currently at on a physical level in terms of fatigue or things like that.

"So as the second half or end of a game approaches, we may look to make subbing decisions based on things like work rate or how much load they've accumulated or how much distance they have covered compared to previous games."

Quite literally at the heart of a lot of this is each player's heart rate data. Athletes all wear a monitor across their chest that allows coaches to know what heart rate zone the player is in at any given moment in a practice or game.

"If we know what heart rate zone a lot of these players live at in games, we can make sure the intensity is high enough in conditioning to make sure they're ready for that in matches," Hoffmann said.

Other data points collected off the pitch play a key role in bettering the Bulldogs as well. They track jump height. They measure peak power. They gauge agility.

All these numbers are like parts of a recipe that allow coaches to see what ingredients need to be added to give players precisely the right mix to excel.

Therin lies another piece of all this. All of this data being collected must be presented in a digestible form to the coaches.

"With a lot of the systems we use, there is a lot of data to work with," said David Saucier, a research engineer with MSU's Athlete Engineering Institute. "We'll narrow down what is most important to the coaches and that will influence training outcomes, strength and conditioning, how they want to adapt their weightlifting programs and more. It's all customizable and very tailored to the individual athlete. It allows the coaches to make more informed decisions on how to optimize training with the data to support that."

Coordinator of sports science Michael Mydlo says one of the most helpful tools in tracking all these things over time is being able to compare athletes within the same position groups.

"For example, maybe we have one athlete that's covering a lot more distance than the others," Mydlo said. "That allows the strength and conditioning staff and the coaching staff to have a conversation of why that may be and then adjust training, if needed."

Mydlo's contributions have been critically important in this entire process. One of his biggest projects since arriving at MSU in 2023 was to ensure that the data being collected was being visualized, processed, analyzed and communicated effectively.

"A lot of programs and universities have these technologies, but the biggest thing that sets us apart here at State is how we leverage the technology," Mydlo said. "One of the biggest things here was to make sure this data is accessible to all members of our performance team, so everyone understands what an athlete did on a particular day and how that's tracking over time in order to ensure that athlete is developing effectively."

Essentially, it's about making sure the team behind the team is on the same page.

"We have just about everything an athlete could need in terms of the technologies, but the one thing that really sets us apart is the collaboration between our [Bulldog Athlete Services] staff, our coaches and our academic partners," Mydlo said. "That really makes this place special."

Mississippi State's process is leading to victories, but it's also undeniably laying the foundation for Bulldogs' futures, too.

MSU's integration of data is ultimately teaching players striving for a professional career what a training structure should look like and how it should be executed.

"Depending on which level you go to, you don't always have the same resources that you do at Mississippi State," Hoffmann said. "So, it's important to be able to make training decisions, understand your body and understand what you need at that next level if you don't have it. We try to educate players well enough so that when they go on to the next level, they feel prepared mentally and physically to handle that."

For the players that move on to the National Women's Soccer League or a similarly high level of soccer, they won't be surprised at all once they get there.

"A lot of professional clubs do things in a very similar way we do," Hoffmann said. "So, we have been able to talk with multiple NWSL teams on what their performance benchmarks are for their teams. It goes back to that layering of professionalism and preparing athletes for the next step. We're trying to get them to a level where they will succeed or have the opportunity to succeed with higher-level or professional clubs."

It's a win-win for everyone involved. Mississippi State's in-house, brilliant minds are keeping the Bulldogs on the cutting edge of technology, leading to wins and championships for MSU. All the while, the players themselves are leveraging the information they receive to get the very most out of themselves, leading to current success and potentially fantastic soccer futures.

Mississippi State University Athletics

Keeping State Soccer on the Cutting Edge

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